Thursday, 6:36 a.m
Tabitha coaxed her eyes open, then blinked at her surroundings. She was somewhere very warm and very snug, wrapped up tight like a sushi roll. Her eyes shifted back into focus, and she realized her head was buried in something soft and navy blue. A lightbulb blazed yellow from somewhere behind it.
With a bit of squirming and thrashing, she managed to surface from the depths of a soft fleece blanket. From the light of the single lamp in the far right corner, she could make out the outlines of couches and a cheap-looking coffee table. Not her coffee table. As she squinted at it, she could see a short pile of DVD boxes littering its surface. Not her DVD's. Behind the coffee table, a wide television was displaying an idle screen with a colorful logo flickering from one corner to another. Not her television.
Someone behind her sighed drowsily, and an arm tightened its grip around her waist, hauling her away from the edge of the couch and back up against a firm chest. Tabitha's eyes went wide. She knew whose chest that was.
She let out a long, shuddering breath and closed her eyes. She could feel James's body and the blanket brushing up against her bare skin, enveloping her like a cocoon. At least she was still wearing her panties. Her bra, however, was unaccounted for. A heavy, hot flush burned her cheeks as she tried to piece together the events of the night prior and did so all too successfully. The two of them had retreated to one of James's sofas after the...incident in his bedroom, and what should have been an innocent evening watching movies was quickly interrupted when the two of them realized how difficult it was to keep their hands off of one another. They made it most of the way through
The Princess Bride
with their clothes on, (in fact, Tabitha made it a point to keep herself planted firmly on the opposite side of the sofa for most of it), but the two of them had shifted and squirmed closer to one another until she found herself tucked under his arm with her head propped up on his shoulder. He kissed her cheek just before the clergyman made the wedding speech---sweetly enough, she thought, but somehow the movie ended with Tabitha straddling his hips on that couch while he tore off her sweater.
She didn't really remember the other two movies.
But now here she was, Tabitha thought: intact, conscious enough, and, most importantly, not depleted of all her blood. And now she was forced to wonder if she had actually been wrong about James. There were plenty of other explanations for what she had seen, weren't there? Perhaps he just had a particularly malevolent stomach ulcer and...maybe a sleep disorder of some kind. But he couldn't possibly be an insomniac. He was sleeping like the dead---or at least the severely concussed---behind her; even snoring as she kicked her way out from the blanket to look for her phone.
When she found it under her knee, she bit her lip. It was only half-past six. Part of her was deeply, sorely tempted to wriggle up against James and fall back asleep. But then she saw the green blinking light on the upper right-hand corner, and a jolt of realization banished the sleepiness from her brain. When she unlocked her screen, she saw a long line of missed calls and text messages. All from...
"Lily,"
she breathed, clutching a handful of her hair in panic. She never called, never texted, and never showed up at Lily's house. And after everything she had told her, she was half-surprised that she hadn't woken up to Lily crouched over them in all black like a pink-haired ninja, brandishing a wooden stake. She had to call her back, but she couldn't possibly do it with James lying only feet away from her, asleep or not.
Tabitha attempted to roll off the couch, but was stopped short when she encountered James's arm wrapped firmly over her. She tried again, harder this time, but he didn't budge. His body was as hard and unmoving as stone---almost, she thought, the notion drifting unwanted through her brain, like he had gone stiff from rigor mortis. But his breath was still coming shallow and rhythmic through his nose, and as she writhed in his grip, she saw his jaw slip open peacefully. He looked almost as if he was about to start drooling on her shoulder. Tabitha jerked herself roughly out from under his arm, but when she made to scoot away from him, he rolled on top of her.
Tabitha flushed and let out a moan of frustration, but James didn't even twitch. She wiggled her knees up until her feet were pressed up against his chest, clenching her jaw from the effort of moving beneath him, then did the same with her hands and heaved him away from her with all of her might. After two tries, James slumped to the side and she rolled off of the couch, panting loudly. To her surprise, he continued to snooze quietly with his back facing her. His left arm felt around, making her flinch, but he only closed his fingers around a red throw pillow and hugged it tightly to his chest. His snoring resumed shortly afterwards.
Tabitha gathered up her clothes and dressed as quietly as she could, giving up after a brief search for her missing bra and tugging her sweater on over her bare chest. Her socks were peeking out from under the coffee table, and her boots were right where she had left them: next to her purple backpack, which lay forgotten near James's front door. She grimaced when she knelt down to strap them on and felt the soreness in between her thighs.
It was time for the shortest walk of shame in human history.
She opened the door as quietly as she could manage, wincing at every tiny creak and whine. When she was certain it was firmly shut, she limped to her door and fished around her front backpack pocket for her keys. As her fingers closed around them, she heard the building door close with a slam. Well, at least someone else was up at this hour. She dialed Lily's number and put her phone to her cheek as she thrust the key into her lock, and, to her surprise, she heard a tinny little ringtone chirping from somewhere in the stairway.
It stopped after a couple of rings, and Tabitha stared uncertainly down the hall as the voice on the other end of the line also echoed from the stairway. "Tabs?"
"...Lily?" Tabitha said slowly. The line went dead and a hasty series of thumps sounded from the stairs. A pink head of hair appeared over the top step, followed by a pale face and a body encased in a fitted leather jacket. Lily stopped at the top of the stairs and stared at her in disbelief, the expression magnified by the impressive dark circles that surrounded her eyes. For several seconds, the two of them just stood in place and looked at one another.
"Tabitha,"
she whispered, her voice hoarse with relief. "Oh, shit. You're...I was..." The surprise on her face faded slowly into fury. "What's
wrong
with you? You couldn't have called or something?" she demanded irritably, marching towards her. "I drove here at, like, one to see if you were around and you didn't answer your door, and then---" She stopped short when she was directly in front of Tabitha, and her eyes darted down to the neckline of Tabitha's sweater. Tabitha followed her gaze and felt her face burn when she noticed that not only was it inside out, it was
backwards.
A little white tag was sticking out from under her chin.
"Look," she began, but Lily's face had already lit up with understanding.
"You
slut!"
she crowed. "No wonder you didn't answer your phone!"
"Shhh!"
"I'm still pissed at you---
