Chapter Six

~James~

Ow.

Ow.

I couldn’t quite figure out what I was thinking, or what was going on, but the one thing I was absolutely certain of was that everything hurt. Even thinking seemed to be a trial, my thoughts sloshing like lazy and incomprehensible waves across the landscape of my mind.

If I wanted to figure anything out, I supposed I needed to open my eyes. Groaning, I tried to do so, but my lids felt like they weighed about a million pounds a piece and that they had been glued shut with some sort of super adhesive.

I groaned, but the sound made my brain reverberate in my skull like it had been banged against a gong. Right. So, sound wasn’t a good thing right now. Right.

Consciousness came to me in waves, but the more I woke up, the more pain I was in. Displeasures revealed themselves one after the other in a cruel march that seemed to love me suffer.

First was that my tongue was like pure cotton, puffy, dry, itchy and tasting terrible. Next was that there was a rumbling in my gut that was telling me that I needed to go to the bathroom quite urgently. And then after that was a sort of swollen, heatedness to my hands that made them hard to move.

I needed water.

It took a whole lot of willpower, but I managed to sit up. My head swam and I almost barfed, but I managed to calm down after a full minute of just sitting there with my eyes closed.

Once that roller coaster of an experience was over, I stumbled to the bathroom, each of my legs feeling like they had their own ball and chains, before finally making it to the sink.

I splashed water into my face, and that helped unseal my eyes while also cooling the intense fire burning just under my skin. One I could see again, I used one of the mini plastic cups to get some of that delicious liquid into my mouth.

God, that really did help me feel better. Sure, my head was still pounding, my stomach was still roiling, and my guts were complaining loudly. Fumbling around, I found there was complementary headache meds in the medicine cabinet, which I grabbed and downed eagerly.

I took a deep breath, the world starting to calm down and stop acting like a carnival was spinning around my head. The next thing on the list was to get the taste of hungover death out of my mouth.

More shuffling around and I found a complementary toothbrush as well as toothpaste. God, I loved the presidential suite amenities.

I fumbled through the motions until finally I had the blessed relief of minty refreshment on my tongue. It seemed to wake me up a bit, and I looked in the mirror to take inventory of the damage.

Man, I looked like I had been through hell and back. There were deep circles under my eyes, my hair looked like I stuck a fork in a socket and-

Why was there a ring on my finger?!

I stopped mid-brushstroke, the whole world careening to a stop as my brain tried to translate what was going on. But what was going on was that there was a bright, gold band on my wedding finger, when -as far as I knew- I was decidedly single and had never seen it before.

What the hell had happened last night!?

I hurriedly spat into the sink, using the rest of my water in my cup, to rush into the bedroom. Last night, I had had a woman come over, right? She wasn’t a coworker, was she?

…no. I think I met her in the lobby. But she was nowhere in sight. Maybe she had gone to some other part of the suite?

I rushed out, heart pounding, but there was no one there. Just my clothes scattered around my room, and my phone on the floor.

My phone!

I raced over and grabbed it, hoping it would have some sort of indication of what the hell had happened, but when I turned it over, I saw that the screen was shattered to the point where it was unusable.

“Shit!” I cried, trying to recall anything that I could.

What was the last thing I remembered? Almost all of it was a blur. A happy blur up until this point, but a blur nonetheless.

Let’s see… I had met a woman down in the lobby. Pretty, funny. I had brought her up here and we’d had some pretty damn good first-time sex. Then… then what had happened? She didn’t leave…did she? No. I remembered there was more, and I had the distinct impression that we went more than once.

I sat down on the couch, closing my eyes. Suddenly the scene between the two of us played in my head last night, helping to relieve a little bit of my panic.

But not enough. Pushing harder, I tried to pick up the pieces of my scattered thoughts.

The champagne was almost gone. While I was slightly tipsy, Nicole was obviously getting to that transition point between buzzed and outright drunk. But she seemed like she was having such an amazing time, that I wanted to as well.

My memory went fuzzy for a minute, but then she was in the pool, naked, while I fed the last of the strawberries to her once by one.

She said something else. What was it? She was still thirsty? That seemed to make sense, because then the both of us were walking to the wardrobe that room service had told us about.

I opened it, and sure enough, a part of it came folding down. After a few more panels shifted and realigned, we were indeed greeted by a beautiful mini-bar that wasn’t so mini.

I reached for a bottle, picked it up, then popped off the top. Nicole -that was her name, right?- opened her mouth and I poured a generous amount in before taking my own gulp.

Things grew fuzzier from there, swirling around each other in a kaleidoscope of colors, creating only jumbled fragments of pictures instead of outright scenes. Only snippets of sensations reached me. Cool air on my face, cars honking, cheesy music playing, soft lips on mine. Alcohol. Silk. Lace. All of them coalesced together and I was able to guess at least part of what had happened.

Opening my eyes, I stared at the empty suite for a minute. “I just got married in Vegas.”

Saying that aloud seemed to jolt something in me, and I jumped to my feet, only to be knocked right back onto my butt by nausea. But that was alright. I would get some more water into me, go to the bathroom, let the pain medicines kick in, and then get goddamned divorced.

But in order to do that, I guessed I needed to know who the hell I was married to!