Winter Jacket

Chapter Two

Hello, hangover. Nice to see you, too.

I looked at my bleary reflection in the bathroom mirror and made a face at what I saw. My mascara was smeared and my eyeliner was smudged, forming dark circles beneath my eyes. I peered closer and tugged at my skin. At least those had better be makeup circles and not just the natural, sickly pallor of my skin.

I couldn't believe I let Troian and Nikole keep me out so late the previous night. I couldn't even remember how or when I'd made it back to my house. I was just thankful that I'd woken up safe in my bed – minus the throbbing in my head.

I rummaged around the medicine cabinet for the Excedrin I could have sworn I'd purchased a few weeks ago. I thankfully found the white and green bottle after a little more searching and popped two pills into my mouth. I turned the bathroom faucet on, leaned over, and with my hands, brought cool water to my mouth. I drank greedily. My thirst was insatiable; it was like I'd slept with cotton balls in my mouth. To add insult to injury, my body ached all over like I'd been run over by a car. Fuck. I hated getting old.

Luckily I didn't teach on Fridays, so I could go back to bed and sleep off this hangover. Teaching the writing seminars four times a week gave me an unusual teaching schedule because most classes in the undergraduate catalogue met twice or three times a week. The university's administrators wanted students to end the semester having the ability to write an academic paper. I'm not sure how much one extra day a week helped with that goal though, but at least I had my Fridays off.

When I wasn't teaching, I typically worked on my own personal writing. I was fortunate that in my discipline tenure was determined not just by published works of nonfiction, but also the poems, short stories, and novels that you wrote. So instead of publishing a close reading of Shakespeare or Chaucer or something similarly mundane, I could write fiction.

These days I was assembling a collection of short stories – obtuse vignettes about people with unusual powers. It wasn't the stuff comic books were made of though; my characters weren't superheroes, and their special abilities weren't necessarily helpful or a hindrance, they were just odd.

I thought about writing a story based on Hunter. Lately she'd been on my mind so frequently, she'd become a kind of Muse. But I couldn't decide what her superhuman special power would be. Eye contact that if left unchecked literally bored holes into solid surfaces? Shoulder blades so delicate and sharp they could cut through anything, making her the perfect thief? The ability to make her English professor weak in the knees?

I was still thirsty, so I plundered from the bathroom upstairs to the kitchen downstairs to get a proper glass of water. I gulped down another pint-full before refilling my glass from the sink and padding back upstairs to return to my bedroom.

By this time it was close to 11 o'clock. A few rays of early afternoon sunshine poked through the semi-closed blinds in my bedroom and fell on the body lying in my bed.

Wait a minute.

The body in my bed?

"Oh shit."

I froze in the doorway. There was definitely a body in my bed. I could just make out the shape beneath my duvet. How had I not noticed that before I went to the bathroom? If I didn't already have a hangover, I'd think I was still drunk.

I swallowed hard. There was an unruly mane of dark brown hair obscuring the face of my bedmate. Well, at least it looked like girl hair. That was some relief. I was still going to kill Troian and Nikole though. How could they let me bring someone home from the bar? I didn't do one-night-stands. I was a serial monogamist with a tendency for infidelity, but even my indiscretions were with women I knew well.

The figure in my bed stirred. The movement startled me so much that I dropped my glass of water. The pint glass fell to the hardwood floor, and while it didn't shatter, the sound of impact echoed loudly in my bedroom.

The noise jarred the woman in my bed awake, and she sat up abruptly. "What was that?" Her voice revealed her alarm, and her face showed that sleepy confusion that comes from being yanked out of a deep sleep.

"I dropped a glass of water," I said in a calm, even tone that surprised my ears. Water puddled and crept at my bare toes. I'd have to do something about that, but first I had to do something about the stranger in my bed.

Her sleepy face scrunched up. "Oh. You need help cleaning it up?" She sat up a little higher in my bed, and I was relieved to see she was wearing a tank top. Well, not relieved that I didn't get to see her naked, but relieved because that probably meant I didn't have blackout sex with her.

"Uh...Megan." Points to me for having remembered her name. "Hi. Um, morning."

"Morning," she grumbled, rubbing her eyes with her hands.

My brain lurched into overdrive, trying to piece together the hazy memories from the previous night out. I remembered her buying me a shot of something gross. And then there was a game of pool, followed by more gross shots when I'd lost. And then there was dancing. Lots of dancing with lots of faceless girls. Not that they didn't have faces, I just couldn't quite remember them right now. And then had come even more drinks. All of this I could somewhat remember. But one glaring and important hole remained. Namely, why was Megan in my bed?

She pulled back the sheets a little to reveal more of her lithe figure. She wore black, lacy undergarments that made her pale skin look even more powder white. "Wanna come back to bed?"

I felt the blush creep up on my cheeks, and I averted my gaze from her half-naked form. "This might be a really stupid question, but what happened last night?"

I looked back up and saw something that resembled regret and guilt mirrored in her eyes. "Don't remember much, huh?"

I sighed. Stupid alcohol. Stupid lack of control. "I'm sorry. No."

"Well firstly, we didn't do anything," she reassured me. "I mean, hell yeah I want to have a go with you, but not when you're blasted. Call me old-fashioned," she grinned.

"That's sweet of you," I said with an embarrassed smile.

"I have an idea," she proposed. "Let me make you breakfast, and I can catch you up." She smiled warmly and I nearly forgot my discomfort. "I make a mean frittata."

"That's really nice of you to offer, but it's really not necessary."

She raised a painted eyebrow. Huh. I never noticed in the bar that she didn't actually have eyebrows – they were just makeup. Weird.

"Not necessary because you're not hungry," she asked for clarification, "or not necessary because this was just an almost one-night-stand that's not going to go any further?"

I had to give this woman some credit. She didn't mess around. It was kind of refreshing actually. And because of her directness, I knew I owed it to her to be explicit as well. "Megan, you seem like a really nice girl..."

She held up her hands. "Whoa. Let me stop you right there." She climbed out of my bed and gathered a few discarded pieces of clothing from the floor.

"Really?" I asked, blinking in disbelief. "Just like that?"

She grunted, pulling on her skinny jeans. "I get it," she stated as she hopped around and slid into her painted-on pants. "I don't need an elaborate speech. Last night was fun. But I get it – that's all it was."

It felt like a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders, but I was still skeptical. "You're being surprisingly cool about this." I inspected her face, looking for some kind of hidden emotion. "Where's the U-Haul?"

She picked her jacket off the ground and gave me a quick peck on the cheek as she made for the bedroom door. "No U-Haul," she chuckled. "Lucky for you, I'm not a lesbian."

The floorboards creaked as she descended the stairs, followed by the sound of the deadbolt unlocking and the front door opening. "See you around, Dr. Elle," I heard her call out.

I heard the door close again, and I was suddenly alone as if the previous night had never happened. But the cold water still tickling at my toes reminded me that it hadn't been a dream.