After All(24)

"He's all grown-up, Carla," I remind her. "And he is packing heat."

She gives a giddy squeal and starts pulling up more photos. One of them is from a recent photoshoot where he's shirtless. I'd felt those muscles under my hands last night, how hard and big and toned he was. Though he was clothed with me, the picture of him here doesn't even encompass everything he is. 

Watch yourself, a loud voice in my head sounds off. You're starting to sound like you're crushing. I make an attempt to rein myself in.

"So where did it happen?"

"In this room with all these tiny wood lockers where rich yachtsman keep their liquor bottles." I go on to tell her how persistent he was all night with me, not to mention the stuff that kept coming from his lips. I have never in my life been around someone more forward. In fact, it was borderline off-putting.

Okay, it should have been off-putting. Maybe that's why this thing bothers me a little bit. It's not that I slept with Emmett Hill, it's that I slept with a guy who knew he could get me into bed and had no problems acting like it. I don't mind honesty in people but in some ways I wish I hadn't succumbed to someone so outright cocky.

When I'm done describing the night, Carla lets out a low whistle. Only she can't whistle so it comes out as a high-pitched squeak. "I'm not exactly up-to-date with celebrity rumors but I guess what I've heard is kind of true."

"Which is?"

"Manwhore about town."

I sigh. "Yeah. Well … obviously I'm one of his victims."

"Oh come on," she says, getting off the bed. "You needed a good romp and you got it. You came right?"

"Hell yes." My voice is blissful. "Haven't come that hard in forever."

"TMI," Carla says. "Didn't need the details. But seriously, who cares if he's a manwhore? You got your fun. You're not going to date him, right? Now you have a fun story to tell and you got the dick you needed."

I guess the real problem here is, it is a fun story but one I wouldn't repeat. If I had slept with like, I don't know, Chris Evans, I'm sure it wouldn't stay a secret. It would feel beyond special. But Emmett Hill? He's probably with someone else tonight, maybe even right now.

"Wow," Carla says as she stares down at her screen, scrolling around. "He broke someone's phone last night. A fan or something was trying to take his picture."

"Actually it wasn't a fan, it was a dickhead who was stalking him and putting it on his Instagram, live video, trying to trip him up." I'm strangely defensive.

"Oh okay, that sucks," she says, reading something. Then suddenly her eyes bug out. "Oh my god!" she exclaims.

"What?"

"Oh my god, Alyssa! Look!" She shoves the phone in my face. "Am I that high, or is this you?"

It takes me a moment to adjust, my eyes tired. What at first looks like a random couple kissing comes into focus and I realize it's not a random couple at all.

It's me.

And it's Emmett.

At the wedding, when we were hanging out in the hallway after we had sex. That limbo period where we drank the rest of his Crown Royal and just acted like … well, like a couple.

At the time I had remembered that it was strange to go from hooking up to kissing and hanging onto each other like we knew each other well. Strange because it was both a foreign feeling and something that somehow felt right.

But whatever it felt like didn't fucking matter because holy crow, there are pictures of us kissing.

I snatch the phone from her hands and start violently scrolling down. There are pictures of us holding hands, me leaning into him, another with his arm around me and he's laughing. It looks far more intimate than it was. I just remember being drunk and laughing a lot. That's it.

Hell! And the pictures are on Perez Hilton of all things.

"Alyssa," Carla says.

"I know, I know, what the hell." My voice is shaking, my heart racing. I'm sure some people dream about making Perez's radar but I certainly don't. Thankfully as I read the short article, Perez calls me a mystery blonde.


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Then he goes on to mention that it's nice for Emmett to find a girl who is, and I quote, "a nice, curvy, normal looking girl, not those gorgeous, young actresses he's always with."

I'm stewing over that too much to even realize that Perez is painting the scene about us as if I'm Emmett's girlfriend instead of a hookup. Right. Because Emmett would never just have sex with someone as big and "normal" as me.

"This isn't good," I tell her, my hand starting to shake.