Lost Angeles

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Golden eyes. Silver teeth. And blood.

Golden eyes. Silver teeth. So much—

A strong slap to the face interrupts the looping nightmare. “Get up, kid.”

It’s pretty crap in the introduction department, but I can’t help the overwhelming relief that accompanies waking up. Breathing hard, heart pounding in my chest, it takes me a few blinks to bring everything into focus.

His eyes are blue; that’s the first thing I notice. Blue, clear like a cloudless sky, and so bright that it hurts to look at them. Beyond that, the stranger’s got dark hair and a square jaw with enough stubble on it to contradict the gel-shell on top of his head. Everything is classic: lips, jawline, nose. Hell, the guy’s probably packing a fig leaf in the expensive jeans belted neatly around his classically narrow hips.

Belted with a diamond-studded, shield-shaped buckle… that’s got a silver cross on it.

“What the fuck?” I can only mumble. “Where am I?”

Because I don’t know, and when I do a mental backtrack, there’s nothing in my sketchy recollections but hazy snippets and blurred lines.

Yeah,
those
kind
.

“You’re in Vegas,” the stranger says. “You smoked crack and married Noah Carmichael.”

“Bullshit,” I tell him, rubbing at the grit in my eyes. “Noah Carmichael will never get married.”

“But you’d smoke crack, huh?”

I frown as I look this guy up and down, trying to place him in the gaping hole that’s last night. A second later, the sudden rumbling vibration of the air conditioner kicks on, and I swear the temperature drops twenty degrees in two seconds flat. It’s the nipple-scrunching chill that knocks my brain into gear, and then my current situation slams home.

“Oh, my god.” Jackknifing upward, I prop an arm behind me on the bed and wince at the sudden head rush. There’s a haze over my thoughts, a thin veneer of slime coating every sensation currently coursing through my veins. My body aches in a haven’t-worked-those-muscles-in-a-while way that tells me that, for at least a portion of my evening, I wasn’t alone in this bed. I curl my hands in a set of crunchy sheets and clutch them against my chest. “I’m naked.”

“What tipped you off?” the stranger grunts over his shoulder. “Was it the cool breeze shooting up your ass, or the fact that your underwear are hanging from the ceiling fan?”

I glance up, heat rushing to my cheeks when I catch sight of the scrap of pink fabric slowly spinning around and around with each revolution of the fan blades.

At least it looks like I had fun.

I think
.

As my wake-up call digs underneath the bed, fishes out a shoe, and collects my jeans, I let my eyes wander, desperately trying to recall last night. My gaze flickers outward, upward, all around, taking in the shiny off-white walls, the paint-by-number pictures tacked to them, and the old-as-hell television perched atop a cheap dresser that looks like a relic from 1974. On the periphery are ice-block glass windows and yellow-brown shag carpet with several unsavory stains that I don’t even want to consider.

“Come on, kid,” the stranger says, chucking a pile of clothes at my head. “We need to get the hell outta here.”

The legs of my jeans end up wrapped unceremoniously around my skull, threads of ripped-up denim catching on my nose ring. After I disentangle myself, I’m right back to staring my newest friend right in his impatient ass as he forages for lost articles of clothing. Face-slapping aside, I don’t feel especially threatened by Fig Leaf. Quite the opposite, I almost feel
relieved
that he’s here. Like I woke up and, boom, there’s my dad, glaring down at me with equal parts disappointment and concern. It’s the same expression I got the day I left home, so similar it’s eerie, which would make it really awkward if me and this stranger—

Gross.

“Did I… um, did we…?”

Fig Leaf stops moving around the room, his dark brows pulling together and his face scrunching up in confusion. I lift one hand and make a gesture that encompasses the both of us. Me and him.

Him and me.

Abruptly, his features twist into an indecipherable expression. “No, we didn’t.” He fishes my other shoe from behind the television set. “You’re not really my type. I tend to prefer them a little…” He thinks about it for a second before finishing with, “sluttier?”

I can’t help but gape at him. Waking up in some cheap motel with a complete stranger isn’t exactly my usual MO, but according to Fig Leaf, naked on a strange bed, with a strange man, in a
very
strange situation, somehow equates to
not slutty enough
.

“Do you remember
anything
from last night?” he asks, sounding as if he already knows the answer and wholeheartedly disapproves.

“Not so much,” I hear myself saying, “but maybe if I sit here and stare at your stupid butt-chin for a while, it’ll come back to me—”

“Heya, blondie.” His voice is low and pleasing, tinged with the arrogance of someone who thinks they’ve stumbled upon a sure thing. “Come here often?”

“Often enough.” I take a sip of my free post-show beer without shifting my eyes away from the act that’s currently playing O’Reilly’s pitted stage. “Also, worst pickup line in the history of ever, dude.”

“Not the worst,” he says, laughing when I snort a little. “I could have asked if you fell from heaven.”

“I did. It hurt.” I lift the bottle to my lips for another swig before the heavy glass base hits the bar again. “A lot.”

“Aren’t you exhausted?” he asks. “Because you’ve been running through my mind all day.”

“Nope.” I slide my finger around and around the ring of condensation on the bar. “I don’t run. If I ran, I’d knock myself out with my own boobies.”

“I dunno,” he says. “The
Baywatch
babes managed it, somehow.”

“Thanks for the mid-nineties newsflash, Hasselhoff.” I roll the bottle between my palms. “What do you want?”

“I want to have a good time,” he tells me, and I feel the soft brush of fingers across my shoulder, my neck, hot breath in my ear that raises goosebumps all over me. “I want to strip you naked and take all your nightmares away.” His voice seems distant, like it’s echoing down an empty hallway in my head.

“You've got it all wrong, buddy.” When I pull myself out of his grasp, everything tilts a little, sliding sideways, and the next words are slurred. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

When I try to get up, I nearly fall off the stool. The bartender, a face without a name, reaches over the bar and grasps my arm so I don’t fall down. I grip the wood, trying desperately to steady myself, but all I can manage is a white-knuckled cling.

From far away, the stranger says, “Looks like you’ve had a little too much to drink, Lo. We should probably get you home.”

His hands are on me again, holding me up, and all I can see of his face are a pair of silvery eyes. The rest is a blur, and a second later, it all just slips away.

“Home…”

“Earth to Lourdes.”

The hotel comes back in a flash. Fig Leaf is standing at the foot of the bed, hands on his hips.

“Want to get a move-on? I mean, unless you want me to pack you out of here naked.”

One hand to my forehead, I stare at the wad of clothes in my lap, straining to remember the rest. I had a little bit, for a moment, but then it all went blank, and when I try to reach for it—

“Could you wait a minute?” I say, and hold up one finger. “I just need like… two seconds.”

“We don’t have a minute. Or two seconds, for that matter.” He hucks the other shoe into my lap with all the rest. “Up and at ’em.”

“Well, what about them?” I say.

“Who?”

Jabbing one finger upward, I watch those blue eyes tilt toward the ceiling, taking in the pink flag of my panties as they whirl around at top speed. The distraction buys me the precious seconds that I need to slow my heart rate, to take a breath, to swallow, to mentally regurgitate a few of the mantras they used at the institution. I don’t pray, because I’m pretty sure there is no God, but the doctors taught me a thing or two about managing my reality.

After a second of consideration, Fig Leaf looks back at me, his face etched with irritation. “You don’t need them.”

“Am I being kidnapped?”

“If I say yes, will you move faster?”

My gaze flicks toward the hotel door as I assess my odds of escape. “Probably not.”

“Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, Lourdes,” he counters. I raise my brow at that, because it’s like every curse word and none of them all rolled into one. “Get the fuck up and put on your clothes.”

“Cheese ’n’ rice, Fig Leaf, take it easy.” Climbing from the bed, I shake out my jeans. “What’s the damn hurry anyway?”

“You’re late, and I’m your ride. Or do you
want
to miss your audition at Scion?”

My heart jumps into my throat as my head swivels, eyes seeking out the standard issue digital clock on the hotel nightstand. I
am
late, or I will be if I don’t get the hell out of here right now. Underwear be damned, I start pulling on clothes as fast as I can, bra inside-out, shirt backwards, but none of it matters because the girly bits are covered.

“Shit, my laptop!” Panic on top of more panic. I had it with me when I went to O’Reilly’s yesterday evening. Needed it for the gig. I try to retrace the steps, following everything backwards to the last place I saw the laptop alive.

At the pub. After my set. Before… before what?

Fuck. Fuck
.
What the crap happened last night?