Page 80 of Last Letters to Ara
Mysterious-bed-person is so loaded they have nothing better to do with their money than to put a living room inside their bedroom, because can you imagine having to actually walk to another room to get to the couch? The horror.
Focus! I need to focus.
Where was I?
Right. My clothes.
After I’m dressed, shoes will be a bonus, but not wholly necessary for escape. If I find them, great, if not, I’ll live. It’ll make it easier to run anyway, which I hate doing even with the best of shoes.
If I was as drunk as I must have been to lose my memory entirely, the next necessity will be a phone, praying that I didn’t drive myself here. I’ll call both a taxi and an Uber, taking whichever shows up first. Douche move, but also the most efficient way of escape.
It’s a solid plan. It only requires each move to be made flawlessly. I can do this. I just have to slip my leg out from under the covers and take the first step toward my pile of clothes in the bedroom-living room...
“I can practically hear your mental gears turning in what is surely the largest freakout of the twenty-first century.” His familiar voice is wrapped in a sleepy gravel that sends a warmth flowing through my body.
Oh, crap.
Suddenly, I’m begging for it to be a stranger in this bed instead. I’d even take Steve Buscemi right about now. In fact, I’d takeanyoneelse besides who I now know is lying on the other side of the bed.
I had sex with Theo!? And I don’t remember it? Fuck. My. Life.
Is the universe so cruel that our friendship could come to an end with a one-two-pumperoo and I can’t even recall a single firework!? We should’veat leastgone out with a bang (pun intended) and the memory of it being my consolation prize.
“Zoosh...zooosh...zooosh...” Theo mimics the sound of machine parts turning and chuckles.
I let out a miserable whine and cover my face with my hands. “We did, didn’t we?”
“If by ‘did’ you mean go to sleep without anything sexual preceding it, then yes, we most certainly did.” Pause. “For the most part.”
“We didn’t have sex?”
“Of course not.” He seems appalled and it hurts my feelings more than it should. Theo, ever aware, continues. “I’m not turned off at the idea of having sex with you, just the part of having sex with you when you are so drunk that you wouldn’t remember it is one gigantic absolutely not.”
Oh.
“Idon’tremember anything,” I admit sheepishly, waving my hand over my body still covered by the fluffy blanket. “I was just basing assumptions on the evidence at hand.”
“Ah, the undies.”
I allow fifteen seconds to utterly curse myself for owning anything which isn’t a sexy laced thing, and foreverchoosing to wear something with fucking strawberries on them. “How did I end up with my clothes off?”
This question makes him smirk, as if he’s remembering something. “You have yourself to blame for that. After we got here, you insisted on practicing a strip tease, with me as your ‘choice demographic.’ You said that if you messed it up at Jane’s, stripping may be your only option, although you admitted how you have no stamina and how those poles look more difficult to navigate around than one would think. But you still asked me for pointers in case they make you audition.”
If only a bolt of lightning could strike me from this planet and this conversation. I can feel myself spiraling, and sadly it’s not into a vortex of water or anything else which would stop my breathing. Strawberry undies feel like a bragging right compared to this level of embarrassment.
Theo clears his throat. “You didn’t need them.”
“What?”
“The pointers. You didn’t need them.” Pause. “Your clothes were covered in vomit, though, so I figured letting you take them off yourself would be less weird than taking them offforyou. For obvious reasons.” He glances at me sideways. “By the time I came back from putting them in the wash, you had started vomiting again, so I got you to the bathroom and changed the sheets.”
I cover my face and groan, silently pleading for this story not to get any worse.
“I was planning to sleep in the guest room, but I was so worried that you might vomit in your sleep, I sat here to keep an eye on you.” He gestures to his position on the bed with a chuckle. “I must have fallen asleep instead.”
“You are definitely the hero of this story—and I’m obviously the villain,” I say in absolute mortification.
“That’s what friends are for,” he says quietly.
