Her hangover woke her out of a sound sleep. The sleep of the dead, she thought. Well, she certainly felt as if someone had tried to kill her. There seemed to be a battering ram working inside her skull that was nearly audible. And the taste in her mouth could only be described as carrion.
She was still in her clothes from the night before; short leather skirt and tube top (where where her panties?). She looked at the clock; 2:05. Her father would be leaving for work shortly, She couldn't remember what she had said to him last night but something told her that it couldn't have been good. If she could just lie here for a few minutes she wouldn't have to face him.
But her stomach was calling the shots and it was not pleased, demanding that she get to the bathroom and get there now.
She made it just in time and sat on the floor for several long minutes afterward, trying to convince her stomach that nothing remained. It refused to accept her pleading and continued to spasm painfully. 'Driving the porcelain bus'. Is what her friends called it. 'Praying to the porcelain god, Rowlf' Funny when it wasn't happening to you.
She heard her father banging on the bathroom door.
"Amy I have to leave in a few minutes and I need to talk to you before I go."
"OK, daddy I'll be out soon." she said just as another painful contraction hit her.
She stood up on shaky legs and drank a glass of water, looking at herself in the mirror. God, she was a mess. She washed her face and dragged a comb through her hair. It wasn't much of an improvement but it was going to have to do.
She removed her clothes from the previous night and tossed them in the laundry. She wrapped a robe around her and taking a deep breath walked unsteadily into the kitchen where her father sat staring at a cup of coffee.
"Sit down." Tim said starkly. She sat.
"Did you know I went to the doctor on Tues?" he began slowly, not looking at her. "He said my blood pressure was through the roof; that I was a good candidate for a heart attack or a stroke."
He looked at her then. His eyes were red. Had he been crying?
"He asked me if there was any undue stress in my life."
Looking back down at his coffee he continued. "Amy, I can't do this anymore, I can't take it. it's killing me. And I can't watch you ruin your life like this, out till all hours of the night, going who knows where with who knows who doing God knows what. It's driving me crazy. I can't take the fighting and the constant arguing."
What the hell happened last night, she thought.
"It seems we're at each other's throats all the time.
"But you're right about one thing; you're a grown woman now. You should be on your own." He took a deep breath.
"I want you to move out. I want you to get a job and get your own place, and if you continue to throw your life away, well, at least I won't have to watch. I'm giving you a month and then I want you gone."
"Daddy, I...I mean...can't we talk about this? I don't have..."
"This is not a discussion, Amy!" he said with real anger that set her back in her seat.
He got up and picked up his lunch and headed towards the door. He opened it and turned to her.
"You have one month. All I ask is that you please, behave in the meantime. I know you don't respect me, but for your mother's sake, please, just cool it till you have your own place and you're on your own. Then you can go wild for all I care."
He slammed the door. She heard the car start and ease out of the drive and through the window she watched it disappear down the street.
Jesus, she thought, her head pounding, what had happened last night?
She went back into the bathroom, dropped her robe on the floor, removed her panties and climbed into the shower, letting the hard stinging spray ease some of the effects of whatever it was she had done the night before. Slowly, like answers rising up inside the Magic 8-Ball, bits and pieces of the previous night's events began to appear in her brain, each one making her cringe.
Amy was 18, fresh out of high school, her future staring her in the face and scaring the hell out of her; not that she was going to admit it or let it change her, that's why God had invented clubs, hot young guys and pot. Young and pretty - hot, by any measure, even her own - she enjoyed the effect she had on the young men she met there. Most of them were so easy; a glimpse of cleavage here - and she had plenty - a flash of thigh there and they were soon panting like dogs, their cocks straining in their pants. In this condition she found she could get them to do anything she wanted.
The night before, after her father had gone to work, she had felt particularly restless. She smoked a joint and watched some TV. She turned on some music and, getting a bottle of bourbon from the liquor cabinet, poured a drink. And then another. She called her friend Leslie to see if she wanted to go to the club and then remembered she had gone away with her family for a week. She couldn't go by herself. What the hell, she thought, I'll just go out to Maxie's. She took a twenty out of her daddy's drawer and left.
Maxie's was a roadhouse out on 70, built by Roger and Maxine Meredith in the (then) rural New Jersey country-side. The clientele consisted of truckers - in for a quick beer, red-necks - loud and rude but basically harmless, college kids looking for pussy, and bikers - ditto.
It had been a slow night at Maxies. She had played pool with 3 boys from the college, usually taking the shot that required her to bend way over the table so that her short leather skirt rode up and they got a good look at her ass from behind and her breasts from in front. For this privilege they paid her in beer and shots and pizza.
She danced some slow dances with one and then another of them, letting them cup her bottom briefly before she returned their hands up to her back, enjoying the feeling of their erections pressing into her stomach.
About an hour and a half after first coming in she was flying high. Making a trip to the ladies' room on unsteady legs, she passed the biker at the end of the bar who gave her a look that chilled her.
He could have come directly from Central Casting; "Uh, we need a biker, leather vest, black jeans, boots, pony tail, ear-ring, wallet chained to his belt, etc. etc." But it was his eyes that broke through her drunken fog. Pale blue and cold they were the color of a high voltage spark, the most beautiful eyes she'd ever seen on a man.
When she'd finished in the rest room she came out and stood next to him at the bar, swaying slightly.
"You're a hot little piece, aren't you." he said coldly.
"You'll never know how hot. Why don't you buy me a drink." she said with false bravado.
He stared for a long time, running the tip of his tongue over his lips, and then held up 2 fingers and Roger brought them Bourbon on the rocks.
"Got you're game all worked out, don't you. Slide on in, tease the little boys, get them all worked up so they buy your drinks, maybe grant them a quick feel for their trouble, then slip on out."
"Jealous?" She said, losing herself a bit in his eyes. It wasn't fair that God gave some men such long soft lashes, she thought.
"It's a dangerous game for a little cunt like you. Sooner or later somebody's gonna cash in on that little pussy of yours."
The college boys never talked to her like this. Even drunk as she was, she could feel the danger in him. It thrilled her. She drank the bourbon.