The chapter is waaaay better if you listen to the accompanying song. Forewarning. You may experience an eargasm.
16.] My Room Smells Like Vodka and Shame
I would never remember what happened after I stumbled out of that office, drunk as hell and my breasts exposed to the world. Okay, so maybe it was just one guy in the otherwise deserted hallway of the basement of the complex; but in my inebriated state, it was the entire world. I couldn’t recall the look upon his face or who he was, which was a detail that Angeline was keeping from me.
She told me everything that had happened afterwards. It was a gruesome tale in which I had stumbled over my own feet, falling flat on my face. The guy had tried to help me, but I was entangled in my shirt and at that point, I decided that not only did I not want his help, but I didn’t want to wear my clothes anymore. While he had attempted to keep me from taking off all of my clothes, he hadn’t really stopped me when I reached up under my skirt and pulled off my underwear.
Angeline had come out of the office just in time to rescue me. She was surprisingly strong and without a word to the mysterious man that I’ll most likely never know the identity of, she lifted me over her shoulder and hauled me back to her apartment. The entire way down the hallway, I had supposedly twirled my underwear around my fingers, batting my eyelashes and cooing at the boy until he was out of sight.
The only positive to not being able to remember what seemed to be one of my most embarrassing moments to date was the fact that I didn’t have to deal with those horrid flashbacks. As far as I was concerned, if I couldn’t remember what I had done, it had never happened. It was shaky logic, for sure, but I was sticking to it; I was determined to keep these moments out of sight and out of mind.
I was too drunk that afternoon to do anything with Eli’s folder, so Angeline put it in a safe place until I was sober enough to understand all of the goodies that lie between the vanilla folds. It had only taken a few minutes before I had fallen asleep on the couch as Angeline went off to get the taco that she had promised me.
While I seemed to usually have the best sleeps whenever I was drunk, that afternoon was an exception. I had woken up in the midst of my nap, groggy headed and still drunk as fuck. Also, I had to vomit. I knew it the moment my eyelids flew open, the uncomfortable grumbling in my tummy, the pressure in my throat, the churning that was happening amongst all of this.
I would like to say that despite all of the furniture that cluttered Angeline’s living room, I had made it to the bathroom. I would really love to say that everything inside of me had come out into the toilet without making any sort of mess. And I would really, really, really love to say that I hadn’t puked inside one of Angeline’s combat boots that was resting against the foot of the table.
I also wish I had left Angeline a note apologizing for puking in her boot. It would have been better for both of us if she hadn’t stumbled upon it by surprise one day, sticking her foot inside only to find her sock drenched in a questionable liquid. On the other hand, I was lucky, because I had no recollections of puking there.
Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I looked around the empty room. I slouched back on the couch, crossing my arms over my chest and looking around the room. For a moment, my eyes dropped from the far wall to my boobs, confused when I found that I was wearing a bra. I frowned, not remembering having put that on.
When I realized that I was half dressed, I realized that it was way too much. Pressing my back against the leather, I pushed my butt up and hitched down my skirt. Plopping my butt back down, I kicked the black material from around my feet, grinning when it hit the chair across the room. Standing up on my shaking legs, I clambered over the back of the couch, falling to the floor with a thud. After groaning at the pain that shot through my body, I looked around the room, pushing my hair back away from my face.
It took me a few minutes to collect myself before I stood up once more. I slowly made my way over to the refrigerator and pulled it open. Finding a variety of Mike’s Hard Lemonades, I grinned to myself, taking out a raspberry one and shutting the door with my hip. I mused for a moment, looking at all of the odds and ends magnets that adorned the refrigerator door. My eyes shot up, happy to find that Angeline had a bottle opener magnet.
How convenient everything in life seemed to be.
Popping the sucker off of my bottle, I tossed the cap at the sink. Raising both arms victoriously when it made it in, I let out a whoop before nodding my head to the music in my head. My eyes widened as I came to the terms with an urge of mine.
At this very moment, I wanted to dance. I wanted to dance so badly that my knees were already starting to knock together. I shook my hips, looking around the room. The first time I had been in Angeline’s apartment, I had admired her music collection. She always kept her iPod on the dock across the room.
It was a good thing I was drunk, because what happened next was probably going to be the most embarrassing moments of my life.
I struggled with working all of the buttons at first, but once I did, I was ready to rock and roll. Unfortunately, my fingers just weren’t cooperating with anything I was trying to do, so once the music got turned up, it was stuck there. “God, I love this song.” I moaned, nodding my head as the sounds of Pour Some Sugar on Me blared from the speakers. Rolling my neck, I raised my hands in the air, laughing as I brought them back down and took a long gulp of my hard lemonade.
Dancing with the bottle in my hand across the room, I clambered up onto the coffee table. Shaking my hips from side to side and dancing in my underwear because I fucking felt like it, I couldn’t remember being this happy. Nor could I ever remember being this drunk in the past month.
But, who the hell fucking cares?
“You got the peaches, I got the cream. Sweet to taste, saccharine. Cause I’m hot, say what? Sticky sweet from my head to my feet. Do you take sugar? One lump or two?” I wailed at the top of my lungs, pausing in my dancing to shake my hair from my face.
I continued about this for about ten minutes, singing until my throat was sore and had to climb down for another bottle of lemonade. By the time I was on my third bottle, this time with a minty green liquid filling my bottle that distracted me, I was probably close to poisoning myself. I was having a good time, though, singing along to the Def Leppard song and pretending that I was in an MTV music video.
I was in my zone, dancing with my eyes closed on top of the coffee table. I shook my hips, waving my arms in the air, and occasionally bringing the bottle back down for a long gulp. It took about a minute before I realized that the music had switched off. Turning around (and almost falling off of the table,) I looked in the direction of the dock, wondering what had happened.
Instead of finding nothing, I found Eli Dunn. And Eli Dunn was looking as if he had won the lottery. Or just paid for a really hot stripper.
“What did you do?” I whined. “Turn it back on!”
“Adrienne, do you realize that you’re practically naked?” He asked, crossing his arms over his t-shirt and looking at me dubiously.
I looked down at my body and then back to him, shrugging my shoulders. “And?”
“And you should put some clothes on.” He said.
“No!” I shook my head. “Actually, I think I need to take more off.”
Eli’s eyes widened as I reached my free hand up behind my back and fumbled with the clasp. He watched, frozen for a moment as I struggled and then grinned victoriously. The material fell from my chest, but not enough to reveal anything. While I tried to not strangle myself with the straps, Eli seemed to snap out of it and walked through the mess of clothing, shoes, and empty bottles now strewn across Angeline’s floor. He stopped right in front of me and gave me a stern look.
“Adrienne, put your bra back on.” He said, planting his hands on his hips.
I shook my head, giggling. After taking a sip from my bottle and letting it run down the corners of my mouth, I inched my strap off, a pout crossing my features. “What’s wrong, Eli? Don’t you want to see me?”
Eli didn’t say anything, just walked around the table. I spun with him, determined to make him beg me for what he wanted. I would like to say that I wasn’t planning on just throwing off my clothes because Eli was in the room, but let’s face it, Eli freaking Dunn was in the room and I wanted nothing more than at this very moment to throw my panties at him. I would probably regret really wanting to jump Eli’s bones, but the stirring in my ovaries led me to believe that there was now no other option.
Deciding to ignore his presence and return to my dancing even though there was no music to dance to, I started singing a song at the top of my lungs. “Take me home tonight! I don’t want to let you go till I see the light.”
“Nice song choice,” Eli muttered, reaching up as I twirled in front of him. Catching me by the arm, he made me hold still, well, as still as he could keep me while he attempted to snap my bra closed. This seemed like an accident waiting to happen, for I was still dancing away, refusing to not move.
I don’t know, man, I just really wanted to dance.
“Ads, would hold still?” He muttered.
It was at this time I began channeling Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr. Seuss. Doing exactly what Eli told me not too, I moved even wilder. Shaking my hips and throwing my arms in the air (now that Eli had confiscated my lemonade,) I made it impossible for him to snap my bra closed. I couldn’t hear him over my incessant singing, having now switched to My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion.
Just when I had reached the chorus, throwing my arms open wide, I heard a dirty word fall from Eli’s mouth as something snapped. I stopped, my limbs falling limp at my side as I turned to look at Eli, who had backed away and was sitting on the edge of the chair, his hand covering his eye.
My own eyes went wide when he pulled it away, wincing slightly. “What happened?” I asked, grimacing at the swelling that was already beginning to form around his eye.
“The closure to your freaking bra hit me in the eye.” He muttered, covering his eye once more. “Motherfucker.”
“I’m so so so sorry,” I started saying. As I did this, I went to step off of the edge of the table.
The last thing I saw before I went down was a look of horror on Eli’s face.
⚓ ⚓ ⚓
When I came to hours later, I felt like I was going to vomit. Rolling over on the bed, I leaned over the edge, hurling directly into a garbage can that had been placed against the edge of the bed. I coughed, sputtering out the remains before pushing myself up to a sitting position.
I groaned, immediately noticing that my bedroom smelled like vodka and shame.
The worst part about it was that I couldn’t remember much of what had happened. My head was throbbing, literally pulsating in the front. When I raised my hand to gently touch it, I was horrified to find that my hand had been wrapped in gauze. Even more horrifying than that was that it had dried blood on it.
And it smelled somewhat of ketchup.
What the?
“It’s about time you woke up.” A voice from across the room said. I looked across the comforter of the bed in my apartment to the chair across the room.
I yelped when I saw the person. My heart sank into the pit of my stomach as I looked at Eli from my spot on the bed. He was sitting in the chair, his arms crossed over his gray t-shirt, looking at me with the only visible eye. When I looked really close, I had to stifle my laughter, wincing because of the pain that then shot through my head.
Eli Dunn was wearing an eye patch.
“Oh, are you talking about this?” He dramatically pointed at the black eyepatch over his eye. “It’s just a little token from our time spent together. Congratulations, Ads, you’re the first girl who gets to say she scratched my cornea with the clasp of her bra.”
“Eli, I am so sorry.” I said, my voice sounding surprisingly more sympathetic than I thought it would.
“Don’t be,” He said, standing up. “You should probably go back to sleep. I thought you were dead for a minute.”
“What?” I screeched.
“Don’t twist your panties in a knot.” He said, pausing in the door. “Or take them off. I know how badly you wanted to take them off for me, Adrienne.”
“I hate you,” I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest.
“And I hate you too.” He grinned and turned to go. Stopping in the doorway, he looked back at me. “Oh yeah, I should probably thank you. I’m going to have girls falling all over me while wearing this thing.”
“You’re a pig!” I hollered.
“I know.” Eli smiled once more before patting the doorframe. “Oh, but, if this makes you feel any better, the eyepatch was totally worth watching you dance in your underwear. Maybe we can do it again sometime? Without any clothing, of course.”
As Eli walked away, I ground my teeth together.
As much as I hated him, I couldn’t deny the fact that he looked twenty times more attractive in that eyepatch.
Damn.