Bad Boy Summer

t w o

EVERYTHING WAS GREEN. This was noted by my hungover brain as my eyes finally pried open and I took in my surroundings. I was on the damp ground, still in my clothes from yesterday sans shoes and my head was resting on a frying pan as if it was a pillow. 

I was in a motherfucking bush. 

How I ended up in said bush, I have no clue. But I do remember that we arrived yesterday, settled into our rooms and then Spencer and Vera—who had arrived a day earlier—encouraged us to play numerous drinking games. The last thing I do recall is being dared to down an entire bag of Doritos in less than a minute. I completed the dare of course. 

But now I was here, lying down in a bush. 

The sound of a car door slamming has me jumping to my feet. A couple twigs cut the skin of my arms and my legs as I stand—slightly too fast for my hungover as fuck brain to handle and up stumbling. 

"Ohhhh shit..." I groan, grabbing my head with my hand. 

After the wave of dizziness passes, my eyes slowly raise from the soft green of the bush and noticed that I was indeed in one of the trimmed bushes that line David's driveway. In the middle of said driveway was David's Range Rover and standing in front of it was David, Levi and Chase who were all staring at me. 

My eyes lock with those gorgeous pools of hazel and I instantly freeze. 

"OH SHIT!" I shout before I propel my body from the clutches of the bush, across the paved driveway and up porch stairs, "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit..." 

I throw throw the front door open, force myself inside before shutting the wooden slab and pressing my back to it. So fucking much for trying to appear as if I went through the ultimate glow-up since our break up. You had one job, Hayden. One damn job. 

I was breathing heavily as I glance across the open downstairs area of the beach house and into the kitchen where everyone stood, watching me with wide eyes. 

"Good morning." Noah says, raising the mug clasped in one hand while sitting at the kitchen island block in Penn's floral silk robe. I push off the door and slowly walk towards the kitchen where everyone was having a grand ol' time enjoying their breakfast. 

I take a deep, calming breath before pointing behind me, "Why the hell did I  just wake up in bush?" 

"Well, during our second round of drunk jenga, you excused yourself to go to the bathroom and you never came back." Spencer explains before taking a sip of his mimosa. Of course he's not hungover, I swear my cousin in in a perpetual state of drunkness. And yet I wouldn't want him any other way. 

"And you didn't think to come looking for me?" I question with a frown as I stop at the end of the island block and place my hands flat on the countertop. 

"We could see you from the stairwell window, Hayden." My mother explains from where she sat in the breakfast nook, "You looked comfortable." 

Noah then exclaims, "I brought you a pillow!"