Dances with Monsters(62)
That brought her up sharply and she clapped a hand to her mouth as more memories flooded her. She vaguely recalled trying to kiss him outside her apartment, and she remembered him practically carrying her to her bedroom. She remembered looking at his back while he pulled off her pillows and then...
She groaned aloud as she remembered stripping in front of him.
After another moment, she took a deep breath. It was coming back to her now—he had repeatedly turned her down and finally had bodily placed her in bed. When she opened her bedroom door, she saw the clock on the floor in the hallway. She stared at it for several long seconds, feeling utter confusion.
"Because you threw it at him," she hissed to herself as the memory finally flashed in her mind. Sudden recollection of shouting curses at him made her cringe. And she'd cursed at him and thrown the clock at him...all because he'd refused to sleep with her.
She heaved a sigh of relief and brought the clock back to her nightstand. She reached for a T-shirt and yoga pants and rubbed her hands over her face, perching on the edge of her bed to collect her thoughts. She was incredibly grateful that Heath had decided not to capitalize on her extreme drunkenness from the night before and she felt a surge of admiration, appreciation and even affection for him. On the heels of that thought, sheer mortification and humiliation overtook her and for a moment she thought again that she might throw up, or start crying.
Oh, my God, she thought, panicked. What must he think of her now? Between the confession of her past the other night and now her sexual forwardness from last night, he had to be completely fed up with, confused, and turned off by her. What sort of message was she sending, especially to him? Granted, no one had been around to see her behavior toward him except him, but that was worst of all. Her face burned with shame and self-loathing. She had never been one to blame things on alcohol, but she normally tried to make a point to stay away from alcohol harder than wine for a reason; hard liquor always hit her much too hard and had resulted in some bad decisions over the years. After college she'd given it up, although that hadn't been public knowledge. She shouldn't have thought she was out of the woods last night or free from the hard-hitting effects of strong liquor; she clearly wasn't, and she'd just made a hugely enormous fool out of herself.
She knew that a drunken mind tended to speak the truth, and if she were being honest with herself, she did want Heath. She was attracted to him, he was the first truly nice person of the opposite sex outside her family she'd met in almost a year, and there was something about him that made her want to be around him all the time. However, her presentation was completely out of line, and not true to herself in any manner. She felt sick when she thought that her actions from the previous night negated the cathartic release of unburdening her pain the other night. How seriously could he take her now? And if he had taken her up on her offer…she knew she would have woken up this morning feeling a thousand times worse, because she would have lost all respect for them both.
She spent a long moment bent over, her hands on her knees, staring at the carpet, allowing the full embarrassment and shame of her behavior from the night before to settle over her, so she could come to terms with it and begin to move past it. Finally, she got up with a heavy sigh and walked out of the bedroom, Rocky at her feet. She put the coffee on and fed her cat, then swallowed a few aspirin, gulping down some water. She leaned over the counter and gripped the edge, staring at the coffee and waiting impatiently for it to finish its brew.
As she sipped at an enormous cup of black coffee that she generously laced with sugar, she glanced at the clock and noted that she'd slept in extremely late. Family dinners were usually around four o'clock and it was almost noon now. She still needed to go to the market and come back and make the dishes she'd been assigned; this week, she was in charge of a caprese salad and a dessert. Then there was the daunting task of pulling herself together and making herself look halfway human so as not to rouse her parents' suspicion.
She realized she'd never let Heath know the time of the dinner. For a moment, she wondered if she should even bother telling him; it was pretty presumptuous on her part to assume that he was still interested in coming given her behavior over the last couple of days. In fact, if she were to presume anything, it would be that he was officially finished with her and her bullshit. She definitely owed him an apology, however, and she would make sure he received one. But for now, the memory of the night before was too strong in her mind, making her feel still too sick, that she couldn't bring herself to contact him just yet.
She gulped down the rest of her coffee and followed it up with a slice of dry toast, then struggled into jeans and a T-shirt to go to the market. She decided to walk; it was a typical cloudy, misty spring morning, which she enjoyed. She strolled along the aisles of the fresh, small grocer; it was her favorite in the city. It was dimly lit with wall sconces offering a soft, homey glow, and the floors were wooden. The shelves carried unique items that supermarkets tended not to carry, as well as a bakery with the freshest items, and a seafood counter and deli with the choicest cuts of meat and fish.