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don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 1:30 am
by Fenris
>> Ivy Langley continued from
Dare You Enter My Magical Realm?
Ivy was the last person to be impressed by the size of anyone's house, and her own was probably larger than this, but she spent so little time in most of her own home—so many halls and rooms that would be coated in dust if not for the maids that kept the whole place museum-spotless—that Forrest's place
felt bigger. She'd explored most of it by now, or at least it felt that way, though logically she must have missed a few spots if she hadn't spotted Bret yet. The advantage, of course, to such a large party venue was that it was possible to escape the crowds no matter how many people were present. She couldn't have counted the guests, she wouldn't have been surprised if the total approached a hundred, but the bulk of them were still on the main floor, or dancing in the basement. Of course a number of the rooms up here seemed occupied, likely by people getting considerably luckier than she expected to tonight, and they still ran into the occasional hallway straggler, but for the most part it was quiet.
Of course, at any party bathrooms are a scarce and valuable commodity, and finding one without a line would be a challenge, if not for Ivy happening to stumble into what was probably one of several master bedrooms. She'd knocked first, of course, with no response, and was about to turn away when she realized it was bedroom number 34 or some equally ludicrous number when she spotted an open door on the other side of the room. She'd locked the door behind them for safety's sake, after making sure no one was nearby to see them enter.
Probably Wyatt was going to be disappointed. Probably this qualified as leading him on.
Still, she sat down on the bed, first. Her foot hurt from walking, after all, and she wanted to rest for a moment, and she was in no way hoping that Wyatt would sit with her. She absolutely did not want to just rest her head on his shoulder, for a moment.
She'd been pointedly quiet on the way here. Her voice was shakier than it had been downstairs when she spoke.
"Hey. Um, I'm... okay? Not emergency. An emergency." Shaky from pain, yes. The alcohol was creeping back in too, though. The fight had sobered her a bit, but the glass of wine took care of that in a hurry. She should tell him what happened, probably. Or what she needed help with.
"You wanna... sit down?"
Re: don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 7:00 am
by MK Kilmarnock
((Wyatt pulled from the same place, he'll probably be right back, yeah? Heh. Yeah.))
Okay, so Ivy'd led him into one of the bajillion bedrooms in this place. Cool.
She locked the door behind them. Cool.
She sat down on the bed. Cool.
Hey. Um, I'm... okay? Not emergency. An emergency." Less cool. Ivy had been drinking, too. He'd been sipping whatever 'Daddy Connie' would let him have and even before joining that game, he'd swung by the drink table to take his fill of the watering hole. But alcohol hit the two of them in completely different ways, different levels of intensity. He figured if he was sloshed enough he might just scoop her up right now and that'd be the end of that. Thank fuck for being more on the side of sobriety, then - didn't need Bondage Kid or whoever comin' out of the woodwork and running to his brother. Okay, so Ivy had been drinking, but something else was completely written on her face. Like half of this situation said 'bend me over and plow me like one of your French girls' and the other half said 'I seriously need help.'
Wyatt decided to hear out that latter half. This was Ives. He owed Ives that much.
"Yeah alright," he said bluntly, plodding over to the bed and sitting beside her with maybe a hand's width between their legs. The bed creaked in protest as he set his weight on it, and he made sure to shift back so the damn frame wouldn't crack underneath him. His feet still rested on the floor for the most part, while Ivy's hung cutely like a girl on a swing. "So uh, what's the big deal?" he asked, trying not to sound nervous. "You're not like pregnant or anything are ya?"
Re: don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 7:41 am
by Fenris
She giggled. Half nerves, half... no, mostly nerves. A touch of something else, though. He was close again, and that made her happy, which it most definitely should not do, but it was what it was. He kept the slightest bit of distance between them, which was polite of him and all, but she bridged the space immediately by leaning into him, resting her head on his shoulder the very way she absolutely did not want to do. He was warm. He was always warm. It was perhaps a touch concerning that they'd been so close frequently enough that she had a baseline of "always" to reference.
"No. Course not. That would qualify as an emergency, I think." Would be a strange thing to go to Wyatt for, anyway... well. No, it wouldn't, all things considered. But she was careful to the point of being somewhat obsessive when it came to her birth control, so that was never likely to be an issue. God, her life was enough of a soap opera as it was.
She pulled her stocking-clad foot back into her lap, wincing as she did so. Conveniently for the sake of demonstration, but worrisomely for all other purposes, blood had soaked through most of the toe portion of her stocking. She touched it gingerly, her finger thankfully coming away dry; leaving bloody footprints through the house would certainly get people talking, though not exactly in the way she would have preferred.
"I..." She paused, frowning. The obvious tack to take was to tell him what happened, that Faith had hurt her, that this was her fault, oh, Wyatt, why is she so mean to me, I was just trying to talk to her! Maybe squeeze out a few more tears for effect, not that the pain didn't still have her on the verge of crying to begin with. But no. Not that she was sure he'd catch on, sweet and simple as he was, but starting there would reek of manipulation. She did call him here for more than just a dig at Faith, though that was a convenient bonus. He'd ask what happened, and she'd tell him then. Or else she'd find a way to work it in. But it could wait.
"I don't know how bad it is. Didn't want to look." She sniffed, looked at him. She loved how his feelings were always written over his face. "Might be broken, or something. S'been kind of hard to walk."
Re: don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 5:59 am
by MK Kilmarnock
"Awwww, fuck fuck Ives, what happened to ya?," Wyatt packed the words full with as much empathy as he could muster, which was a much higher threshold for somebody like Ivy. Girls in general, really, demanded a softer touch (unless they were into a harder one, yeah?) than guys. Guy with a bloodied toe? Foot falling off? Suck it up buttercup, we got a whole fourth quarter to play.
With Ivy showing him her foot all tore up, he just wanted to snatch the tiny little thing up and cradle it like that was going to make it better. He restrained his inner-Lenny, not wanting to act like a fucking retard in the face of the slightest injury, and focused on what was important: Making Ivy feel better. Secondary goal, find out how this happened, and bust up the door frame or jackoff responsible.
"Lemme take a look at this. Gonna take your sock off."
He set his hand on the knee of the same leg and ran it higher, searching for the end of the stocking. If he had to go above the hem of her skirt to do that, well fuck it, all in the sack of playing Doctor Carter. He was going to have to take a look at that toe one way or another. Going gentle was never exactly Wyatt's strong; he did the best he could regardless, getting most of the stocking off over her knee and bunching it up at her ankle, then letting her position her leg however she deemed necessary, even letting her scoot back on the bed so he could gingerly tug the sock the rest of the way off to look at the toe. And of course Ivy wasn't able to look herself... he found himself smirking at how adorable she was in handling the pain.
"Yep, that's a busted-up nail. You try to kick a bowling ball or something?" Came the sage verdict with rather curt delivery.
Re: don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 9:06 pm
by Fenris
It should have occurred to Ivy that she should have taken her stocking off herself, or at least rolled it down to her knee, and "I didn't think about it" felt like a poor excuse even as she only thought it to herself. It was the sort of thing she didn't particularly want to explain to a potential random interloper—but she'd locked the door, hadn't she, and Wyatt was hardly complaining, and the full-body shiver that ran through her when his hand crept beneath her skirt didn't give much credence to her not wanting him to do it. She still cringed away when his hand touched her foot, willing herself to stay still enough to let him look. She averted her eyes as the sock slid off of her.
A busted up nail. What did that even mean? She didn't want to look, but her eyes darted toward her toe and then immediately away again because seeing the damage both made the pain immediately worse and turned her stomach. A busted up nail felt like an understatement. The nail on her big toe was split down the middle, straight down into the nail bed; the split was filled with dried blood that also coated the rest of her toes. It wasn't much blood, logically, but she still felt woozy. She closed her eyes. She leaned further into Wyatt. Because she was dizzy and she might fall over otherwise, and no other reason.
Bless him, he hadn't needed much prodding to ask the question she was hoping for. Perhaps if she'd hoped to be diplomatic she could choose a more tactful answer than the one she planned to give, but the time for diplomacy seemed to be very much over. Besides, it felt right, giving him a straight answer. He deserved it.
"Faith."
Her voice was quiet, less confident than she would have liked, but she didn't feel particularly confident at this moment in time.
"She stomped on my foot. Really hard, We were, like, talking an'..." She shouldn't give more information, shouldn't incriminate herself, but Faith would just give him the full story later, right? Might as well get it all out now.
"... An' I was upset, cause of the whole thing with... I dunno if you heard about the thing with Julien and Myles, s'not..." She gave a vague airy hand gesture. It's not important were the words she didn't say, because it was important, but probably not worth burdening Wyatt with right now. "Probably said somethin' bad. Don't remember that well. Then she hurt me an' left."
And she really didn't know, now that she'd laid it all out, if Wyatt would even sympathize. You shouldn't dish it if you can't take it. She could hear it already. But violence was taking things too far, words weren't supposed to lead to that, it was immature and proof Faith couldn't stand on her own words and, and, and.
Why should Wyatt be on her side, again? He liked Faith better anyway, right? They had stuff in common. They could actually just hang out and do whatever and be friends and she was just his brother's girlfriend who wandered into his life and made it infinitely more complicated and they'd known each other for a long time but they hadn't known each other and, and.
It was too much. Ivy buried her face into his shoulder and started to cry.
Re: don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 7:19 am
by MK Kilmarnock
"Julien? Myles who? ...Alright, alright, come on."
She was crying now. She was crying into his shoulder, unable to take the pain in her foot. No, wait, that was wrong. If it was the pain in her foot bothering her, then she would have done the crying straight away, or at least gotten out of Faith's line of sight first. Come to think of it, Ivy looked all red-eyed when she came up behind him at the game of truth or dare. So she HAD cried before, and was crying now. You don't cry over the same injury twice.
"Hey hey hey," he muttered, scooping her up under her knees with his close arm securing her to the designated crying shoulder. He turned her a little and sat her directly on his lap, trying to decide if he should laugh or frown. Doing both was proving difficult. "Take it easy. I can't beat the shit outta her for you but you got me right now."
Fuck... he was at a loss for things to say.
"What would make you happy right now?"
Re: don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 9:17 am
by Fenris
She felt limp. He moved her so easily, and she didn't try to resist. How could she complain about being closer to him? When she'd told herself a hundred times that it would never happen again. That she had to forget. Her memories were soaked in shitty beer and yet they'd crystalized so strongly in her mind that she couldn't feel Bret's hands on her anymore without thinking of his—she couldn't do anything but try to forget. But she'd needed help. And now here she was again, drunk and confused with her lips inches from his. Funny how that worked.
She didn't think she was a particularly ugly crier or anything—her nose wasn't running, at least—but she could hardly argue it was a look. He was still looking at her, though. She wanted badly to avert her eyes, but he was so close. He looked... at a loss, which was fair enough. It wasn't like she knew what she was doing here, either.
He wasn't leaving. He hadn't told her to suck it up. He'd said he couldn't hurt Faith, but she hardly expected that from him. She wasn't sure she'd want him to if he offered, even. What would be the point?
The point, she supposed, was some sort of proof. Evidence. Something she could hang on to. Something more than a half-memory that proved she was more to him than a one-time mistake and an occasional jerk-off reminiscence. Something more tangible than the words she still remembered him saying, I ain't regrettin' what happened, hesitation in his voice, nerves. That sentence had played back a thousand times in the days that stretched between then and now and she clung to it like a life preserver.
What would make her happy?
There were words she wanted to hear, but they didn't count if she asked for them. She could close the distance between them, instead. The door was locked. No one would stop her. She wanted to, of course she did, and in what world was Wyatt going to stop her? He'd be all too happy to take care of things. More memories. More questions.
She touched his chest. Her hands were so small. She felt like she was shrinking.
She opened her mouth, and gave the most honest answer she could manage.
"I don't... know."
And then, too quickly,
"Just, stay. Please."
Re: don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2019 10:05 pm
by MK Kilmarnock
"I didn't plan on goin' anywhere."
So much for the game of truth or dare. The most he was going to get back out of that was hitting Misty with a revenge dare, though, so nothing lost. Nothing more important than what was going on right now.
The bittersweet scent of alcohol wafted from Ivy's breath. It reminded Wyatt of the time in his living room before he took Ivy up the stairs, and it reminded him of the time at the riverfront. Those two nights had ended in markedly different ways. The feeling of having her press against him so feebly drove him with this strange urge to squeeze her as hard as he could. Fortunately for the both of them, he resisted the urge to be the Lenny to her mouse; he held her secure, carefully gauging the pressure every step of the way.
Don't leave. Just stay.
Making sure Ivy didn't stray too far from his chest, he shifted his weight over, twisted to be flat on his back, and pulled his legs up to fully lay down on the bed with Ivy over him. It was a feeling wholly unfamiliar to him, to have her placed exactly like this, and that made it less than completely comfortable. But for now, he wanted...
Actually... he wasn't sure what he wanted. Or, that was a lie, he knew what he wanted but wasn't sure what he could have.
He couldn't yet decide which.
Re: don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2019 9:00 am
by Fenris
She felt... guilty.
But the wrong kind of guilty, somehow. Guilty for taking up his time. Guilty for dragging him away from fun. Guilty for... this, whatever this was. Not guilty because she did need him, but guilty because she wasn't even doing what she'd dragged him here for. She needed some Neosporin or something, or at the very least to wash her foot. Find a band-aid, find her shoes, send Wyatt on his way. Do something else. Go home, maybe. What else was there to do? Myles was undoubtedly busy. Bret was a ghost. She could barely walk. Worst case she ran into Faith again, or Julien, or whoever else she absolutely did not want to deal with tonight.
But when Wyatt laid back on the bed, when she found herself lying down with her head pressed into his chest, she didn't stop him. She pushed herself up just enough to readjust herself, settling partially beside and partially on top of him, tucked in the crook of his arm.
It felt familiar.
She remembered, faintly, the feeling she'd grasped only for moments before it slipped away. Not quite the same, hot and sweat-slicked and panting but still somehow so similar, when for only moments he had held her, and she had nothing to do but breathe. Half-drunk and barely conscious and exhausted, she'd slipped away, and the next moment she was reaching out for a boy who wasn't there. One who'd remembered the severity of their situation and had already moved onto damage control.
She glanced behind her, at the door. There was a right kind of guilty, too, but all she felt was glad that she'd remembered the lock.
Ivy turned her head just enough to look at him. The calm was the same, somehow, and this time she knew the moment wouldn't be interrupted. And this time she refused to slip away. This time, for whatever it was worth, they were here. For as long as they'd have each other. For whatever they planned to have each other for.
She opened her mouth, but every word she could think to come out sounded stupid, or immature, or desperate, or needy, or worse. It wasn't the right time. It wasn't ever going to be the right time, though. They had to talk, didn't they? If this was going to be something, they had to talk about it. But it couldn't ever be anything, so there was no point in talking about it. Right?
A noise of frustration escaped her.
"What are we even doing, Wyatt?"
Those were almost definitely the wrong words. She didn't want an answer to that. She so didn't want an answer that she pushed herself upward and pressed her lips against his, which was, she thought, her own answer.
Re: don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2019 9:36 pm
by MK Kilmarnock
Wyatt wasn't expecting that question and he wasn't expecting any additional... difficulties of the night. Ivy was bending one way and he responded accordingly in order to support her. And for one moment, apparently she didn't like that either. Thankfully, it was just a moment, and there was no time for the loaded question to cook before Ivy supplied him with an answer.
Okay, apparently this is what they were doing.
Considering the question good and dead, Wyatt pushed it to the side and returned the kiss, at first just matching Ivy since she'd decided to take the initiative, but the ball wasn't going to be in her court for long. Since Ivy had pushed off to the side a little bit, he slide more of himself out from under her so they were just about side-to-side. His hand came to rest on her side with all of its weight, sliding somewhere between where her top and skirt met and staying there for the time being.
Right this sec, fuck Faith and whatever got up her ass this night. Fuck his brother and not being there, because if he was paying attention maybe Ivy would have gone to him, so he only had himself to blame. And fuck the rest of this party, he wasn't going back to it anytime soon.
And he was alright with that, brother be damned. He could come knocking on that fucking door and it wasn't like they were gonna stop.
Re: don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2019 11:57 pm
by Cactus
Stomping around the upstairs level of Forrest Quin's house was like navigating a maze - Ariana Moretti felt like she'd been wandering it for an hour and still hadn't seen all of the different rooms. This place seemed an absolute fucking
labyrinth, and perhaps it was the alcohol she'd imbibed but she couldn't seem to figure out where she was going.
Her sights were set on some room.
Somewhere. But where?
Fuck sakes.
((Ariana Moretti continued from In Vino Veritas))
Having barely interacted with anyone after the Marco Volker incident, Ariana knew that walking it off was the best bet. She'd lost her cool - absolutely, but she was resolute in that the little shithead deserved it. People like him basically didn't do anything unless they were going to get a reaction out of it, and so he'd gotten exactly what he'd wanted. Probably tenfold. Ariana barely cared what the rumour mill would say later on, either. She slapped him. Good for her. Knowing the student body, word would spread and people would likely take her side. Whatever. Sometimes people were just
begging to be slapped. A part of her wished he'd hit her back. If only to take him down to size - which wouldn't have been hard, he was shorter than she was. Of course, starting a real fight in the school year's biggest party was likely a terrible idea, so she'd left.
The new problem though, regarded her jacket. Like most of the students who'd arrived at the party early, she'd piled her coat in one of the spare bedrooms, on top of a bed for safekeeping. The doorman - hoity-toity Claude of all people, had walked her to some room on this floor, but that had been hours ago, and thus far she was striking out. Stopping in front of a room at the corner of the hallway, she furrowed her brow. Had this been it? She didn't... think so? But maybe?
God, she wanted a cigarette.
Of course, she'd tried to cut back on the smoking thanks to Ross not being a fan, and while it was tough, Ariana knew that in the long run, her stamina and endurance would thank her. Blinking a few times, she thought she heard voices behind the door. They were faint, but ... was she in the right place? Ariana shrugged to herself, and tried to turn the door handle.
Fuck. Locked.
"Huh."
Knowing full well that she was probably interrupting someone's drunken Swiftball hookup, Ariana raised her fist to the door, leaving it hang there for a moment. While she didn't want to see many of her fellow classmates in the buff, she also
really didn't want anyone fucking on her coat.
So yeah, this was happening.
Three loud knocks on the door blended in with the bass from the music coming from the lower floor.
"Hey, someone in there?"
They were, she knew. Whether they'd answer was another story altogether.
Re: don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Sat Mar 30, 2019 6:49 am
by Fenris
What was she thinking? There were plenty of good reasons for her to open her mouth here and none of them were to speak. His hands weren't moving nearly fast enough, but they were on her in places they probably shouldn't be, which was enough of an improvement to cast whatever was left of her doubts out of her mind. Parties weren't for talking, anyway. They were for this, this thing that'd been on her mind for weeks, flitting through her thoughts every time she so much as passed him in the halls, this thing that she wasn't supposed to want and didn't want to rationalize. It could be so easy, couldn't it? They could keep quiet, they could find these spare moments, and then, and then. And then she didn't know. It didn't matter. The future was miles away, right now. Right now there was only
three knocks at the door, muffled by but distinct from the bass downstairs.
The door was locked. That thought didn't quite hit her quickly enough to stop her from pulling her lips from his, but it was enough to stop her from moving any further. This interloper, this indefensibly nosy cunt couldn't get in the room. Which made her irrelevant pretty much immediately, especially because Ivy only recognized her voice enough to know it wasn't anyone she needed to think about. They could just ignore it, couldn't they? She'd leave, probably. There was no particular reason she'd need to be in this room, after all.
But!
Ivy was drunk, yes, but paranoia overcomes intoxication every time.
It was unlikely, of course, extremely unlikely, but if whoever this bitch was had some serious reason for coming in here, she could try breaking the door down. Probably wouldn't work, but at the very least it would bring some unwanted attention. Or, worse yet, she could go find Forrest, and get a key. If there was a key for this specific door somewhere. Which there probably wasn't? But it was possible. So probably they shouldn't ignore it. But if she said anything the bitch in question might recognize her voice, and—it was unlikely, of course, extremely unlikely, but—she might realize that Ivy Langley oughtn't be locked in a room with a boy at a party her boyfriend was currently MIA from. Maybe she was mishearing the voice, maybe it was someone she knew, maybe tomorrow the whole world would know exactly what she'd been up to tonight. Extremely unlikely. But not worth the risk.
Wyatt, meanwhile, was single. Whatever he might be doing in here was no one else's business and hardly a suitable subject for rumor. The logical solution was obvious.
"Say something," she whispered. No point in explaining the logistics to Wyatt. It would take far longer that way. "Whatever she wants. Send her off."
Re: don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Sat Mar 30, 2019 7:23 am
by MK Kilmarnock
GOD FUCKING DAMN IT, Bret wasn't actually supposed to come knocking at the door!
Right around the time Wyatt sprang halfway up off the bed, carried Ivy with him and the plopped her back on the bed after getting his arm all the way out from under her, a voice on the other side of the door confirmed the presence as anybody other than the worst possible case of his twin brother. Unless Bret got a sex change in the last 30 minutes anyway, that definitely wasn't him. Crisis fucking averted, or at least lessened. Nonetheless, looking down at Ivy and having her look back up at him in that way, Wyatt knew something had to be done about the situation because if they just ignored her, this could get very bad, very fast.
Nodding and wiping his chin at Ivy's suggestion, Wyatt started to roll off the bed. "The fuck you want me to say?" he breathed, then in a much, MUCH louder voice:
"WHADDAYA FUCKING WANT!?"
Re: don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2019 4:41 pm
by Cactus
Ariana frowned at the doorway almost immediately. Lovely, it was fucking Wyatt Carter inside of the room. While she didn't have an egregious issues with Wyatt herself, he was obnoxious and brought an energy to most rooms that she didn't really feel like dealing with at the moment. She just wanted to find her jacket and get the fuck out of there. Plus it brought the added incentive of getting her things away from a potential Carter ho, and that didn't need any explanation at all.
She didn't think much of the Carter boys' taste in women. Or their taste in political views. Or really, them... much at all. Yet for all of her own bravado and loud personality, she'd never crossed that particular clique and rather wanted to keep it that way.
It could only end messily for everyone, after all.
"I need to get in for a second," she called out, trying to hide her annoyance. She could always ask if the coats were inside, but anyone worth their salt would just say no, and continue about whatever dirty business they had. No, Ariana knew that she needed to see inside for herself - if it was the wrong room, so be it, but she was running out of places to look.
"I left something in there."
Re: don't go wasting your emotion
Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2019 11:44 pm
by Fenris
What on earth was she talking about?
Ivy could tell the moment she'd walked into the room that no one had been in here all night. It was too... clean. The bed was made, for fuck's sake. She did a quick look-around just for the sake of her own surety; unless whoever this was had actually put their stuff away in a drawer or whatever, without touching anything else in the room, she was lying. Or more likely simply mistaken. It seemed pointless to assign ungenerous motives to a voice she didn't recognize. Had it been Madison or someone of her ilk on the other side of the door Ivy would be much faster to assume she was hoping to catch a glimpse of something suspicious.
They could still just ignore her. The door was still locked. Or Wyatt could just tell her that there was nothing in here. But considering she'd heard Wyatt's voice—one difficult to mistake for anyone at George Hunter—and hadn't backed off immediately, Ivy had to assume that she was stubborn, at the very least. Probably also quite stupid, but that wasn't particularly helpful in this instance. Stubborn meant she wasn't going to leave. And they could ignore her still, and assume she wouldn't actually break in, but while it was quite likely that Wyatt wouldn't care all that much, Ivy herself didn't particularly relish the idea of continuing the night's planned activities with some random girl standing listening at the door.
The walls weren't thin, exactly, but they weren't soundproof, either.
Ivy grumbled under her breath before sliding off the bed, picking up her discarded stocking for the sake of total safety, and whispering to Wyatt—
"I'll go in the bathroom. Jus' let her in. Real fast."
After which she made good on her word and made her way to the bathroom a touch more slowly than she'd like, considering the limp and all. But her door was shut behind her well before Wyatt opened his.
What a bathroom, though. Ivy wasn't immediately sure if the tub was a straight-up hot tub or just a particularly fancy and large regular type, though another glance confirmed it as the latter. She looked in the mirror above the sink. It was situated irritatingly high, clearly not meant to be used by anyone shorter than 5'6", and as a result Ivy couldn't see much higher than her upper lip. But it was enough to look at her eyes. Her mascara was running. Her foot, after a few steps, was throbbing again. She glanced down at it, and the sight of dried blood still turned her stomach.
She was, in short, a mess.
She wished she could turn the lights out before Wyatt looked at her again.