The Girlfriend [discontinued]

II. "Head, meet toilet."

II. "Head, meet toilet." 

I am never going to drink again. Well, at least not for another week or so. 

I woke up this morning with a killer headache and the intense urge to throw up. It's safe to say my head and the toilet bowl have become well acquainted over the past few hours. Admittedly, it was worse the morning after the whole sorry-about-your-jeans fiasco, but still. I would sell my soul to stop the pounding on my skull. 

Of course, Riley, being the lucky bitch she is, slept off the alcohol just like she always does and woke up feeling nothing more than a little thirsty. She must have been a saint in a past life. At least in the next one she'll get severely punished for sidestepping hangovers the way she does. I hope. 

When I'm curled back up in bed, hugging my pillow in the futile hope that if I grip it tight enough, the hangover will pass, Riley places a glass of water and a couple of pain killers on my bedside table, announcing that she's going down to the local convenience store to get some more Coco Pops, which almost provokes another round of 'head, meet toilet' at the thought of food right now. 

"Get me ear plugs too. Maybe I can block out the pounding," I mumble. She laughs, but I'm not joking. Whatever I can do to make it stop, I will. 

"Okay then." She gives my shoulder a pat and heads for the door. "Make sure you make it to the bathroom on time," she calls out before the door clicks shut. I groan in reply. 

I must manage to drift off, because the next thing I know Riley is slamming the door shut behind her and screeching at what seems to be the top if her lungs, "Winter James, you're in a magazine!" 

I clamp my hands over my temples in the hopes of muting the pain in my head as I blink up at her, wincing at the sudden brightness of the room. She's got a wicked grin plastered across her face as she stares down at me, waving something in the air that looks suspiciously like a mini baseball bat. 

"What?" I ask groggily, still trying to figure out what the hell is going on. 

"You were totally right about the guy you were dancing with last night. He is hot with a capital H," she muses as she sits onto my bed beside me, forcing me to move over to make room for her. 

"Huh?" Now I'm really confused. Couldn't this type of confusion have waited until I'm a little less hungover? "How do you know?" 

"Oh honey, you don't know the half of it. You've been a very, very, very bad girl," she teases cryptically. 

"Riley, I really don't have the mental capacity to understand anything other than English for Dummies right now. Please," I beg exasperatedly, struggling to get a look at what I now realise is a magazine rolled up in her hand. 

"I think I'll just show you then." She's grinning, and a tsunami of worry starts to bubble inside me. I have a really bad feeling about this. 

Without further hesitation, she hands the magazine to me with a flurry, revealing the front cover which was previously on the inside of the magazine when it was rolled up. 

When my eyes land on the main picture on the cover, I start to feel sick again. There, right in front of me, which the whole country has probably seen by now, is a picture of me dancing with the guy from the party. My head is bowed, so if you didn't know me, I would probably be unidentifiable, but for anyone who knows me, it'd be hard to miss. 

I stare at the picture for what feels like forever, but eventually my eyes drift further down the page to the headline: 'NoMo's new girl'. My mind connects the dots; NoMo, as in Noah Montgomery, the Prime Minister's son, the guy who can't seem to stay out of trouble, even when the whole country is watching him. Especially when the whole country is watching him. This picture is all kinds of proof of that.