If it wasn’t for the excruciating headache Estella’s head pounded with, this could have turned out to be a perfect morning. The sun was up and out, the sky was a pretty shade of blue, and fluffy white cumulus clouds embellished the world.
Oh, yeah, and there was a guy sleeping next to her.
The birds chirping were usually annoying enough in the morning, but with a full-on hangover going on, Estella felt like curling up into a ball and dying right there.
“Shut up, stupid birds. Shut the hell up,” she mumbled, smacking her lips together a few times, trying to regain some sort of moisture, any kind of moisture, back in her mouth, but all she tasted was the alcohol from last night.
Rolling over in hopes of finding sleep again, in hopes of escaping this terrible hangover, Estella did not find sleep. Instead, she found a tan body. A naked body. A man’s body.
Shit.
The last time Estella ever slept around like this was before she started dating Stephen. And now that he was gone, she supposed she was back to her old, slutty high school life. Fan-fucking-tastic.
Almost afraid to see, she crinkled her eyebrows while rubbing her right temple with her index and middle fingers. And then her eyes courageously trailed up the boy’s abs, his pecs, his neck, his face…
Jonah.
“Hey,” he mumbled.
Just kidding, he wasn’t sleeping.
“Good Lord,” Estella muttered under her breath. What had she done? Had she actually slept with this guy? In hopes of this being some sort of mistake, Estella attempted to recall what she did last night.
Bad idea. Terrible, awful idea.
Not only did it make her feel like her head was being tumbled and tossed after falling into a ditch of cow shit, Estella also couldn’t retrace a single thing. All she remembered was Blair separating from her to get laid.
“Holy fucking sh…!” A trail of loud curses jolted Estella back to reality as well as adding on weight to her headache. She mustered all her hate in one glare and directed it towards Jonah, who had just gotten a hold of the fact that he was waking up next to Estella Churchill. Jonah quickly realized yelling out loud was not a good idea and sank down, assuming a fetal position to calm his headache.
“I think I’m gonna throw up,” he mumbled painfully, groaning all the while.
Estella closed her eyes ruefully. This was not good.
This was not good at all.
“Wait, let me get this straight,” Mona interrupted, putting down her blue smoothie. “You slept with my roommate… and then in a panic, you ran out and dragged Jonah onto the bed next to her? To make it look like they slept together?”
Sluggish and ashamed, Drew nodded, holding his head in his hands.
Mona leaned back and slurped her smoothie for a few moments. Then she stretched her mouth in a thin line. “Wow, you’re fucked.”
Drew had awoken in one of the hours just after midnight. The sky had been tar black when he opened his eyes. Admittedly, this was a situation he often found himself in. So, he slept around. But he realized that things were not the same as usual when he found Estella Churchill sleeping soundly next to him. Naked.
Too panicked to even fool around and peek at her under the blankets like he usually would have, he jumped out of the bed and pulled on the nearest clothes he could find. Then, he ran downstairs and found Jonah lying on the couch, totally wasted. The blonde bimbo he’d been with had disappeared from his side. And he was right there. It was like a gift from heaven above. Well… not really. But with the pounding headache and confusion and utter panic, Drew dragged Jonah off the couch and upstairs, throwing him next to Estella. Then, he hailed a taxi to Mona’s house. She nursed his hangover with all kinds of weird Internet remedies, and then they headed to the town smoothie shop to hear Drew’s explanation on what happened.
“I know,” Drew moaned. “I totally screwed up. God, I’m such a creep when I’m drunk.”
Mona snorted. “You kiss everyone within ten meters of you. Everyone, Drew. I know from experience.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled sheepishly.
Laughing lightly, she shrugged. “It’s no problem. It’s not like I didn’t like it, anyway.” She paused, waiting for him to comment, but he didn’t. Well, if he wasn’t going to talk, she was. She liked talking. “Besides, I don’t think it was entirely your fault. When Estella gets drunk, she gets surprisingly carefree and pretty much lets anyone touch her. And she’s creepily honest. She’s so much easier to relate to and talk to… sometimes I just feel like injecting a shot into her with a needle.”
Drew shuddered.
“Okay, that was weird. But my point is, it’s so eerie it almost seems like a planned thing. You, who becomes a horny pig when you’re drunk, and Estella, who doesn’t reject anyone when she’s drunk, got together. Like some superhuman knew that and paired you two together. It’d be weird if you didn’t sleep together.”
Drew huffed again, either at the horny pig comment or at the whole idea altogether. Or both.
“But what I don’t get—” Mona continued very thoughtfully while absently wiping away the water vapor on her smoothie, “—is why you put Jonah next to Estella.”
He closed his eyes. “I was hungover and panicked. I saw Jonah and I just… I don’t know.”
“Thought you could pull it off?” Mona finished for him.
“I guess.”
Mona chewed on her lip thoughtfully as Drew sunk even lower into his depression, both mentally and physically. “Stephen’s gonna murder Jonah…” he groaned. “And it’s all my fault.”
“Then, go clear it up,” Mona replied bluntly.
“Clear it up, my ass,” Drew immediately shot flatly, lifting his head temporarily to glower at her. “If I tell Stephen I slept with Estella, you won’t be seeing me the next day. Or the day after. Or the day after that.”
Mona cracked a devious grin. “Then, let’s just watch how this goes down.”
His head went back into his hands, groaning. “I suck.”
After the whole ordeal with Jonah, the two agreed to keep this thing under the covers. It was a one night thing, and neither of them wanted anyone to know. Jonah especially, if he still treasured his life.
Jonah offered her a ride and she accepted, seeing as she had no other method of getting home, and she wanted to get out of that house as soon as possible.
When he parked in the student dormitory parking, Estella turned down his offer to escort her to her dorm. When she did arrive to the front door, Estella suddenly craved a shower. A nice, hot, bubble bath, in fact. And that’s exactly what she did.
Mona always left the door unlocked when she left, which was not exactly the best idea, but was fairly convenient right now because Estella had no idea where her key was. Swinging the door open, she found the room empty. Clearly, Mona had gone out. Well, fine. That was good. At least she wouldn’t be bombarded with questions and have to listen to Mona talk about what she ate for breakfast or whatever. Good Lord, that girl liked to talk. Sometimes, Estella wished she had gotten a shy, quiet girl as her roommate. At least then, she’d have a chance at peace and quiet.
Walking into the bathroom, Estella almost had a heart attack to find another girl in there. She had brown hair with streaks of auburn, smeared makeup, indents on her right cheek from sleeping, and some sort of dried drink all over her outfit.
How did she get here? Why did she look like that? Was this a prank? Or a horror movie? Estella didn’t know whether to scream, run away, or drop to the floor and play dead. So she just stood there, frozen. And so did Mystery Girl. She had a wild, maniac-like look in her eyes. The craziest thing was, she was in the mirror.
It was her reflection.
Estella closed her eyes in relief but comical disdain at the same time. Is that really what she looked like the whole time? Jonah must have been dying trying to hide his laughter and disgust. Now she definitely needed a bubble bath.
Glancing down at her shirt, she wondered what the brownish streaks were. They didn’t look like blood, and she sure hoped they weren’t someone’s feces. All the thinking made her head hurt, so she just tore it off and threw it in the dirty laundry basket. Just as she was turning on the water on full blast, her dormitory door flew open. Moments later, Blair appeared by her side.
She looked horrified. Terrified, rather.
“Holy freaking Chr—you look awful!” she squeaked, her eyes taking Estella in. Her Florida-beach-ocean-blue eyes skimmed up to her hair, and was about to reach up and touch it, but decided against it, not wanting to dirty her hands. “Did you just get here?”
“No,” Estella replied without missing a beat. Lying was easier than breathing. She reached up for some expensive-looking product and hoped it was a bubble bath product, flicking open the cap and pouring it into the tub as the water began to fill up.
Deciding not to push it, Blair put down the toilet cover and sat on it, crossing her legs. “This might not be the best time to bring it up, but… everyone’s talking about it, you know.”
“About what?” Estella asked warily, only half listening. She closed the cap and returned the bottle to where she thought she got it from.
Blair was never one to beat around the bush. So she got the point, fast. “About you kissing Jonah during Spin the Bottle and then calling Stephen white trash and then him pouring beer all over you,” she replied matter-of-factly.
Estella nearly fell over. “What?” She whipped her head around to stare at Blair, who would burst out laughing. I was just kidding, she’d say. You actually fell for that? she’d say.
Estella waited. She waited for a laugh, a smile, anything.
Any decade now.
Nothing. There was nothing in Blair’s eyes but straightforwardness and expectancy for a reaction.
She was screwed. She was screwed this time, for sure.