Mortified, I quickly climb from the bed and grab the fluffy hotel robe from the hook on the wall, shrugging it on and tying the belt at the waist so he doesn’t see me naked. Which is ridiculous, considering, apparently, we’ve already been intimate, and I have his stubble rash on my cooch.
My head gives another throb, so I push my glasses on and then dig in my toiletries bag to find the sweetest treasure a hungover person can be confronted with—paracetamol. Snagging a bottle of water from the fridge, I gulp down half and swallow two pills before setting another bottle and two more pills on the side for Theo.
“Your phone was on the side in there. It’s dead. I’ll stick it on charge for you,” he says as he comes back into the room and walks around the bed to the bedside cabinet, where my charger is. He picks it up and plugs it in for me before heading back to the dresser and flicking on the kettle.
“Thanks. Water and tablets on there for you.” I nod at it.
He smiles gratefully. “Sweet. Ta.”
I slump onto the edge of the bed and frown down at my boots. I barely have the energy to attempt it, but my feet are sweating in the plastic, so they need to come off. As I grip the foot of one and pull, Theo chugs his water and pills. I growl in frustration and try the other foot. The damn things are welded on. I might have to call down to reception and ask for them to send up some scissors to cut them off.
Theo chuckles and walks over, dropping to his knees in front of me. He’s still wrapped in just the throw, so his sculpted chest is on full display. My fingers itch to reach out and touch it.
My body heats up. I get a little flashback of him on his knees, smiling up at me devilishly, his eyes sparkling with lust. My core clenches, and the skin at the nape of my neck prickles.
“Let me have a go.” He takes hold of my calf and lifts one leg.
When his fingers curl around the back of my knee, I get another flashback—this one of his hands caressing my skin, our bodies pressing together, the weight of him on top of me, his eyes meeting mine as his breath blows across my face.
I blink and have to look away. It’s so intimate and hot that it makes my body ache. I can’t remember much, but I can sort of remember what those lips feel like against mine, what his teeth feel like scraping against my skin. An involuntary shiver of lust tickles down my spine as he finally works one boot loose and then starts on the other.
“There you go, miss.” He smiles up at me as the second boot slides off my foot. It’s a cute smile, not a smirk or a gloat because we did the nasty last night.
“Thanks.” I smile back weakly and then flop back onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling, trying to breathe through my nausea.
The shots last night were a mistake. The sex was also a mistake, though because I can’t remember it, I can’t bring myself to feel too bad about it.
Theo makes us coffee while I lie there and watch the muscles in his back and shoulders contract and expand whenever he moves. It’s hot. The smell of coffee just adds to said hotness.
Needing to know the time because I agreed yesterday to meet the girls for our little pre-wedding pamper session at ten thirty, I drag myself up the bed and prop up against the headboard as I reach for my phone. There’s enough power in it now to turn it on, so I blink at my screen, waiting for my eyes to focus.
It’s just after nine. Hopefully, I’ll feel more alive by the time I have to meet them.
A pop-up tells me the internal storage of my phone is full, and my cloud has stopped syncing. I frown, confused.
As the phone connects to the hotel Wi-Fi, notifications start arriving one after the other: Instagram, Twitter, text messages, WhatsApp. My phone goes crazy in my hand, and I quickly switch it to silent before it makes my head explode.
“Someone’s popular,” Theo jokes, flopping down next to me and pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
I click on the Instagram notifications first because I know the messages will all be from Aubrey, and I’m not ready to deal with her level of intensity yet. Theo has tagged me in numerous posts.
I frown at my screen and click on the first one. “You’ve tagged me in videos.”
“What?” He leans in, and we both watch the screen.
It’s a TikTok video of us attempting some funny voice-over, mime routine. It’s terrible, and by the end, we’re both just laughing. The next is worse; we’re attempting the Carole Baskin dance together. I click them one after the other. They’re stupid and ridiculous and yet bloody hilarious. Some of them are in the function room; you can see the party going on around us, people watching us like we’re crazy. Some of them are outside on the patio with the loch behind. The last one is us in the lobby. We’re clearly hammered but having a blast.
I chuckle and shake my head. The comments are people basically adding laughing/crying faces and calling us idiots. There are lots of comments about how fit I am, how amazing we look together, how stellar our outfits are, lots of people asking Theo if I’m his new girlfriend.
“Do you even remember making these?” I ask Theo, watching as he sips his coffee.
He rubs at his forehead, shrugging one shoulder. “Sort of. Maybe. Down in the bar, we were fooling around, I think.” He frowns as if unsure, so it must have been towards the end of the night.
I nod along and then open my Photos app, intending to delete them. They’ve obviously clogged up my memory. A video that’s over three hours long is the last thing I recorded.
I frown down at it. “Ugh, what’s this one?”
I open it and click play.
It’s Theo and me in the bathroom in my room. I can tell it’s mine because my make-up bag and toothbrush are on the side next to the sink. We’re laughing hysterically. Theo is holding my phone, and he’s filming us in the mirror. We’re both still in our costumes. We look a little worse for wear—sweaty, mussed up, and uncoordinated.
“Oh God, this one’s gonna be epic,” I hear myself say from my phone.
I wince because hearing yourself on video is painful. I hope I don’t sound that screechy in real life.
“I bet we go viral.” That’s Theo. “You ready?”
There’s more giggling.
“Let’s do this.”
In the video, I fiddle with Theo’s phone that sits on the counter, and a song starts up: “Flip the Switch” by Drake. I gasp as I realise what we’re doing—the Flip the Switch challenge. I actually can’t wait to see the results. Now, I know why Theo is wearing my wristbands and tiara—we swapped clothes! I’m pretty sure we’re doing it wrong though. We’re not even in the TikTok app. This is just a normal video. Inebriated Lucie and Theo are clearly idiots.
In the video, I start dancing to the beat of the song, swaying my hips seductively. When it gets to the flip the switch part, Theo turns the light off, and the screen goes black, but the camera doesn’t stop rolling. I can hear laughing, banging, the rustle of clothes.
“I need to turn the light back on. I can’t see jack and can’t get this off with one hand!” Theo chuckles. “I’ll just put the phone down, and we’ll let it roll on. Then, we can edit it before we upload. It’s gonna be so good.”
The light flicks back on. Theo props the phone up against the mirror, camera facing towards us now. The angle is awkward. Most of the screen is taken up by the ceiling, and we’re in the corner, but I see myself struggling to pull off my wristbands, handing them to Theo and grinning like a loon as he puts them on. When I yank down my top, bunching it around my waist, ready to shimmy it down my hips, Theo’s eyes widen as he stares at my strapless, lacy red bra.