ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS

16.

"Were you cold?"

"A bit."

"Why didn't you say anything then?" Adam hauls himself out of bed, trudging towards the closet towering across the room. He opens it, showing a whole set of soft plaid blankets.

"My grandma owned something like that, too."

The cutting remark seems to slide off Adam's back. "You could have asked for a pillow and a blanket."

"I'm sorry, I thought that would be included in the Hamilton Hotel hospitality pack," he sneers.

Adam tears his gaze from him. "Lucky for you, there won't be a next time."

"Right," Dawson chokes on his breath. He clears his throat to speak. "Thank goodness for that."

Adam opens the door for him, politely inviting him to leave, but Dawson seems to miss the cue. "You saved my ass last night..."

"Get out of my face, Evans," his unapologetic smile makes Dawson's heart constrict into his chest.

He steps out of the room and walks away, feeling the boy's heavy stare weighing down on his back.

So much for the day-after walk of shame.

Before knocking at his door, room one hundred thirty-one, Dawson glances around furtively, praying not to see Remington appear out of nowhere holding her weird torture tools in her knotty witch fingers.

"Hey," Dawson greets Milo and a sleepy Calliope, who's wearing part of her costume from the night before and is still curled up in bedsheets. Of Milo's bed, no less. "Feeling hangover?"

"I'm never drinking again," Calliope grunts squeezing a pillow against her face. Milo's pillow.

Dawson lets out a short laugh. "Of course you will."

"What happened last night?" Milo cuts in. "Where did you hide?"

"Hamilton's."

Cal removes the pillow from her face, her bewildered eyes fixed on Dawson while Milo gazes thoughtfully at him. "I thought you hated him," the boy asks the implicit question.

"He helped me this one time," Dawson says nonchalantly. The last thing he wants is for them to see him get flustered over Adam fucking Hamilton. Then it dawns on him. "Where are the others?"

Cal just shrugs while Milo looks afflicted by a dark premonition.

"Maisie is too clever to ever get caught," Cal speaks up, trying to reassure them and herself. "And Abe is a master in the art of getting by. I'm sure they're OK."

The conversation seems to trigger some kind of urgency in her since she shoots up and fixes her high ponytail in the mirror. Dawson has never seen her wear her hair up. After making sure she looks presentable, she walks up to Milo and hunches over him. The boy catches his breath.

"Thank you for taking care of me last night," she whispers in his ear, loud enough for Dawson to hear every word.

Milo just nods, his cheeks tinted red right over his evergreen freckles.

"I'm going back to my room," she gives them a first-lady smile. "Toodles."

And so she leaves, closing the door behind her. Dawson and Milo share five long seconds of awkward silence.

"Did you share the bed?"

"No," Milo sighs, voice tinged with embarrassment. "I slept on the floor."

"You could have slept in my bed."

"I know how much you value your stuff and your personal space. I didn't want to disrespect you by sleeping in your bed without asking for permission."