I startle, shoving back from him and slam into my headboard, tearing out my earbuds with my left hand.
He, he just smiles at me, sits up slowly, lazily, like a cat waking from a nap.
“Hi, Regi,” he says, extending a hand, “I'm Gill.”
I snap to, sitting up as suddenly as the teenage self in my dream, heart pounding in my chest like it did on that long ago day in my bedroom. This time though, everything's different. I'm thirty-one and single, stripped bare of that youthful crush I developed in an instant, lost in the too blue of my lover's eyes.
“Oh, hell no,” I murmur, shaking my hair out and combing my fingers through the honey gold strands. What started off as a perfect bun early this morning is now a rat's nest of epic proportions and here I sit with no hairbrush, no toothpaste, not even a clean pair of panties to call my own. “There's no way in freaking Hades that I'm going to start dreaming about Gilleon Marchal.” I stand up and yank the orange sherbet colored blouse the rest of the way out of my skirt. I actually despise the color, but Cliff talked me into it and he was right—it brings out the gold in my eyes.
I glance up into the mirror, at the lacy white Ella Moss tank I layered under my blouse. I should've probably left it behind with all my other clothes, but I figured nobody would notice one extra missing shirt. I finger the crocheted hem and let myself remember my mom, the effortless modern bohemian look she could pull off like nobody else. This top reminds me of her, so it had to come. It just had to. Besides, it's perfect for wearing down to the bar to grab a drink—and I could really use a drink right about now.
I call down to the front desk and manage to wrangle up a pair of shoes—flip-flops, actually, cheap plastic ones meant for use in the indoor pool/spa area that Gill promised me. My feet twitch at just the idea of wearing of them, but my Louboutin stilettos are long gone and I'll have to wait for my stepbrother's promised cash flow to come in before I can grab more.
“Merci beaucoup,” I gush, clutching the shoes to my chest and passing over the single and only US dollar that I have to the sour faced hipster hotel attendant. She's wearing a PBR pin on her uniform, right next to one with a unicorn on it. I suddenly feel a whole lot less guilty about giving her a shitty tip.
“Uh, sure, de nada,” she says and shrugs before shoving the bill in her pocket. I cringe and hope to crap she doesn't really think I'm speaking Spanish.
“What the hell's wrong with kids these days?” I murmur as I lean against the doorjamb and shove the flip-flops on my battered feet. I stepped on broken glass yesterday morning, ran across cobblestone streets, all of it sans shoes. “I spoke French and German and Spanish when I was her age.” True, I'm probably only a decade older than that brat, but I was motivated. I wanted to do things, see things, be something. And then Mom died … and Gill left …
My heart catches in my throat and I steer my mind back to the present.
Fresh start. Forcefully dug out of my rut. New life.
All I have to do is maintain a positive attitude, something that I'm remarkably good at.
“I am a wonderful and beautiful person who deserves to be happy,” I say, using some seriously peppy self-talk to make myself feel better about what I did yesterday. Guess I'm not going to be able to pull the whole Gill's a thief routine when I'm trying really hard to make myself hate the memories of him. I'm a thief now, too. We both are. “I am a strong woman who can do anything she puts her mind to.”
I check to make sure the keycard's in the front pocket of my skirt and let the hotel room door slam shut behind me. As I walk, I hold up a hand and start ticking off fingers. Five positive self-talk statements per day, that's what my mom always did and she was successful and happy, even after she lost my father and to a degree, my sister.
“I am going to be superfluously successful in life.” I smile at the strange looks passersby are tossing my way. “I am not going to let the negative opinion's of others affect me.” Even if I'm wandering the halls of a Best Western talking to myself. “I am not going to let Gilleon Marchal's beautiful blue eyes get to me.”
“My what?”
I jump and my heart slams into my throat, choking me.
I stumble in my plastic flip-flops and barely manage to catch myself on the wall.
“Gill,” I breathe, clutching a hand to my chest and turning to glare at my stepbrother. That motherfucker is standing in a decorative alcove, leaning against the wall and blocking my view of the ugly hotel oil painting behind him. “You scared the crap out of me,” I whisper, my heart still hammering away in my chest. I straighten up and toss my hair over my shoulder. So he heard me compliment his eyes? So what? It's no secret that I've always liked them. “Why the hell would you do that?” I ask as he chuckles and focuses that laser vision of his on me, giving me a head to toe once-over that draws goose bumps up on my arms. “Sneak up on me like that?”