“Paul? Are you all right over there?”
No answer.
“Paul?”
Still nothing.
Without stopping to think, Megan turned the handle on the door. It wasn’t locked, and it opened easily.
She peeked inside, and what she saw had her scrambling across the room in a hurry. Paul was balanced—barely—against the dresser that supported the television. He looked as if he’d just come from the bathroom, and he was drunk. Not a little drunk, but can’t-walk-straight-or-talk-without-slurring-his-words drunk. She’d never seen him like this.
“Meg-Meg-an.” He sighed, and attempted to raise his arm toward her as she wrapped her arm around his waist. He was twice her size, and in his current condition, he was dead weight.
With little help from him, Megan moved him a few feet over to the bed. He plopped down so hard he bounced.
Once she was fairly sure he wasn’t going to topple over, she glanced around the room. That was when she noticed the bottle of scotch on the coffee table. Most of the bottle appeared to be gone, and as there was no one else in the room, she had to assume he’d drunk it all himself.
“Will you be okay for a minute?”
“Su-sure.” Paul smiled up at her, and she felt something flutter in the pit of her stomach.
Stop it, she told herself, as she marched back into her room to get some ibuprofen.
He was still where she left him when she returned with something for the headache he was bound to have come morning. She took one of the glasses provided by the hotel into the bathroom to fill it up with water, before returning to stand directly in front of him. “Here. Take these. If you drank as much as I think you did, then you are going to have one massive hangover in the morning.”
Without comment, or protest, Paul downed the pills like they were candy. She handed him the water, and he drained that within seconds as well.
When he was done, she took the glass from him, and went to refill it. Again, he drained it when she brought it back to him. Once he polished that one off, Megan set aside the empty glass. She couldn’t help but wonder what had brought this on, although she was pretty sure she knew.
Megan was lost in thought when she felt Paul’s fingers brush the outside of her legs. At first, she thought it was unintentional, but then he got bolder and flattened his palms so that they were bracketing her waist. She could feel the heat of his hands through her clothes. Megan knew she should push him away—he was drunk, after all—but she couldn’t. She wanted to see what he would do.
.jpg)
.jpg)