The dust-coated wooden fan legs were spinning nauseatingly and with a continuous hum as her
eyes pried open, speckled with sleep and leftover, crunchy makeup. She instantly noticed the
warm, stocky body next to her own. It was one that she had gotten to know fairly well over a
year. His biceps were perfectly rounded on the top and what seemed like thousands of freckles
covered his red-toned skin. They reminded her of the stars – they never seemed to end. She could
take a second look and swear that a hundred more appeared. His dark brown hair, always so stiff
and dry, looked as though it had barely been slept on throughout the night, unlike her own; ratted
and similar to that of a four-year-old returning from recess in the sweltering days of early
summer.
This type of morning, waking up next to him, wasn’t uncommon. They regularly found each
other, whether it had been weeks or months since they last spoke; whether it had previously
ended in a nasty, screaming argument or a calm text that both had seen coming. They always
seemed to find each other. She didn’t always want to, either. Nevertheless, here he was in her
bed after three months of no contact. It wasn’t a good thing – she knew that. Their pull toward
each other was almost like regretfully running to the market to pick up a pack of cigarettes when
your throat is already scratched to hell and you know the inevitable consequences. All the same,
it’s an addiction that seems impossible to overcome, no matter how hard she tried.
A night out on the town, like last night, was expected to bring dry mouths that felt like freshly
picked cotton and piercing headaches from too much alcohol, and, yes, she felt these things, but
they were not what immediately alarmed her. There was a tenderness, a not quite ache, but it came from a part of her hungover body that had not, without a doubt, gone untouched throughout
the night. What she couldn’t manage to wrap her throbbing brain around was what they had
done. What had he done? Sex had consistently been something she did not want to pursue with
him, yet, something was not as it should have been.
The soreness was new, she realized as her forehead started to push alcohol-filled sweat beads
down her temple and onto her neck. Nervous sweats. Her near-translucent hands were clamming
up and her breath quickened, uneven. This feeling, this dread, wasn’t completely uncommon,
either. Stories of fear, grief, confusion and what-have-you are hammered into most girls’ heads
before they embark on their college journey. She had even been kissed once while sleeping in a
friend’s bed freshman year, but to her, that was just a silly boy who had a few too many drinks
and wasn’t thinking straight. That’s the excuse most use, but she couldn’t muster up anything
better. Honestly, it hadn’t been just one kiss but three persistent, non-obliged pressings of one’s
lips to another, unmoving. That was something she tried to forget. They couldn’t be the same.
She couldn’t remember what had happened. Every recollection of the night before seemed as if
blurred and shaken images were taken as a keepsake, only they weren’t captured by her and she
couldn’t make out the image. She remembered, embarrassingly, the karaoke they had performed
together on the beer-coated steps of the obnoxiously loud bar, the one, two, three seltzer drinks
he ordered for her after noticeably already having too many, and the vibrancy in her that typically says she’s having fun. She enjoyed herself, but where exactly did that drunken enjoyment lead her?
The fan was still rotating insufferably as the heavy breathing next to her frozen limbs hiked,
interrupting her aloneness. When he awoke, he was grinning, giddy even, with straight teeth that
reeked of the whiskey and cokes he spent his night nursing, one after the other. All she felt was
confusion as his hot breath swarmed her nostrils and his prickly beard burned the skin of her
jutting chin and above her bruised lips. He edged himself lower, nuzzling his face into the cool,
soft nape of her neck and shifting his hips to fit against her own. His hairy thigh started to
separate her legs, pushing even harder into her. She was just beginning to recognize the
throbbing between herself as something to be fearful of when he whispered through her fine hair
and into her ear, “Do you want to do it again?”