Mindy's pillow was all wrong. She didn't know anything else yet, but she knew that. It felt weird, soft and smooth against her cheek like...silk? She slowly levered her eyes open, squinting just a bit as she got used to the early morning daylight. Definitely silk. Red silk. She was in a bed with red silk pillowcases. She wasn't ready to make a more ambitious conjecture, but she was pretty confident about that.
She didn't have red silk pillowcases in her bed. So this wasn't her bed. She was definitely starting to piece it together now. She was in a strange bed, and it was morning, and...Mindy noticed the sound of sleepy breathing next to her, not quite snoring but definitely the sound of a person in the bed next to her who wasn't awake. She rolled over very slowly, so as not to disturb them. Yep. Strange bed, strange man.
He looked kind of cute-sandy blond hair left a little bit long so it flopped over his face, slender build, decent chin. Sweet, but not really the kind of guy she'd go home with and...she peeked underneath the covers. Not the kind of guy she'd go home with and get naked with. But apparently she had. The evidence was pretty hard to argue. So last night, she'd met a guy. A guy named...named...she looked at him again, hoping maybe his face would jog her memory or he'd have a tattoo of his driver's license or something, but nope. Mindy had gone home with a complete stranger, they'd gotten naked in bed together, and...had they done anything else?
If they had, she couldn't remember. Mindy very carefully started edging herself out of bed; if she couldn't piece together anything about last night, she didn't want to have an awkward conversation with someone whose feelings might very well be hurt if she admitted that whatever they'd done, she couldn't even remember doing it. If they'd done anything.
Mindy inched her leg a bit further towards the edge of the bed and felt a distinct wet spot underneath her thigh. Okay. So they'd definitely done something. Had it been good? Had it been awkward? Had they used protection? Mindy had a lot of questions and absolutely no answers. She had a lot of questions about why she had no answers-she didn't remember getting drunk. She didn't ever get drunk. Maybe that was the problem? Maybe when she got drunk she did stupid things without remembering it, and she just didn't know it because last night was the first time she ever did it? But then why didn't she feel hungover now?
She'd figure it all out later, Mindy decided. For now, it was time to get out of bed and find her clothes and get out of this apartment before-
"Hi," a sleepy male voice said next to her.
Mindy looked over. "Hi," she said. "Um...good morning." She rolled over to face him and pulled up the covers a bit around herself, trying to figure out if there was a way to wrap the sheet around herself unobtrusively. It didn't seem likely.
He rolled over and propped himself up on one elbow. "Good morning," he said, smiling at her. When he smiled, Mindy had a little bit of an inkling why she went to bed with him last night. It was a very nice smile. "How're you feeling?"
"Um..." Mindy smiled nervously. "A little, um...you know, surprisingly good, considering..." She sighed.
May as well pull the bandage off,
she decided. "I'm sorry, I don't remember a single thing about last night. It's just a total blank space. I'm really sorry, I hope you don't think that I normally get blackout drunk and go home with complete strangers, because I really don't, but..." She winced. "I don't even know your name."
Mindy wasn't sure what reaction she was expecting, but she definitely didn't think he'd find it funny. He clearly did, though; he didn't laugh, but his smile widened and his eyes twinkled with amusement. "Grant," he said. "Grant Lyons. And you don't remember anything? Anything at all?"
Mindy closed her eyes tightly for a moment. "I remember going out," she said. "To a...club? No, not a club. A coffee house. There was someone reading poetry..."
"And playing guitar, yes," Grant said. "What happened next?"
"I..." Mindy pushed at the blank, sticky fog that obscured the edges of the memory. "I remember talking to you. You were sitting next to me, you were reading a book...I can't remember much else, though. It's all foggy."
"It's okay," Grant said soothingly. "Just imagine yourself walking into that fog. The closer you get to the memory, the more distinct it becomes, doesn't it?"
"Um..." Mindy opened her eyes and blinked slowly. It was kind of strange, but Grant was right-the more she thought about it, the clearer the memory got around the edges. Still totally blank in the middle, but the coffee house felt almost more real to her than the bedroom now. "I remember liking the book, it was...Tolkien, but not 'Lord of the Rings'..."
"It was 'The Silmarillion'," Grant replied. "See? You can remember if you just keep trying."
Mindy nodded, but she wasn't really looking at him. She was staring straight ahead, seeing the coffee house in her mind's eye. "And I remember, we got talking about the movies, you asked me if I liked them, and I..." She paused, exhausted by the effort of pushing back the mist in her thoughts. She'd never imagined that just remembering something could be so tiring. "I said I liked the bit in the tavern. Where Frodo used the Ring."
"But you didn't tell me why," Grant said. "Not then."
Had she told him later? Mindy struggled to remember, but the fog resisted her semi-panicked attempt to rifle through the whole night in search of a single moment. She didn't think she would have, not even if they'd gone out and gotten drunk. That was a little too intimate to share with a stranger, even a charming one.
"And what happened next, Mindy?" She blinked again, realizing she'd gotten completely lost in thought. Almost literally-the fog in her mind was so thick that it felt like it would be terribly easy to wander in it forever without guidance. So easy to get lost in the warm, blank mist...
"Mindy?" She started in confusion, suddenly aware that she'd simply been staring straight ahead for a minute or two without saying anything. She inched her hand out from between her thighs, hoping Grant wouldn't notice. "Mindy, what happened next?" Grant prompted her again, his voice warm and gentle.
And that reminded her. "You said you liked it too. The scene." Her voice felt thick, like it was difficult to talk. She felt so worn out, like all she wanted to do was lie back and close her eyes and fall asleep all over again, but she forced herself to remember. "You said it looked like he was hypnotizing himself. With the Ring."
Mindy remembered more than that, but she didn't put it into words. She remembered trying hard not to look guilty, even though Grant had stumbled onto the exact reason she'd loved that scene so much. The way Elijah Wood's eyes had fluttered, the way his struggle to resist had been written all over his face...and the way that he looked when his willpower crumbled and he finally gave in. Mindy whimpered a little at the thought before she caught herself. She hoped Grant hadn't noticed.
"You liked that, didn't you?" It almost didn't sound like a question. It sounded like Grant knew. Mindy wondered for a moment why he didn't just tell her what happened, but she didn't have the energy to think about it. Every time her thoughts wandered away from last night, from finding the heart of the blank space in her memories, she only got lost in the fog. Lost in the warm, thick, engulfing...
"Mindy. Focus for me, please." Grant's voice was there again, guiding her. It was so good to have someone to guide her when she was this deep in the fog. "What did you say?"
