Levi, it turns out, is an Irish model, which explains his ethereally beautiful face. He’s also a lot better at handling his alcohol than I am, which I find out when I try to keep pace with him and quickly lose the ability to stand steady. He steers me to a free spot on the bed, and we sit while he tells me about a time he almost got arrested with Ella and Kellin. As we talk, we lean against each other more and more, and he starts brushing the side of my thigh with his thumb. Everything feels warm, and slow, and soft. Like those caramels.
The party’s steadily growing louder as people knock back more shots and, I assume, whatever stash Angel took from is passed around. One group is loudly filming a video for Instagram while they play a drinking game that apparently involves banging on an end table and screaming every time someone speaks. Not far from them, a couple of guys and a girl have lost their shirts and are running around trying to procure an extra shirt for the girl. Someone else is playing trap music through their phone speaker, and it’s clashing with the music on Angel’s speakers so badly I can barely hear myself think.
I check on Zach a couple of times, and he hasn’t left the girl with the curls. I guess he’s chosen her to break his heart tonight.
And I guess I’ve chosen Levi.
“So, how long are you in Paris for?” Levi asks.
“Today and tomorrow. We leave the next morning.”
“Ah.” He pouts. “And you’re staying here?”
“Yeah, my room’s just down the hall.”
“Oh, you all have your own rooms. Cool.” He pretends to say it casually, but his hand presses more firmly against my leg, and something flutters in my stomach. My throat feels thick, leaving me a little breathless.
Someone grabs my arm, and I glance up to find a very concerned-looking Zach. “Can I get your help for a minute?” he asks.
I excuse myself from Levi, and Zach brings me to his heartbreak girl. Except she’s sitting slumped against the wall, her head now so far to one side it’s resting on her shoulder.
“Jesus, what’d you do to her?”
“Nothing! I think she’s just drunk.”
An unfamiliar girl appears with a bottle of water to hand to the girl. She takes it and clasps it between both hands. Zach crouches down. “Is she okay?” he asks.
“Yes, this happens sometimes,” the new girl says in a French accent. “I’ll call an Uber.”
“How far is the drive?”
“Maybe thirty minutes?”
“That’s a long trip. She doesn’t look so good.”
“We don’t have anywhere else to stay.”
“I feel sick,” Heartbreak Girl moans. “Let me sleep on the floor, Manon. Please?”
Zach hesitates, then looks at me hopefully. It takes me a moment to realize what he wants through the haze of alcohol.
“If you wanna give her your bed…” I say with a shrug.
“You wouldn’t mind? If I crashed with you?”
Well, Levi might mind. But Levi will just have to get over it.
Working in tandem, the three of us help the heartbreak girl to her feet and steer her into Zach’s room. He hurriedly shoves his stuff into his suitcase, and I work with the girl’s friend, Manon, to get her safely into Zach’s bed. Manon thanks us on repeat, between composing typo-ridden tweets about how Zach Knight needs to be stanned until the end times. Then Zach and I drag his bags into my room, and I collapse onto my bed, officially too dizzy to stand anymore.
“Sorry to interrupt your, um, thing,” Zach says in a weird voice. He hovers by his suitcases and hugs his arms to his chest.
I groan and throw an arm over my eyes to block out the ceiling light. “It’s fine. What are friends for but to cockblock?”
“Crap. I’m sorry.”
“I’m kidding. Kind of.” I peek at him and grin. “I can’t be mad at you when you’re just being, like, the most decent guy. That’d make me shitty, wouldn’t it?”
“You could never be shitty.”
“I could, if I put my mind to it.”
The mattress bounces. He must have sat on the bed. “You wanna head back over?”
“Mm-hmm. We could. But the bed is really nice, and the room’s moving way too much suddenly.”
“Tell me about it. Those kids can drink.”
“Right? Levi had about half a bottle of vodka and he wasn’t even slurring.”
I send Jon a text to let him know we’ve ditched. No point texting Angel, he wouldn’t see it until morning.
“Levi,” Zach repeats. His voice is all weird again.
“Yeah, the guy I—”
“Yeah, no, I got that.’
I haul myself upright and yank my jeans off. “He’s a model,” I say.
Zach, who’s started undressing, too, pauses with his shirt half over his head. “Of course he is. Wonder if he got on that list.”
Oh, the list. I’d forgotten about it. “Fuck the stupid list, Zach,” I say, crawling under the covers.
Zach flicks the ceiling light off, and a rustling of fabric tells me he’s taking his jeans off. I fiercely regret him turning the light off. “Do I … can I just…?” his disembodied voice asks in the darkness.
“Yeah, get in,” I say. I want to add, “Where did you think you were gonna sleep?” but I somehow rein the sass in.
He gingerly crawls under the covers beside me. He’s radiating heat.
“Screw Erin, too, and screw Chorus,” I add.
Zach groans. “I don’t care. I don’t even … care.”
“Good. Because they don’t know anything, and they’re stupid.”
A shuffling on the bed tells me he’s rolled onto his side, closer to me. “They didn’t get it wrong. You’re all better looking than me.”
I roll over so fast my head lurches. Too fast for a drunk guy, apparently. “That,” I say, “is the stupidest shit you’ve ever said. You’re hot.”
“Naaahhhhh.”
“Yeeeaaahhh, you are. You”—I reach out to poke him, feeling around in the darkness until my fingers collide a little too hard with his chest—“should be on the top of that list.”
“No.”
“Number one!”
He swats my hand away, and our fingers entangle for a second. “Stop lying.”
“I’m not.”
He shuffles in place to get comfortable, and it brings him closer to me. “I’ve seen the guys you think are hot,” he says “They don’t look anything like me.”
My breath catches in my throat. Why, exactly, does he give a shit about which guys I do and don’t think are hot? “What?”
“They’re all, like, buff or whatever. That’s how I know you’re lying to make me feel better.”
Oh. That makes more sense. For the wildest moment I thought he meant … something else.