07 | la situation

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BY THE TIME we got back to Coco's, I could already feel the effects of the wine wearing off. My body still buzzed, and my head still felt light and delicate, but I could considerably think clearer and form more coherent thoughts. The bottle of water I'd had earlier definitely helped, and so did the cold air blasting nonstop from the air conditioner.

But despite the fact that I knew there was something off about this arrangement, I didn't let go of Takoda's hand, not even as he led me up the stairs to Coco's room, as per her request, while she went to grab some supplies. His free hand had been chastely placed on my hip, but the contact made it feel as though I wasn't putting any clothes on. Everything about him right now was just warm and magnetic and intense and right. I wanted all of it.

I stumbled a little right before we reached the top, but his hand tightened around me to keep me steady.

"Easy," he said.

We continued up in silence after I found my footing, and the dark, empty hallway seemed to welcome us. Coco had been intent on getting some bottles of water and a bucket, even though I thought she was a little too tired to see right, and she'd unintentionally left the both of us alone.

"I don't want anyone throwing up on my carpet," I remember her saying.

Apparently, I was the most likely person to do that.

Her room had been left open, but I would've walked past it if not for Takoda's loyal guidance.

He gently led me to the big, bouncy bed and directed me to sit. Then he crouched to help me take off my shoes. Yes, I did feel useless. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was very aware of the fact that I was drunk and with Takoda Calebs, but that was about it. I couldn't really register why that was a bright red flag. All I knew was that it was.

Takoda was working on untying my laces with so much innocent concentration that I found myself watching him. How his hands fumbled with the knot for a bit before he finally got it loose. How everything he did was so damn gentle, like he genuinely thought everything had feelings and was actively trying not to hurt them.

I'd always thought Takoda Calebs was beautiful. It felt overly cliché to admit it, but it looked as if extra attention had been given to him when he was being created. There was a strange kind of perfection to the slope of his nose and shape of his jawline, in the size of his eyes and dip of his Cupid's bow. Not because they were flawless, but because all of it was just perfect. Just that. In their own way.

I wanted to kiss him.

When I reached forward, I didn't realize it. But then he looked at me with what was probably the most faultless expression, after my hand made contact with his face, and I felt higher than I already was. This was what I used to look forward to. Being with him like this, him looking at me like that, just being engulfed in each other, like we were the last two bodies in the universe, aware that we were both going to burn up eventually but still watching to see who would go first.

Today, I was the one that did, and for the first time in a really, really long time, I tasted his lips.

My brain went numb for a second at the feel of his lips against mine, and I almost tipped forward and messed the entire thing up, but he impulsively reached up to steady me, right before pulling away.

"Cleo," he said, chewing on the rest of his words.

I felt a sloppy smile on my face as we both took each other in for a few beats, and without thinking about it, I leaned in for the second time. My nose brushed against his once because I didn't quite angle my head right, but his lips responded to mine once we found our bearing, resurrecting the long-dead creatures inside me.

He was gentle with his movements, but his lips were firm and confident, like they remembered vividly what to do and how to do it. All kinds of sensations were traveling across my body with impressive speed, feeling like the castle in Beauty and the Beast after Belle showed up. But none of it was enough. I wanted him closer.

I'd just nudged his face closer to mine with my hand, was just about to deepen the kiss, to take these emotions to new heights, when he pulled away again.

"Shit," he said, lowering his head for a moment.

"Takoda," I whispered, trying to make him look at me, but he kept his head angled away.

"Shit. We shouldn't do this right now, Cleo." He went back to untying my laces, and a sour feeling spread across my chest.

"Why?" I asked.

He refused to respond at first, and I was already gearing up to ask him why again and again when he looked up, looking me right in the eyes. "You're drunk. You'll hate me in the morning."

"You're doing it again." I told him, my voice softer than I intended, and he paused for a moment.

For a quiet second, he just maintained the eye contact, and I was honestly expecting him to be the one to initiate the kiss this time, but what he did instead was shake his head and help me take off my shoe. "You should get some sleep. You look tired."

Rejection permeated my body until it was all I could feel, until it was in the tips of my fingers, until my heart was pumping with it. That gooey feeling that took center stage just seconds ago slowly ebbed away, and the next thing I heard from my mouth was, "Screw you, Takoda."

He looked up at me like those were the last words he was expecting to hear, even while I was drunk, and the hurt that flashed across his eyes kind of undid me a little. I kicked off my other shoe and shuffled further onto the bed, fresh tears making my eyes prickle. I was such an idiot.

I clumsily struggled with the covers, attempting to get my body beneath, but everything just ended up wrapping around my lower half, managing to frustrate me even further.

Takoda remained crouched next to the bed for a dazed second before he came to help me. I didn't want him to, but I also didn't have a choice. He unwrapped me, then lifted the covers and gestured for me to lie down. I did. As he placed the fluffy covers over my sulking frame, he pushed back the lifeless pieces of hair in my face. I promptly shook him off and closed my eyes.

"I'm sorry," I heard him say as I snuggled into the pillow beneath my head and comically dozed off.

Unsurprisingly, the kiss was the first thing I remembered when I woke up around eight a.m.

My head felt like it was about to split open, in half, and my eyes felt like they could survive after being detached from my head. Worse, the sun was out and shining through my sister's sliding doors. Why did she pull the curtains apart? To kill me?

I groaned, extracting my face from the pillow beneath me and slowly rolling onto my back, trying hard not to dwell too much on the fact that I'd basically thrown myself at Takoda last night.

Try—keyword.

I couldn't believe myself. I actually kissed that loser. I'd placed my mouth on his and freaking kissed him—

I forcefully threw back the covers and got out of bed, refusing to let it bother me. The speed with which I got up was definitely not good for the hangover though, because a sudden wave of dizziness washed over me, causing me to stumble. I had to grab the headboard to keep myself steady. Then after a few seconds, my stomach rolled as if reminding me that I hadn't thrown up yet.

There were stray panties, bras and shoes on the floor, scattered across the carpet like none of us could function properly when we got back in the wee hours of the morning. If anyone else was like me, they were probably too focused kissing their ex-something to even remember what—

I found myself screaming into the headboard with my mouth closed, consequently worsening my headache and upsetting my stomach even more, because I kissed Takoda Calebs. I kissed him after letting him know that I didn't care about him. After telling him to stay away from me.

I went to the bathroom to throw up shortly after that, gripping the sides of the toilet bowl with the intensity of someone ready to detach it from the floor. I could practically feel my stomach liquids as they fiercely crashed against the walls of my body, rioting, rejecting the alcohol after enduring its presence for a few hours.

Too weak to function after brushing my teeth and returning to bed, I buried my face in my palms, feeling like processed shit.

How was I going to face him? How was I going to continue being this indifferent person after losing control of my emotions the way I did?

The skin on my face felt hot beneath my clammy palms, and I realized too late that I was sweating. Like, profusely.

"Good morning," a chirpy voice suddenly announced from the doorway, piercing through my skull, and I reluctantly looked over to see Robin, one hand high up in the air, the other holding a bowl of cookies. "I heard retching."

I glared at her for a second. "Of all the times you could decide to talk to me, you had to choose when I feel like I was passed through an industrial machine," I said, my voice monotone.

She waved me off. "You look the part, and it's my sole purpose right now to immaturely get back at you, so we're fair."

"I feel much better now, thanks." I rolled my eyes, a huge mistake, judging by the way I retreated into myself like a kid having lime for the first time. I needed to learn to be a normal person and stop making too many gestures when I was hungover. Not that I planned on drinking ever again in my life.

"Well, you have to get ready because it's Confession Day."

I immediately fell back into the bed. "Oh my God."

"Uh huh."

I placed my hands over my face. "Oh. My God."

Saturdays and Sundays were our free days. Most of the stuff filmed during the weekend ended up in some kind of montage or pre-scene clip in the episode, but the loosened schedule came with a price we all had to pay. The confessional.

New episodes were usually aired on Tuesday evenings—it took the team about two days to review everything that happened between Monday and Friday and compress into a forty-five to fifty-minute episode—so we usually spent the entire weekend in the confessional, trying not to let Mark get to us. He was the nicest producer I knew—also one of the only producers I knew—but he could be very . . . pressuring when he wanted to be. I was actually really proud of the amount of time and work that went into Coco Says, even though I still strongly believed it was nothing but an invasion of privacy.

We'd lovingly dubbed our Saturdays Confession Day after a particular episode ended up forcing my sister to reveal that she was seeing a notorious DJ—who may or may not have shoved our mom once.

Robin tittered, and I couldn't understand how she was so chirpy this early in the morning. It was absolutely ridiculous. Was she an extraterrestrial being? "Everyone's literally praying for Coco's great grandkids right now."

I looked at her, eyebrows raised curiously. I didn't get it. Was that supposed to be a joke?

"Because she literally orchestrated last night and woke up at, like, five a.m. this morning to continue work on that secret project of hers, while everyone was out like sacks of ice. I've been awake since four. Takoda and I basically couldn't sleep with the memory of all of you making giant asses of yourselves."

At the sound of Takoda's name, I looked away from her, internally cursing my luck. Wow, I was so stupid last night.

"I have, like, thirty minutes worth of footage of you, excluding the part where you specifically asked him to sit next to you."

I reached to my left without looking, grabbed a pillow, and pressed it into my face as hard as I could.

"I think it's been pretty established that you like him."

"Why are you talking so much?" I groaned into the pillow, her voice making my skull feel like there were numerous tiny people playing conga drums inside it, with the minions as special guests.

"Who likes who?" came my sister's voice from the hallway. I was starting to think she had a superpower.

I'd realized too late that I had too high expectations of my best friend sometimes. Sometimes she was up to the task, and other times she was . . . Well, she was Robin. No other description could compare. There was a whole list of things I thought she'd say, I was just joking being at the top, but what I heard instead was an extremely honest, "Cleo likes Takoda."

There was silence for a moment, and even though I didn't want to, I took the pillow off my face to study the mood. I had to blink several times before I could truly see anything.

Coco was standing next to Robin by the open door, messy hair in a bun—the only sign that she was just a little less hungover than I was—and a mug of coffee clutched in her hands. Her reading glasses were perched on her nose, and for some reason—perhaps me just wanting to forget about the pounding behind my eyes—I noticed that there was a constellation of red spots on her right cheek.

This early, without her face made and hair extensions put in, Coco looked like your regular neighbor; particularly, the bestselling-author-who's-now-suffering-from-massive-writer's-block type of neighbor.

"You have heat rash?" I asked at exactly the same time that she said, "Cleo is physically and emotionally incapable of liking anyone. There is no heart inside that chest of hers."

"Ha!" Robin exclaimed, way too pleased with herself. "Trust me, there is, and it is pumping fast for your best friend."

This time, I wasn't quick enough to notice the camera, but when I did, I wondered how long it had been there. The cameraman didn't come in, pleased with the view from the hallway.

"Seriously, Robin, it's too early to joke around," my sister said with a smile.

"Yeah, Robin," I piped, still in bed, injecting as much fake sugar into my voice as I could while giving her a death glare. "It's too early to joke around."

She stared at me for a second. For two. Then she nodded, satisfied. "Confession Day," she said, right before walking back out into the hallway. With the cookies, too.

There was a lot more meaning to her words this time, and I realized as she disappeared from my line of sight that she'd left enough Easter eggs for Mark to become suspicious. The moment in the kitchen, her basically ignoring me at the club yesterday, and now the whole "Cleo likes Takoda" talk. Who knew what she'd say in the confessional?

Our dear producer was a bloodhound in his previous life. He noticed everything. Even when we kept them off-screen. I couldn't count the number of times he'd caught me unaware with his questions, and the things he'd questioned me for were far less grievous than this. Wow, I was in so much trouble.

Coco took a sip of her coffee the moment Robin left, fixing her eyes on mine. There was a question brewing there somewhere, I could tell, so I wasn't too surprised when she asked, "What was that about?"

I tried to shrug, but the gesture ended up looking weird with the way my arms were placed. "I have no idea. I'm too hungover to even deal with it."

She snorted, finally stepping fully into the room. "And I thought everyone else woke up late," she said, gently placing her coffee on the bedside table so she could check her charging phone. "I left my phone here on purpose because people kept texting me."

"You should've just put it on silent or something."

"You know that wouldn't have worked. Would you look at that—two missed calls from Mark."

In my peripheral vision, I watched her scroll through the notifications on her phone, her coffee now forgotten. At the thought of drinking coffee, nausea made my stomach churn. Again.

"Apparently, we have to get to the confessional an hour early," she said, putting her phone down.

"Why?"

"Mark sent me a text saying he has something he needs me to see, so."

"Why do I have to come with you?"

Swiftly, she flung a pillow at me, and it landed softly on my aching head. "Shut up and get your hungover ass out of my bed. We have a long day."

Yet again, I groaned.

salut!

so. what are we thinking? how are we feeling? what are our views on exes (ex-anything) that break hearts then come back to try and make things right? should they be trusted?

lots of love!


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