To This Day

Chapter Nine: Leaving

Another grumbling noise came from Carter's direction. I glanced over to see that he'd rolled over again and was now beginning to wake up. He yawned loudly, stretched, then rubbed his eyes. After blinking a few times, he seemed to notice me in his room.

"Morning, Syd." His voice was gravelly in the morning, another thing about him that I hadn't known before, and that I now loved.

"Hey," I whispered, partly because I was unsure if his head was as painful as mine and partly because even the sound of my own voice was too loud.

Carter pulled himself up so that he was sat up against the headboard. Probably noticing that I was more than a little worse for wear, he asked,"How's the hangover?"

"Not good," I replied with a grimace. "You?"

"Oh," he laughed, as though I'd asked something ridiculous. "I don't get hangovers - at least not from the amount I drank last night. Although, to be fair, I think you may have had a little more than even me."

This was unfathomable to me; I couldn't imagine drinking even half what I did last night without waking up with a pounding headache. It made me wonder just how much he drank on other nights out.

Carter swung his legs around so that he was sat on the edge of the bed. His chest was bare, and the covers were strewn across his middle. For a panicked moment, I thought he might be naked. Not that we hadn't both been naked around each other, but that was in moments of heated passion, not asleep together or casually getting ready in the morning. But, when he stood up, I saw that he was thankfully wearing boxers.

Still, the question persisted in my mind. "Did we, um, have sex last night?"

His back was turned to me as he rooted through his wardrobe for an outfit, but I heard him laugh.

"I wasn't going to take advantage of an almost blackout drunk girl," he said, then turned and smirked, adding, "No matter how many times she asked me to."

Oh, God. My cheeks burned with humiliation. Why was drunk Sydney apparently such a flirt?

"So, what exactly did happen?"

Carter was now dressed in a scruffy, faded Yale Bulldogs shirt and some jeans, making me feel particularly underdressed. He sat back down on his bed, facing me and close enough that either of us could reach out and touch the other if we wanted.

His eyes were focused on mine and his smile was tender as he explained, "Well, once you got to the point where I was having to hold your hair back while you threw up in the parking lot, I figured it was time to head back. I would have taken you back to yours but you were in a bit of a state - no offence - so I figured I'd just bring you back here so I could look out for you. Then, you passed out pretty much the moment your head hit the pillow."

His expression was warmer, more open than usual. I bit down on my bottom lip, resisting the urge to lean forward and kiss him. Now, more than ever, I wanted him. I wanted the understated intimacy of being together - for him to be the one who looked after me when I was sick, who put me in one of his t-shirts before bed, who'd share soft smiles with me in the morning. It was a kind of longing I'd experienced only once before, six years ago, when I first fell for him. Only now, at nineteen, a relationship was that much more real, more significant, and I yearned even more deeply for it.

The tricky thing was that that now a relationship came with a whole lot more baggage - so much so that the possibility of one had become unreachable.

***

I didn't get back to my dorm until gone midday. Eventually, we'd located my clothes from the night before (thankfully, last night's choice of jeans and a blouse meant it wasn't obvious to the public that I was still wearing the outfit I'd gone out in the night before) and then Carter had insisted on buying me a coffee. Seriously, it was like he was trying to show off just what a great boyfriend he could be, if only he let himself.