Bria opened her eyes and squinted through the sunlight that was now pouring into her room. She looked over and she had forgotten to close the drapes, the room was now flooded in yellow morning light. She heard a bunch of kids scream outside, and that was when the migraine struck. The pain radiated around her entire head, pounding, throbbing, like a toothache in her brain. Right between the eyes, excruciating, debilitating, soaring. Bria felt like screaming. She clenched her eyes shut and grabbed her head in her hands, rolling around the bed like she was dying. Then finally she settled on her back, trying to breathe in slowly, ignoring the pain that was now creeping down to her neck.

God, she hated hangovers.

She squinted again, her dry mouth sticky with saliva, waves of nausea adding to her misery. Her phone pinged with message after message; without even looking, she knew it was Savannah. But she didn’t bother answering, not now, at least. Her brain felt like it would swell beyond the capacity of her skull and now her dehydration was too obvious to ignore. She sighed, thinking that she would have to bump down the stairs on her backside. Again her stomach lurched and gurgled. Perhaps some painkillers would help. She raised her heavy eyelids half way only for them to fall shut. She raised them again and swung her bare feet to the carpet again. It was cold and sticky underfoot; she must have missed that earlier. One bleary look told her what she'd been eating last night with her mystery man; late night mac ‘n’ cheese apparently. She sank back to the bed; too many jobs to do, so much mess, and her life in tatters.

She looked over and her date was still asleep. He had her back to her; that tight muscled back was nothing different from the one she saw last night. Great job, Ari. You didn’t end up sleeping with a total freak. Then again, she still couldn’t see his face. She sat up in bed thinking about the happenings of last night. She felt bad for leaving Savvy, but she knew she would understand. Besides, she had probably gone home with some random guy, herself. Bria rested her head on the headboard, trying to remember what had happened. The memories rushed in slowly, but then all at once. Suddenly she could see the stranger’s shoulder pushed up gently against her face, the moles on his neck, his light stubble. She could see his abs and his arms and all his chest hair. She could hear his voice, sort of. More like his panting as he thrust into her, over and over again. She could see his back glistening with sweat. It made her smile to herself.

Whenever she moved, she could feel her stomach gurgling again, until she decided to hop off the bed and run to the bathroom. She limped across the room and stumbled inside, where she remained hunched over the toilet until the feeling went away. Drops of sweat formed at her hairline and dripped down her forehead. She gulped in air and let it out through her nose. Then she heard a sound that made her jump. It was her bed springs. She peered into the room, feeling even more blown away by how hot he was. He was sprawled over the bed with his arms raised above his head; the sheets were covering just his ass while the rest of him remained exposed to the warm sunlight. He shifted in his place, eventually rolling around and sleeping on his back.

Suddenly, Bria felt her heart skip a beat.

Kade?

She backed up a few steps, almost tripping and falling over. Her heart was exploding in her chest, her hands felt clammy and she was hyperventilating. She leaned back against the wall, trying to decide if what she saw was true. She peered inside one more time, only to have her doubts confirmed all over again.

“What the fuck?” she whispered to herself. She was just standing there, butt naked, secretly wishing the floor would crack open and swallow her. The events of last night were a bit too ambiguous for her to bare, and then suddenly she was more uncomfortable than ever. She just wanted Kade to wake up and leave because it felt wrong; all of it. Even though she had a great time last night, she still couldn’t fathom the fact that it was him. She was even more distraught that it all happened despite herself, that she couldn’t even remember it. If she were to do something with Kade, she really wanted to wake up the next day remembering every single detail, not a fuzzy recollection of clumsy moments and limbs flailing about. She sighed in disappointment, but she couldn’t help but stare at him. His chest was rising and falling to the rhythm of his breath and his face was all crumpled up like a child’s.

Bria felt like a creep, so she shook her head and headed back downstairs, trying to make sense of everything. “Fuck,” she muttered under her breath, realizing that she wasn’t going to make it to work on time. But then it occurred to her that, since she hadn’t missed a single work day so far, it was only fair that she took a little break. She made herself some coffee and just stood there by the counter, in complete denial of the fact that her high school sweetheart was asleep in her bed. And what would his reaction be when he saw her, anyway? Bria hoped he wouldn’t recognize her at all.

She drank her coffee in silence, her ears straining for sound. Nothing. Just kids playing outside and a bunch of dogs barking. The noise of her fridge. The hum of the dishwasher. The tap dripping water. All of a sudden she remembered that she had left her phone upstairs. Fuck. She looked up at the clock and it was almost nine; before Bria could do anything, she heard that noise; that sharp, ear-piercing siren. She took off, bolting up the stairs and tumbling into her room naked.

Kade was already awake.

He was sitting up in bed, staring at nothing in particular. His face was all scrunched up into a persistent frown and he was breathing so heavily that Bria could almost hear him from across the room. He looked around, seemingly confused, then he ran his fingers through his hair before his eyes settled on her. He squinted, and she squinted back, and then suddenly she remembered she was naked.

“Oh, um,” she said, bending over and tugging at the sheets. She tried to pull them from under him, but they wouldn’t budge, and for some reason he didn’t seem to move, either. “Could you, could you?”

Kade snickered, rolling only partially so she could yank the sheets from under him. She got a little glimpse of that butt, too. Bri wrapped herself in the white linen sheets and sat on the corner of the bed, a smile plastered to her face. But it wasn’t a happy smile, or a comfortable one, either. It was more like I’m not sure how we got here, so can we please pretend like this never happened?

And Kade sure picked up on that, too. He was just sitting there, staring at her through heavy-lidded eyes. A pair of glowing blue beads were embedded into them; they, too, were staring at her. “Well good morning, I guess,” he said, finally.

“Morning,” she turned away from him and started picking up her clothes, which were scattered all over the room — on the floor, on the bed, even on the windowpane. Then she began to dress herself, looking at Kade through the corner of her eye. Even though she wasn’t looking directly at him she could tell he was offended by her silence. She just didn’t know what to say, that’s all. She wiggled into her pants, put her bra on with her back to him -yikes- and then turned around. “So, what happened last night?”

“Oh.” Kade sounded more disappointed than anything. “I mean, it’s pretty self-explanatory.” He lifted the covers off him for a moment, raised his eyebrows at her and smirked. Bria smirked back, because, how could she resist that face? She sure couldn’t last night. “Or, do you not remember exactly what happened? I mean, we were both drunk and everything, but I’d like to think we both had a good time …”

At that point, he was only rambling. Bria felt the heat rush to her cheeks but she couldn’t hold it in for any longer. “I didn’t, I didn’t know it was you.”

Kade’s eyes shifted to the side again and he clenched his jaw in such a way that made Ari’s insides tremble. “So, let me get this straight,” he started, raising himself on his elbows. “You were so drunk last night, that you didn’t even know it was me you were going home with?”

Bria shook her head no.

“Well, that’s disappointing,” he sighed. At that point he just looked irritated. Whenever he thought about the events of last night, all he could see was Bria’s face, her eyes clenched shut, mouth open in pleasure. This morning he woke up long before she did but he just pretended to be asleep because he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know if she had a roommate - a kid, maybe?- or a golden lab that just liked to roam around at five o’clock in the morning. So he just froze there for a while, marveling in what had happened, trying to soak it all in. He remembered the way her body looked while he was on top of her, the way she shifted, closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip. He remembered waking up in the early morning and staring at her strawberry blond locks, the way the sun came over them, and then panicking a little because his thoughts were running a bit too wild.

Meanwhile Bria was just standing there, looking rather ashamed of herself.

“Was Savvy with you last night?” Kade asked.

“I just got a heck ton of flashbacks right now,” Bria chuckled. Back in high school, Kade and Savvy were arch enemies. Kade absolutely hated her guts, but Bri didn’t seem to remember why. School was a blur to her now, a great white fog of memories, but she did remember a few things. At one point she had a theory that Savvy actually had feelings for Kade, and when she found out that he didn’t feel the same way, she made it her mission to make his life a living hell. But that was just a theory.

“Yeah, yeah. I never really liked your friend, she’s a bit too much,” he said, his voice penetrating Ari’s consciousness. “She had a habit of humiliating me at parties, do you remember that?”

Bri paused for a moment and looked up, as if trying to remember something. The wind had creeped into her room, so she went over to the window and closed it. She wondered if her neighbors had seen a naked Kade asleep on her bed, but she thought that, even if Erika and Scarlett had seen her with him the other night, they had no choice but to envy her. “Yeah, yeah. I remember,” she replied, thinking back to that time when she and Kade stepped out from a house party, only to find that someone had slashed his tires. Bri never really thought of Savvy as the prime suspect, or maybe she was just in denial. All she knew was that she and Kade had gotten into an argument earlier that day and that it had something to do with chicken nuggets.

“Anyway, how is she?” Kade asked, feigning his interest.

“She’s alright, still crazy. But alright,” Bri said, brushing the hair from her eyes. She stared at Kade through her fringe and it was like she had captured a snapshot of him, one that she would store forever in her memory. “We’re still best friends, you know.”

“Let me guess, she was the one that talked you into going to that party?”

“That’s for sure.” Bri folded her arms across her chest and squinted at him. “How did you know?”

“Come on, I know that’s not really your scene,” he said, shrugging.

“We haven’t seen each other in ten years, you didn’t think that maybe I’ve changed?” she asked him. The truth was, Bria had always been insecure about her character. She felt like some sort of paper doll; permanent, never changing and, well, boring as hell. “You know what, you don’t have to answer that,” she said, interrupting him. “I’ve had the same hair since middle school, so I get what you mean.”

Kade smiled and looked at the ground. The truth was that he wanted to say a lot of things, but he just nodded, instead.

“Savvy got me so drunk last night, though,” she said, despite herself. Kade was just irritated at this point, because he kept being reminded, over and over again, that Bri had no idea what the hell she was doing when she hooked up with him. “She just kept dousing me in shots, one after the other, until I totally blacked out.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have let her do that to you,” Kade said, his lips only slightly parted.

“What if I wanted to get drunk and have fun?” Bri asked, suddenly annoyed, but deep down she knew he was right. I want to remember last night just as much as you do, she thought to herself, but she wasn’t about to voice that out to him. Instead she just shifted her weight to one leg and averted her gaze to the door. “I should get to work,” she murmured. Kade immediately rolled off the bed and started dressing himself.

“I should get home, too,” he said, thinking that maybe he should’ve left a long time ago. He felt humiliated and a bit ashamed, but as always, he told himself to snap out of it, and that no woman, no matter who she was, was worth his pain. The silence lingered in the air and all they could hear was the sound of Kade’s belt clanking as he struggled to wiggle into his pants. Finally he rose to his feet, tucked his shirt in, zipped up and looked at Bri with his hands on his waist. “Where are my shoes?” he asked, scanning the room with his eyes. It was a mess, to say the least. Bria couldn’t imagine the violence of last night, the kind of violence that would’ve led to Kade’s shoes being thrown in the trash can. “Well, that’s one of them,” he said, holding them up and inspecting them for traces of vomit. “Where’s the other one?”

Bria went around looking for the missing shoe, sliding in out of rooms and then, standing in the middle of her bedroom, hands on hips, looking absolutely frustrated.

“Oh, there it is,” Kade said finally, pointing towards the ceiling; his shoe was lying on its side on top of her closet. Bria shook her head and dragged her desk chair to the middle of the room. “Here, let me,” he said, reaching out and grabbing the white sports shoe off the top of her closet. Bri suddenly remembered how tall he was. “Well, I better get going.”

“Let me walk you to the door,” she said, following him downstairs. Bria was pretty bad with signals. Kade reached his hand out while she went in for a hug and as the two of them tried to work through the gut-retching awkwardness of their last encounter. Bri cursed herself in her head.

“Well, I’ll see you later,” he said before turning around and marching across her yard. She closed the door, barely catching a glimpse of him as he stopped a cab and drove away. Bria felt her heart sink. She retreated back into her room, crawled under the covers and pulled them all the way up to her chin. Her whole bed smelled of Kade’s eau de parfum, a little bit of beer, and a whole lot of sweat. It was too late to go to work now, and she had pretty much nothing to distract her the whole day except maybe a few episodes of Gilmore Girls. But for a while, all she did was sit in bed and dwell over her life decisions.

Meeting Kade was far from a good idea.

It only got her thinking about him all over again, ruminating in her mistakes, wondering what she did wrong. He looked visibly upset when he left but she didn’t do anything about it because she owed him nothing. She wasn’t the one who broke his heart ten years ago, was she? It was her right to drink and have fun and dance with strangers ... except he wasn’t a stranger, far from it.

It was about time that she came out of her shell. She didn’t care if Kade got offended, except that she really, really, did. But she didn’t want to care, so she didn’t fall into that pit all over again. Slowly she lowered her head in her hands and started sobbing. A bit too dramatic? Maybe. Volcanic frustration balled inside her, exploding only around Savvy, whom she texted ferociously. Then she decided that it was time to get her shit together, so she got up and decided to go to work. Late or not, she needed to distract herself and the only way to do that was to dress up and show up. She opened up her closet, reached into her pile of untouched clothes and pulled out the first thing she got her hands on. A pretty pink sweater that she hadn’t worn in two years because she thought it made her look fat.

Ah, that’s the one, she thought to herself. She then threw it on, inspected herself only momentarily in the mirror --that is, before she changed her mind-- and then hurried back out again. And just like last time, she put her makeup on and promised herself one thing: today was going to be a good day.