The ringing of my phone set off an explosion of pain my head. My mouth felt as if it was full of cotton balls, my body ached, and I was pretty sure that if I tried to stand up, the entire world might flip upside down. I had no idea where my phone was, but the noise it was making seemed to be all around me. All the lights in my hotel room were still on, which caused another sharp jab of pain in my head each time I tried to peel my eyes open. They seemed to be glued shut.

I swept my hand across the bed, finding piles of pillows and sheets, but no hard rectangular electronic device that was clearly in league with the devil. Suddenly the noise stopped and I breathed a sigh of relief. As I pulled one of the pillows closer to me, I realized I was still fully dressed. Eyes firmly closed, I gave myself a good pat down discovering that not only was I still wearing my bra, T-shirt, and jeans but I was also still wearing socks and shoes. Yet I hadn’t let that stop me from crawling completely under the covers.

Groaning, I rolled over on to my back as the previous evening’s dramatics came back to me in painful Technicolor. Sitting in the bar with Nathan, seeing Nick on stage with his band, Nick and Anne Marie playing the song about me with new, updated, unwelcomed lyrics, me drinking half the beer in Texas in an effort to avoid reality and then throwing up in the street. Nick asking me if I liked the song and then my whole, glorious, expletive-laced monologue about how bad Nick was in bed, how good I was, and how much I wished I was in bed with Nathan. And on top of all that I had been mean to him. Like, truly, unnecessarily mean. What the hell, Hall? Nathan was not Nick and it wasn’t fair to even compare them.

Fuck me, I thought, my head pounding. I had truly and completely fucked up this assignment. There was absolutely no way Nathan was going to speak to me again, let alone allow me to interview him in a professional capacity. Good job, Hall, I told myself. You’re a fucking moron who can’t hold her booze.

Then, as if things couldn’t get any worse, the phone started ringing again.

“Argh!” I moaned and yanked my pillow out from under my head and threw it across the room. When I lay back on the bed, however, my skull cracked against the very device I had been struggling to find. “Ouch,” I muttered and squinted at the screen. My mother. Of course.

Knowing that it was unlikely she’d stop calling, I pushed ACCEPT and held the phone a good distance from my ear, my head still throbbing in rhythm with the now silenced ringing.

“Hello?” I croaked.

“That’s my girl,” Mama said, her own voice as raspy as mine. I didn’t know how she did it, but somehow my mother knew exactly when I was hung over and always chose to call me as early as she could that morning. I forced my eyes open wider and blinked at the digital numbers on the clock next to the bed. 12:30. OK, well, that was early for her, I supposed. From the gravel in her voice, it would be an easy assumption that she had been out just as late as I had, probably doing much of the same thing. Though my mom rarely ended her night screaming at two men in the middle of the street. Usually it was just one man and it was in our living room.

“Morning, Mama,” I said, struggling to sit up. I felt damp and rumpled in yesterday’s clothes, but I was glad to see that I hadn’t thrown up again once I arrived back at my room. The last thing I wanted was to leave the staff of this fancy hotel an indication that I was a drunk like my mother instead of the professional I aspired to be. But if last night was any indication, I hadn’t fallen that far from that particularly boozy tree. Like mother, like daughter, I thought, trying to swallow my own embarrassment and nausea.

“How’s Austin?” she asked. “Having fun?”

“Uh huh,” I said, realizing that fully formed sentences were going to be a bit of struggle until I had a shower and a bathtub’s amount of coffee.

“How’s that interview going?”

“Good,” I lied.

“Is that hot shot ball player being nice to you?”

“Uh huh,” I lied again.

“Have you copped a feel yet?”

“Mama!” I chided her, the effort making my forehead throb.

“I just saw him on the TV the other day,” she said. “And goodness, does that boy have a nice tush.”

I just shook my head, knowing it was no use trying to argue with her. Especially because she was absolutely right. Nathan did have a great tush. One that I was never going to be allowed within fifty feet of once news of my behavior reached the Register. I would be lucky if I ever got an assignment like this again. I’d probably be demoted, destined to deliver coffee and answer phones for the rest of my career.

Leaning my head back on the headrest, I tried to think of how I could salvage this situation, but I was out of ideas. This wasn’t something that was forgiven in journalism. This was very, very unprofessional. And worse, I had been mean to someone who’d tried to help me. I winced at the memory of everything I had said to Nathan. I was the one who had been the real jerk in that situation.

“You sound terrible, hon,” my mom said, reminding me that she was there. “Go splash some water on your face and pour yourself some whiskey.”

The thought of drinking any more alcohol made me to dry heave.

“Hair of the dog!” my mother said. “It works.”

“Mmhmm,” I barely managed. “I gotta go.”

“Good luck with Mr. Hot Ass,” Mama said and then hung up.

Even though I knew it wouldn’t help my headache, I pulled up my email to see if I had missed anything. To my extreme displeasure there was an email from my editor. Short, but to the unfortunate point.

“Please send notes and/or interview rough draft. Want to get an idea of how it is coming along.”

I stared at it for a few moments, my stomach twisting and churning. And this time, when I heaved, I had to race to the bathroom, barely making it as the rest of my evening was emptied out into the toilet.

* * *

An hour later, I was freshly showered and on my second cup of hotel coffee and just beginning to feel like a human being again when there was a knock at the door. Even thought I was pretty sure I had put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, the last thing I wanted was for the cleaning staff to come into the room and discover how much I had trashed the room in my drunken state. The bed especially was in an embarrassing state of disarray, sheets scrunched to the middle of the mattress, pillows and blankets strewn across the room. My sad, broken suitcase was leaning up against the wall, looking a little how I felt—defeated and unable to fulfill its purpose. I grabbed a robe and wrapped the terry cloth belt tightly around me. It was soft and cuddly, just warm enough for the perfectly air-conditioned room, and covered my black lace clad body from the gaze of whatever poor cleaning person was on the other side of the door.

Careful not to reveal too much of the room behind me, I eased open the door, preparing to apologize and ask them to come back later. But it wasn’t hotel staff on the other side of the door. It was Nathan.

My stomach dropped to my feet and for a moment I thought I might need to run back to the bathroom. I was sure my face was a pleasant tinge of green.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” was about as much as I could manage. I forced myself to close my dropped jaw. What was he doing here? And looking as good as he did. He was wearing his usual attire, jeans and a T-shirt, but something about the way he seemed to fill up the hallway, the scent of him, that wonderful clean, fresh smell wafting into the room, made him seem overwhelmingly male. Plus it didn’t help that I was practically naked underneath my robe. All I would have to do was loosen the belt, wiggle my shoulders and…

I realized I was staring and that he had asked me something.

“Sorry?” I shook my head, trying to clear away the naughty thoughts that had gotten me into all this trouble in the first place.

“I was wondering if I could come in,” he repeated. His expression was serious, but not angry.

“Um, sure, of course.” I opened the door and quickly turned and tried to organize as much of the chaos as I could in the span of five seconds. I managed to clear off a chair and a spot on the bed, but the rest was pretty much hopeless.

“Sorry for the mess,” I apologized, as he took a seat in the chair. I perched on the edge of the bed, very aware that I was very nearly naked. I hadn’t given much thought to the length of the robe, but now, with Nathan sitting in front of me, my wet hair drying into messy waves, I was very conscious of how much of my bare legs were visible. I tugged at the hem of the robe, hoping to cover at least the top part of my thigh. I noticed he was doing his best to avert his eyes, though there was a flush slowly spreading across his handsome cheekbones.

I felt totally exposed in front of him. And not in the way I had imagined many, many times.

“I—” I said, just as he blurted out, “I just wanted to—”

There was a moment of silence and then, “You first—,” we both said.

We stared at each for a moment and then shared an embarrassed laugh. Some of the tension broke, but not all of it. I tugged at my robe, wrapping it tighter around me.

“Ladies first.” He gave me a smile.

I cleared my throat. “I wanted to apologize for last night.” I found myself staring at the end of the terry cloth belt that I was winding around my fingers. “It was incredibly unprofessional of me and I completely understand if you want to request another reporter do the interview. I also need to apologize for being a total jerk last night. Clearly my ex-boyfriend brings out the worst while beer brings up the peanuts,” I joked lamely, feeling so incredibly awful for how I had treated him.

I risked a glance up at him, but he was also looking downward, apparently at his feet. What did he have to be so embarrassed about?

“I wanted to apologize as well,” he said, finally looking up at me. “I was a real jerk to you last night.”

“I think that was pretty well covered by me,” I countered, pushing my wet hair back over my shoulder. He watched the movement, his gaze then following the line of my neck before dipping down towards the suddenly gaping neck of my robe. I pulled it closed and he jerked his eyes back up to my face, his cheeks even more red.

He coughed. “I shouldn’t have taken you to that bar.”

“You didn’t know that Nick would be there,” I told him, before furrowing my brows at him. “Right?”

He nodded. “But I still shouldn’t have taken you there. You were right. It wasn’t a place for an interview and I knew that.” He went back to staring at his feet. “This whole time you’ve just been trying to do your job and I’ve been a big baby about it.”

“You don’t like journalists.” I shrugged my shoulders, still waiting for the brush-off. “I understand that. Some people don’t like the spotlight.”

“It’s not just that,” he said. “I just don’t think I deserve it.”

I was surprised. Like, really, really surprised. He was an incredibly talented baseball star—usually that was the kind of person that lived for the spotlight. “Why would you think that?” I asked.

“I just think there are more important people out there. People who deserve attention. People who don’t get it.” He looked up at me sheepishly. “Besides, I am not newsworthy.”

“I think you should let me be the judge of that,” I told him, for a moment forgetting that he still hadn’t agreed to actually go through with the interview. But I sensed that there was potential here. “OK,” I leaned forward. “Why don’t I make a deal with you?”

“A deal?” he raised an eyebrow. “What kind of deal?”

“You give me one evening. One. I get my interview, all the standard questions, the whole usual thing. If I decide you’re not newsworthy, I’ll do the article on something else.” There was no way that the Register would agree to this, but there was also no way that Nathan wasn’t worth writing about. Nobody went from college ball straight to the major league.

“Something else?” he asked, looking intrigued. “Like what?”

I lifted a shoulder. “You seemed to think that there were things more interesting than you. I guess you’ll have to prove it to me.”

He smiled and my heart skipped a beat.

“Sounds like a challenge,” he said.

“Guess it is,” I responded. There was hope for this article yet.

“OK,” he stood and regarded me. “I’m guessing you’d like to do the interview tonight.”

“If you don’t mind.” I gave him a smile and stood as well, keeping a tight grip on my robe.

“Six?”

“Great,” I walked him to the door.

He gave me a half smile as he stepped into the hallway. “Guess it’s up to me to prove to you how boring I really am.”

“And I’m looking forward to seeing you try,” I teased as he turned to face me. We were still standing close together. Too close in fact. Or not close enough, I couldn’t really tell. All I knew was that if he leaned forward just a little bit, he would be able to kiss me. And I’d be able to kiss him back.

Nathan’s eyes dropped to my lips and I could tell he was thinking the same thing. For a moment I thought he was going to do it, finish what we had started in the frat house the other night.

But there was a clattering from down the hall and we both jumped apart as a cleaning lady rolled past us. Even though she kept her eyes discreetly down, I could tell she knew exactly what was going on.

Nathan cleared his throat. “I’ll see you at six,” he finally managed.

I nodded and waited until he had disappeared into the elevator before I closed the door.