✏️ Under One Roof

10. Three Guys

Tegan woke up again feeling more than a little under the weather. The sun was too bright outside, and she wished that it came with a dimmer switch. Or at least that she had thought to pull the blinds closed before diving into bed. She grumbled under her breath and managed to pull herself to her feet, then wondered if she should close the blinds or actually make an effort to wake up.

For a second she almost started to panic, reaching down and finding a damp stickiness on her clothes. But once she thought about it, she vaguely remembered spilling a glass of something called Corniche on herself the night before. Presumably she'd been too tired to change her clothes when she got home, which would also explain why she wasn't wearing her pyjamas. She tried to remember what had happened last night to result in her memory feeling like a box of scrambled eggs, but she could only pull back scattered scenes; fragments of what must have been a very full day. They'd done karaoke, she remembered, and everyone had praised her performance. Someone had bought a bottle of fizzy wine to celebrate after a good song. And then... well, that was where the memories started to fall apart.

On the positive side, she now knew that the trains back from Moistville to Pine Ridge ran well after midnight, and the bus from the station to the edge of Morganston was apparently easy enough to catch even when she didn't know what she was doing. Getting to Moistville might need a little more planning, because the bus would always get her to the station just after a train had departed, leaving her to wait for the next one, but getting home would still be easy.

Tegan's head felt like it wasn't screwed on straight. Whether it was lack of sleep, how much she'd drunk last night, or maybe something she'd eaten, she wasn't going to be firing on all cylinders today, and she really hoped that she wasn't going to have anything serious to deal with. She just wanted to throw herself into the shower and alternate between ice and steam until she started to feel awake. But those plans were thwarted when she threw her stained clothes in the laundry hamper, wrapped a robe around her, and opened the door to see Ness standing right outside, hand raised as if he were about to knock.

"Oh," he said, looking her up and down. Tegan instinctively pulled the belt tighter around her robe, and tried to think of any way to get rid of him. She didn't want him looking at her like that. Even if she was completely covered, being seen in her robe by a guy felt somehow indecent, and she got an immediate desire for revenge.

"Yeah, what do you want?" she snapped, glaring at him as if that might manage to convey the sentiments she couldn't quite find words for right now.

"Oh, I..." he started, and then at least had the decency to avert his eyes. "You were looking for recordings, right? I knew I had the files somewhere. Should have given this to you yesterday, but you know... Getting into college and everything." He handed her a USB stick, and then turned and walked back to his own room, closing the door behind him as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Tegan shrugged, and tossed it onto her bed. She could look into it after she was done in the shower. Then she stepped out of her room again, only to find another ambush waiting for her. And this time, she knew that she needed to be polite.

"You're home then," her dad said, standing in the doorway of his own room. "We were starting to worry about you last night."

"Yeah, I uhh... Met some new friends, I guess. Other students on my course, and that. Got a little carried away. Sorry, I didn't mean to..."

"Don't worry," her dad said, which was a little surprise she wasn't quite alert enough to analyse the meaning of. "You didn't cause any problems, and you don't seem to have woken anyone when you were coming in, or made a mess of the house. You're an adult now, Tegan, and that means that your problems are your own to deal with unless you want to ask me for help. I'm not going to judge you for being young. Now, hangover? Or last traces of alcohol leaving your system?"