I was wearing only my bra, stockings, and underwear. I confirmed this belief when I peeked under the white sheet which had pooled at my mid-back. I glanced again around the room and found my dress folded in half over the back of the wooden chair and my shoes neatly settled under the desk.
My hands went to my chest as I struggled to sit upright; adjusting the strapless bra to ensure it covered my br**sts as I deliberately attempted to find equilibrium in the vertical world. My hair fell to my lower spine in a puffy, untenable tangle of curls; it must have come completely loose sometime during the night. Elizabeth called it my mane of hair; I called it my bane of hair. However, it was far worse looking when it was short, sticking straight up or out at awkward angles; at least when it was long it almost obeyed gravity.
I wanted to die. Almost as soon as I was in a sitting position on the mattress but before I was fully able to bring the world and my current misadventure into focus, I perceived the sound of running water, of a shower, emanating from a door to the right of the bed. A sudden thunderbolt of panic struck my heart and I stiffened, immediately regretting the ungraceful movement and the resulting stab of pain in my temples.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I took several deep breaths. As exigently as possible I went to the invisible closet space in my head and went through the motions of wrapping up the panic in the beach towel, somehow fumbled with the lid of the box, finally found the damn key for the box and inserted it into the lock. I tried to ignore the shaking of my hands as the pretend me in my head put the box on the top shelf of the closet, quickly turned the light off, and ran screaming from the make-believe closet.
I needed to focus, I really needed to.
I had to get out of here before the mystery shower person emerged from the bathroom. At this point, as my memory was drawing a complete blank, I had no idea if the mystery person was a man or a woman. I wasn’t sure if, at that moment, I really had a preference in their gender but I drew some hope from the fact that I saw no discarded monkey suits by the bed or littering the floor. I raced to the chair, grabbed my dress, and quickly pulled it over my head. It felt just as inadequate in daylight as it had the night before. I shimmied into my shoes just as I heard the water cut off in the bathroom.
“Oh God.” I couldn’t find my bag. My gaze swept over the desk and the chair but they proved to be a purse-free zone. The brown leather couch and side table were also bagless. I automatically tiptoed to the queen mattress and lifted the sheets. The box spring was lying directly on the floor otherwise I would have crawled around looking under the bed.
I gave up my search for the bag and instead started hunting around the room for a phone. However, before I could initiate my first sweep, I heard the handle on the bathroom door turn and I sucked in a sharp breath.
This was it.
This was going to be my second walk of shame in two weeks. I just hoped that whoever was on the other side of the door didn’t insist on a no-eye-contact breakfast. It wasn’t just the fact that my stupidity had resulted in a probably one-night-stand and maybe a plethora of incurable venereal diseases or my immediate embarrassment at the situation, but that Jon and Elizabeth had been right: I needed an escort. I had reclusive tendencies for a reason, I couldn’t be trusted to live in the world and make decisions on my own.
I swallowed again, my hand on my stomach, as I turned to face the door.
When he emerged I thought I was hallucinating or, at the very least, still passed out from my night of drunken disorderliness. I had to blink several times to understand, and several more times to accept, that McHotpants was standing in the doorway, clothed only in a white towel nonchalantly wrapped low around his waist. Even through the lingering pounding pain of my hangover I couldn’t help gape at the perfection of him, of his bare chest, arms, and stomach. Every part of him looked photoshoped.
Finally, after what felt like an hour but what actually might have been four seconds, I realized I’d been starting at not his face and moved my gaze to his eyes. He wasn’t smiling. In fact, his expression wasn’t cool or warm or disgusted or pleased; it was completely unreadable. We stood, watching each other; me with a burning unfamiliar mixture of lust, mortification, and complete astonishment; him with a marbled mask of calm. This stalemate protracted for an indeterminable amount of time.
He was the first break the stare, his eyes moving over my now clothed form and shoes. I shivered involuntarily.
Finally, he removed his attention from me and he walked further into the room, crossing to the bookshelf, “I believe you are looking for this.”
I watched him, how the muscles in his back moved, still struck dumb by his sudden appearance; he easily reached to the top of the bookshelf and retrieved my bag. His bare feet made hardly any noise as he moved to where I stood and handed it to me. I automatically took the offered purse and tucked it under my arm.
“Thank you.” My voice was surprisingly calm given the fact that my brain and heart and lungs and stomach and lady bits were all rioting. I was determined to stay off the see-saw of crazy; I was going to be unaffected by him.
“You’re welcome.” He replied; his eyes skimming over my face. Without warning he brazenly reached out, pulled a thick puffy tendril from my mass of bedraggled hair and looped it around his forefinger. “You have a lot of hair.”
Suppressing a flock of butterflies in my stomach, I nodded and cleared my throat, “Yes. I do.” Before I could stop myself I continued, “Hair is one of the defining characteristics of mammals.” I quickly bit my lip to keep from telling him that there were only four species of mammal still alive that laid eggs, among them were the platypus and the under publicized spiny anteater; everyone always forgets about the spiny anteater.
He released the lock of hair and crossed his arms over his chest; “What are the other characteristics of mammals?”
I watched him intently for a minute, about to tell him about sweat glands and ear bones, but then a flash of memory from the previous night penetrated my conciseness. I felt suddenly sure he was making fun of me. I remembered the absurdity of my innate response to him, I remembered the way my brain and body were at complete discord, I remembered his words to me just before the first time I left the club- that someone like me didn’t belong there. I was determined to remain in control, detached, invulnerable to his glittering physical perfection and soul x-raying blue eyes.
I focused on his teasing. I didn’t especially enjoy being teased when I couldn’t be certain of the person’s intentions so I shrugged, “I don’t know.”
His eyes narrowed for the briefest of moments as he openly studied me, his mouth curving into a frown; he looked displeased. Then he said, “What do you remember about last night?”
I lifted my chin, gritting my teeth. “I remember you making me leave the club.”
“Can you remember anything after that?” his tone was guarded.
My attention drifted to the left and I blinked, trying to figure out precisely what I did remember from the previous night. I had been so preoccupied with my hangover and my escape that I didn’t stop to think about how I ended up in his apartment, in my underwear. I was talking as I was thinking and before I realized it said, “Not much. You were there and I remember leaving the club-”
“Which time?” He interjected.
“With Elizabeth. I left with Elizabeth and she put me in a taxi. I asked the driver to take me back. When I got back sunglassman waved me in then I-” my eyes lost focus, I tried to pull the memories forward, “When I walked in I bumped into a man, he said he was looking for me. He-” I cleared my throat and squinted. I felt for sure I bumped into someone I knew, a man I recognized, but I couldn’t be sure. “I think someone took me up some stairs- it actually looked like a tree at first with a tree house but it was a room.”
“The Canopy room.” Quinn’s voice was matter-of-fact but something about it brought my attention back to him. He moved his hands to his hips, his blue eyes dark with some unreadable thought. “What else do you remember?”
I studied him for a moment, and my own thoughts, before I continued. “Not much.” I licked my lips. It was the truth, I didn’t remember much. I remembered being offered and drinking a shot of something that burned but I couldn’t really make out the size or shape of the room or any tangible, physical characteristics. I knew there had been several people present because I remember them laughing but I didn’t remember what they looked like. It was like I walked into the tree house room and was swallowed up by a black fog.
A sudden thought occurred to me and I quickly wrapped my arms around my center, “Does that happen a lot? After drinking?”
“What? Losing your memory?” he asked.
“Yes.” I nodded.
“No, not after drinking. When I found you upstairs in the Canopy room, not long after I thought you’d already left, you were still awake but... you weren’t making any sense so I carried you out.”
“Wait, you carried me?” My body responded strangely to that information.
He nodded. “Yeah, one of our-” he seemed to struggle for the right words, “one of the club patrons was dancing with you but you weren’t exactly cooperating so much as critiquing his dance moves. I think someone must have slipped you something.” He surveyed me, as though carefully studying my reaction or bracing for a freak-out.