I wake the next morning in a haze, my body bent and half-naked on the couch.
When – and how – did I fall asleep in my bikini?
There is a hammering in my ear and as I look up, I see Scott’s body sprawled face down across the deck chair just on the other side of the sliding glass door.
I groan, figuring the pounding I hear is just my massive hangover.
The living room is trashed, throw pillows everywhere, candle wax on Mom’s favorite coffee table, the bottles on top of Dad’s wet bar empty and sticky.
I stumble into the kitchen, grabbing a pool cover up on the way, and reach for an iced coffee in the fridge.
I shake my head, the pounding louder now; coarse and insistent.
“The hell?” I snap, poking my head around the fridge and seeing Flynn tapping his fingers against the slider; he’s smiling.
“Ugghh,” I groan, reaching for a Sunshine Soda and stumbling over a broken coat rack to reach the door before he can bang any louder.
“Annoy much?” I snort, handing him the cola.
He smirks and says, “At least I waited until sunrise, Viv; you don’t know how hard that was seeing as I’ve been awake for, I dunno, the last four years!!!”
I crack my iced coffee and tap his can, saying, “I’m just glad I lived until sunrise.”
I drain half the can in one gulp, the caffeine and sugar instantly making me feel at least a fraction more alive than old Flynn here.
“I see you’re not alone,” he smirks, sneering down at Scott’s body splayed sideways across the deck chair; all he wears is his ridiculous neon baggies. “Everything all right?”
“Fine, fine,” I say, waving him off casually. “Nothing a few aspirin and a cleaning crew won’t fix.”
He smirks and eyes the litter and junk and clothes and purses and sea of red cups drowning in the waterfall, gurgling in the still running Jacuzzi and floating in the pool.
“Where should I start?” he asks.
“It’s not your job to clean up my mess,” I sigh, finishing the last of my coffee and slipping my feet into what could be my flip flops; they are. “Let me just get this out of the way and then…”
“I’ll start with the Jacuzzi,” he says, walking over to turn it off.
I sigh, smiling secretly, until he says, “Uh, Viv? Can you come here for a sec?”
“You don’t waste any time, do you? What’d you find, a bikini top or something?”
He’s peering into the bushes to the side of the Jacuzzi, which is still gurgling; the smell of chlorine and vodka ripe in the humid air.
“Not quite,” he answers, finding one of those sleek “Flarp” video cameras strategically planted on a camouflage tripod in the new potted palm right next to the hot tub. “I wonder who could have planted this?” he asks knowingly, spying Scott’s body sprawled out on the nearest deck chair.
“You got me,” I say, a blush rising to my cheeks at what might be on that camera.
Everything happened so fast, so hard, so hot, I can barely remember it all.
I do know I stayed out of the hot tub, though; I think.
“Well, somebody did,” he smirks sitting down on the ledge of the hot tub with his bare feet sliding inside the gurgling bubbles.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I pout.
“It means somebody at your little shin dig,” he begins, until he remembers the crumpled beer cans and red plastic cups littering the pool deck, to say nothing of those floating on the pool’s suddenly fugly surface. “Or, should I say, big shin dig?”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I guess things did get a little… out of hand.”
He looks from the video camera to the hot tub. “Anything get a little… out of hand… in here Viv?”
“Possibly,” I shrug, looking guiltily at Scott’s half-naked body splayed out on the deck chair. “Probably.”
He nods, dark eyes darker than usual and looking almost… disappointed.
“Well,” he says dryly, handing the camera over. “You should probably do something with that before the whole world sees you and Scott getting—”
“Hold up,” I spit, causing Scott to stir, drool and moan all in the same motion. “Who says Scott and I did anything in there?”
He seems suddenly taken aback.
“N-n-no one,” he stammers, handing the video camera over. “I just, I dunno, I assumed I guess. I mean, when I left last night, you were pretty much on Team Scott, that’s all.”
I roll my eyes and push “Play,” squinching down toward him and sliding onto the deck next to his chilly body.
I slide my legs in the hot tub to inch closer so we can both watch.
The background noise on the video is loud and hard to decipher but the image is crystal clear.
It’s the hot tub all right, and Scott is sliding in opposite some girl.
He looks stellar, as always, but his eyes are glassy and predatory and… greedy (just like Flynn had warned me the night before).
He’s got on the same baggies as he’s wearing now, hot pink with black stripes down the side.
“Nice,” Flynn chortles, but I can see he’s anxious to find out who the girl is just the same.
She has blondish-brownish hair and next-to-nothing on, which means she could basically be anyone at the party; even… me.
Her shoulders are wet, her hair around her shoulders wet, a glass of something in one long, elegant hand; you can’t see the other one, where it is or… what it might be doing.
We grow quiet as Scott slides into the water; slithers, is more like it.
His blond curls are damp and wet, like he’s already been in the pool, his hairless chest smooth and radiant in the glowing light of the deck lamps.
He has a beer can in one hand, and the other gently laps at the bubbling surface of the pool.
His smile is churlish and wide, his eyes raking up the front of the girl he’s sitting across as if she’s a slab of baby back ribs and he’s just gone off a hunger strike.
He says something we can’t hear because of all the background noise, nods his head and slowly the girl reaches around to the back of her neck with her mystery hand and unties her bikini top.
“Wow, he works fast,” Flynn says quietly; almost… admiringly.
“Not on me,” I whisper back; because suddenly I think I know who the girl is.
Even before she stands up and inches toward him, dropping her top along the way, even before she leans over and kisses him, even before he stands up and turns around with his back to the camera and we finally get to see her rapturous face, I know it’s Lavinia; I’d know that dangling butterfly bracelet anywhere.
“Turn it off,” I spit, rising from the pool and splashing him with water. “Turn it off before I can see the rest.”