Gypsy Candles

Chapter Two: Here We Go Again

Chapter Two::Here We Go Again. 

“Mmmmm,” I groaned, squeezing my eyes as I rolled over to avoid the sunlight streaming through the windows and beating down on my face. As I lay on my stomach, my left arm hung over the side of the bed.

“Close the curtains!”

My eyes snapped open as I jumped and fell off the bed, pulling the sheet with me.

Who the hell was that? I sat up and my jaw fell open a bit at the blond man in my bed.

“Wait, that’s not my bed…” I whispered aloud to myself. I glanced down and saw that, other than the sheet wrapped around me, I was naked. I held the sheet together to my body and took a deep breath. “Where the hell am I?” I moaned, closing my eyes and clutching my forehead in my free hand as I tried to see past my hangover and recollect what happened last night.

Okay, so yesterday was my twenty-third birthday! Blair and I went to a charity even at a homeless shelter, went out to dinner with our parents, and then she and I headed to our birthday party. Oh, and Blake and Evelyn got engaged. Right. That happened. Moving on. Ummm…Blair and I went to get a cupcake. We blew out that candle and…

“And that’s all I remember,” I grumbled. I must have gotten pretty fucking wasted after that blowing out that cupcake.

“Aubrey, babe, can you please close those god forsaken curtains?” I opened my eyes and looked towards the bed. Although his eyes were shut, he was now facing me and my face scrunched up in confusion as I finally recognized the naked man in my bed.

“Jake? Jake, what are you doing here?” Jake was Evelyn’s cousin and while we’d slept together more times than I could count, it was always just for fun and I hadn’t seen in a couple of months. I had invited him to my birthday but he was in Germany on some business trip and said he wouldn’t be able to make it.

So what were we doing in bed together?

It was only when I turned my head to the side and saw a picture hanging on the wall that I realized something weirder than weird was occurring.

The picture was of my mother and me and it was taken on my sixteenth birthday.

I stood up and glanced around the room.

The lilac walls, the framed family photos, the Audrey Hepburn poster…I looked back to the bed and down at the sheet I was covered in…the sheets I had thrown out when Blair and I moved out of our apartment six months ago…our apartment…this apartment.

“AUBREY!” A high-pitched scream rang through the apartment and I cringed and heard Jake mutter a few profanities before he covered his head with a pillow and continued to sleep.

My bedroom door swung open moments later and banged against the wall, causing Jake to growl into the pillow.

Blair stood in the doorway looking frazzled. She was dressed in a pair of long cotton pajama pants and a tank top but her eyes were wide and her arms seemed to be shaking a bit. What surprised me more than anything else was the fact that her hair only ran just past her shoulders now.  She had cut it to that length last year when she participated in the ‘Love for Locks’ program but since then, she had grown it out.

“Aubrey, what the fuck is going on?” She demanded, storming into the room. She grabbed me by my shoulders and her deep green eyes stared straight into my matching ones. “Why are we in our old apartment and why can’t I remember anything past that blowing out that fucking cupcake last night and why is my hair so fucking short and…and why is Jake here? I thought he was in Europe or something.” I pulled away from her and shook my head as I tried to recollect myself.