My Last - Riley & Chelle by Melanie Shawn

Maybe that simple act would help her to open her eyes, to become aware of her surroundings. When she tried to lift her head, however, she realized her mistake. HUGE mistake! Her stomach rolled with nausea, and the banging sound became louder and was accompanied by sharp pains – pains that felt like ragged shards of glass being twisted viciously into her brain.
    Note to self: Vodka and pizza do not mix.
    That's when she realized that there was no mystery drummer in the bedroom (although if she didn't feel so crappy, she may not have objected to having a mystery drummer in her bedroom...). The thump-thump-thumping she heard was the pounding of her own head.
    She laid her head back down in defeat, but did come up with a plan. She decided that she would lay perfectly still long enough for the nausea to pass, and then maybe she would just try and ROLL out of bed. Gravity, FTW!
    She carefully placed her hands over her stomach and concentrated on breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth.
    “You awake sleeping beauty?”
    At the sound of the deep voice, adrenaline overcame all of her symptoms and Chelle bolted upright in bed, her eyes flying open.
    Adrenaline didn't help her vision, though, and it was pretty fuzzy. She was having a hard time focusing. She could just make out a shadowy figure sitting in the chair across from the bed. Just as she was getting ready to scream bloody murder, the figure spoke again.
    “Chelle, its Riley. Don’t be scared.”
    The deep sexy voice certainly sounded like Riley. From what she could make out of his features, the seated figure looked like (a blurry version of) Riley. The frame was right – the blurry blob had Riley's wide, muscled shoulders and taut, sculpted waist. The rest of the features fit, as well. She could barely make out dark blonde hair and sun-kissed tanned skin.
    But what in God’s name would Riley Sloan be doing here!?
    “Riley?” Chelle spoke his name in disbelief. Trying to make some sort of sense of what was going on, she asked, “Is it...what are you...why are you here?”
    “Sightseeing.”
    “What?” she asked, bewildered.
    “Sightseeing,” he repeated.
    “In my bedroom?” she murmured, puzzled. She rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her vision to see if he was really here, in the flesh. After all these years. Live and in person – and in a chair that sat only a few feet away from her.
    Was it true? Or was he just a smoking hot hallucination?
    Probably the latter, she concluded.
    She was most likely experiencing the final stages of her complete and total mental melt down.
    Well, she thought sanguinely, I can think of worse ways to lose my mind than imagining the sexiest man in the world in my bedroom with me. If I have to go crazy, at least I have company.
    Or, at least I'm imagining I do...
    The figment of her imagination smiled at her and said, “Jason called me. Katie was worried about you. She's been trying to get a hold of you for a few days. When she wasn’t able to reach you, she wanted to fly home early to check on you. But, since I was already in California, they asked if I could stop by and make sure that you were doing alright.”
    Ok ay, so maybe not a figment of her addled imagination. She didn't imagine that some sexy hallucination she conjured up would sit there talking to her about phone calls and plane schedules.
    She said, “I haven’t gotten any calls from her.” She reached over to retrieve her phone from the nightstand but her arms were so heavy that she didn’t quite make it.
    “Your phone was dead. It’s charging in the kitchen.”
    She tried to get out of bed, fueled by new urgency, saying, “I need to go call her.”
    However, it seemed that even new urgency was not enough to overcome physical deficits, and this proved to be much trickier than she had assumed it would be. The blankets she lay in were wrapped around her tightly, and try as she might to free her arms and legs, it felt as though her limbs were filled