Part 15
Alex groaned and tried not to rest her head on the toilet bowl. She felt sick. Very sick. And she knew it had something to do with the alcohol she’d consumed the night before. She was sitting on her hotel room’s bathroom floor in the darkness; light wasn’t her friend at the moment. She wasn’t sure that it would ever be her friend again.
She rested her head on the wall and closed her eyes. Maybe if she just stayed really still she would stop feeling so dizzy.
Suddenly a loud knocking on the hotel room door jerked Alex out of her short rest. She slowly opened both eyes and painstakingly got up from where she had been settled on the floor. She unlocked the bathroom door in annoyance. She was going to murder whoever was pounding on her hotel room door.
She walked out of the bathroom and looked around. Leo had thankfully made himself scarce when he saw Alex rushing to the bathroom earlier that morning.
She walked to the door and opened it ready to blast whoever was on the other side of it and met Chris’s obnoxiously cheerful countenance.
He took one look at Alex and laughed. “Do you feel as bad as you look?”
Alex looked down at herself and realized that she was still in her pj’s and now that she thought about it, she realized that she hadn’t brushed her teeth or hair either. She didn’t really care, when you woke up feeling like you’d just been run over by an NSYNC tour bus, beauty wasn’t exactly your first priority.
“What do you want, Chris?” she asked stoically.
He walked into the room and thrust a bottle of water at her. “Here, drink lots of this and take a couple aspirins. We have to get out of here in a couple hours. You’re probably not going to feel better by then but you’ll have to suck it up, ok?”
She grabbed the bottle and nodded, grimacing when a new bout of dizziness hit her. “I can handle it.”
Chris raised a brow. “If you say so.” He turned away to walk out the door.
“Hey Chris?” Alex said quietly.
“Yeah?” Chris turned back to face Alex.
“I’m sorry about last night.”
“Dude, don’t worry about it. You can’t help the fact that you’re such a stud,” Chris said laughing before he left the room.
Alex rolled her eyes before feeling another bout of nausea and rushing to the bathroom.
…
Alex propped herself against the outside wall of the hotel as she watched whatever luggage the guys had used, get packed onto the buses. With a baseball cap crammed onto her head to block her eyes from the sun, she waited there until it was time to leave. She wasn’t looking forward to being cooped up on the bus for rest of the day and wanted to get as much fresh air as possible.
She closed her eyes and let the breeze lull her. Even with the noisy traffic and the never-ending stream of people bustling by she felt herself relaxing. Her eyes fluttered open as she felt a presence beside her. She turned her head and was surprised to see Vella standing only a few feet away.
Alex didn’t want to talk to Vella and considered heading back inside just to avoid conversation with the girl but Vella took the choice from her by walking up to her and plopping down on a bench beside the wall.
Vella sighed and shone her big eyes up at Alex. “Hey.”
Alex didn’t have much choice in leaving now without it looking like a direct cut so she jerked her head in greeting and shifted her eyes to the buses.
Vella sighed again and Alex raised her eyes in annoyance at Vella’s obvious ploy to get Alex to talk to her. Might as well just get it over with, Alex thought before she asked the question Vella obviously wanted to hear. “What’s wrong?”
Vella lowered her eyes and lifted her right shoulder in an off hand shrug. “Oh, nothing…”
“Ok.” Alex didn’t really care either way.
“Well, actually…”
Now it was Alex’s turn to sigh. She looked at Vella and waited.
“It’s just that. I know we’ve never really talked or anything. But like, I don’t know who else to turn to and you seem really nice.” She took a breath before continuing. “Well, I was really down last night after everyone went out without me. And the headache didn’t help or anything, you know? And then JC came into our room all annoyed and edgy and stuff.”
Alex tried to suppress the feeling of jealousy that shot through her at the mention of their room.
“Anyway, so like, I was all sick and achy and all and he was all mad and I didn’t do anything and he just like, snapped at me for no reason. I mean, even when I was crying he didn’t hold me or anything. He even passed up sex. Like, that never happens. And I just don’t know what’s going on. I can’t lose him.” Vella started tearing up at this and rifled through her purse before removing a fresh piece of Kleenex out of it.
Alex turned her face away from Vella as an image of Vella and JC in bed flashed through her mind. She shook her head trying to clear it. She didn’t want to think about it. At all.
She turned back to the sniffling Vella. “Umm, I’m sure he was just having a bad day.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, sure,” Alex said shrugging.
“I hope you’re right. He just means so much to me. I never want to lose him, you know?”
Alex nodded and glanced around suddenly feeling claustrophobic. “So yeah, umm, I just realized that I forgot my toothbrush in my room. So, I’m just going to…go.”
Alex rushed into the hotel before Vella could stop her. She was looking back to make sure Vella wasn’t following her when she walked into someone, their hands settling on her shoulders to steady her.
She looked up at a grinning JC. “What’s the rush?”
She backed away and cleared her throat. “Uh…No rush.”
JC raised a brow, an amused expression on his face. “Ok remind me to stay out of your way when you are in a rush.”
She laughed self-consciously.
“I’m going to go to the restaurant for a late breakfast. Want to come?” JC asked.
“Ok,” she said and followed him as he led the way to the restaurant.
The restaurant wasn’t very crowded and they found a table near the back away from the windows. After they’d been approached by the waiter and given him their orders, they sat in silence. Alex had never been completely alone with JC before and was feeling nervous and tense.
She looked up and saw that JC was looking at her in amusement. Was he laughing at her? Did he think she wasn’t interesting? An intense need to fill the silence took over and she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “I was just talking to Vella.”
The smile on JC’s face slowly disappeared and an irritated expression replaced it. “And?” he asked.
“And…nothing. Never mind.” Alex wished she’d just kept her mouth shut.
“Don’t lie to me, Al. I know her. Let me guess, she told you about our little encounter last night.”
Alex took her eyes away from him as she noted his growing anger and started playing with her fork. “Kinda, yeah.”
“And she made me out to be the villain in her little piece.”
Alex didn’t say anything and that seemed response enough for JC. “I don’t get her. The truth is…last night, I was still kind of pissed and I admit that I wasn’t the happiest when I got in my room and saw her there with all her luggage and shit. It’s like fuck, man. It hasn’t been a month yet and she’s moving in already? But I was like it’s cool; she’s sick and if makes her feel better to be here, all right…”
He paused as the waiter came back with the coffee and pancakes he ordered and the glass of ginger ale Alex had ordered. She wasn’t quite up to food yet.
JC spooned some sugar in his coffee before he continued his rant. “Dude, I know I’m going on here but—”
“No, that’s all right. Go on,” Alex interrupted. She didn’t mind him sharing with her, in fact she liked that he trusted her enough to share with her.
“Thanks, man. Anyway, she was in bed and I asked her how she was. She said she was still feeling badly and then bitched me out for not staying with her. I snapped, she started crying, I apologized and she stormed into the bathroom and locked herself in there for an hour while I tried to pacify her through the door. Finally she walked out and told me that she forgave me and got back into bed.” He cut out a piece of his pancake and put it in his mouth.
Alex wasn’t surprised. It sounded exactly like something Vella would do. Alex wondered again why JC was with her.
JC seemed to read her mind. “I don’t know why I’m still with her.” He picked up his coffee cup and took a long drink.
“The sex?” Alex’s eyes widened. Where had that come from?
JC’s eyes met hers before he set his coffee cup back down on the table. “Yeah, there’s that,” he said with a lopsided grin.
Alex swallowed nervously, her throat suddenly dry. She took a sip of her drink and glanced out the window.
JC laughed softly. “Alex, I can see right through you.”
“You’re speaking in song titles,” Alex pointed out trying to move the conversation away from the direction it was going in.
“I do that sometimes,” JC said easily. “But we weren’t talking about me—“
“Yeah we were.”
JC continued speaking ignoring Alex’s last comment. “We were talking about you. You’ve never had a girlfriend before, huh?”
Alex almost laughed in his face. No, she hadn’t. She shook her head.
“You shouldn’t be ashamed of that, dude. In fact, I think I can rectify that.” JC grinned at her and she felt her heart drop at his words.
“That’s a nice offer, man. But, uh, that’s ok. I’m good single.”
JC raised a brow. “We’ll see.”
Alex frowned. “No really.”
JC lifted his hands. “Ok, ok. Just stay open to possibilities,” he said his eyes sparkling in a way that Alex didn’t trust.
“Chris mentioned that you’re still a little upset about last night,” he said suddenly, putting another piece of the pancake in his mouth as he watched her.
“I’m ok. I just feel kind of bad that your day off ended so badly.”
He shrugged. “We’ll have other nights to party. Wait until we get to Vegas. Ever been to Vegas, Al?”
“No.”
JC grinned. “You’re going to love Vegas. You won’t be able to gamble or anything but you’ll love it.”
Alex smiled at his enthusiasm. “If you say so.”
“I do. I’m going to have a good time showing you around, baby face.” JC continued to eat his pancakes and she finished her drink and called over the waiter.
She ordered some toast and another glass of ginger ale. JC’s company seemed to have worked wonders on her. She was feeling better already.