Lily
When I wake up, the first thing I notice is my body. It’s an odd thing to think, that you notice your body, but I usually do not notice mine but for the aching of a long, long shift. Normally when I wake up, my arms and legs are infused with the dull, never-ceasing ache which most nurses I’ve spoken to can sympathise with. You get used to it after a while, however, and so you stop noticing it. But this morning I notice my body all over again, even if the aches are now in different places. Nipples, neck, in between my thighs, ass cheeks . . . all of them ache, burn, with the feel of Roman’s pleasure-giving body. His hands gripping my ass cheeks, his lips on my nipples, his rock-hard cock driving wetly and hotly inside of me. When I think of that, I want to reach across the bed and grab him . . .
And so the second thing I notice is the emptiness of the bed beside me. I claw for Roman, wanting to feel his tight, sculpted muscle, but instead my hands find nothing but sheets. I lean up, squinting against the early-morning sunlight which shines through the curtains, and look around the room. My clothes lay in disarray, my dress a crumpled pile on the floor, my panties hanging off the back of a chair, my bra dangling from the corner desk, one of my heels wedged between the bathroom door, the other upside down balancing preciously on the television. I listen, but there’s no sign of Roman, just the general noise of a Vegas hotel coming to life, and the distant ding-ding of slot machines.
I rub the sleep from my eyes and check my phone. It’s half past seven o’clock, which means I have around four hours to get back to my apartment, showered, changed, and into work. I open my and close my mouth, which is dry, lips cracked, and wish for the first time in a long time that I was off today. I rarely think that. Nursing is not just what I do; it’s who I am. But I would like just one day to recover from a steamy night with Roman.
As I go about the room collecting my clothes—none of Roman’s clothes are in sight—I wonder if I am angry with him. And then I realize that the very fact I even have to wonder means I’m not.
“Watson, this is a very odd turn of events, is it not?” I whisper to myself as I pull on my panties. “At first, we have a committed nurse, a nurse who would never, never sleep with a man she does not know. And then we have a woman—not a nurse, because her mind had changed by that point—throwing herself into bed with a man. And now she is the nurse again, and yet she is not angry with the man. In fact, she feels a certain degree of warmth toward him. Hmm, yes, strange, one could say. Very suspect.” I giggle, thinking that maybe I’m still a tad drunk, and put on my bra and then wriggle into my dress. “Let us peer into her mind. There is no resentment. No hatred. No anger. Just a woman who is glad that she had the experience. Just a woman who enjoyed herself mightily and will cherish the memory, will go into her life holding the phantom of Roman . . . oh yes, and now we get to the crux of the matter, Roman, she does not even know his last name! Oh, this won’t do—”
“Will you keep it down in there?” a man roars from the next room, voice slurred with drunkenness. “Some of us are trying to sleep!”
I giggle again, and then go into the bathroom and splash my face with water. I can’t stop smiling. I feel like the silliest woman in the world, grinning like this. Perhaps part of it is because I know there’s a real possibility that I will see him again. He is Carol’s boyfriend’s co-worker, so if the memory of the hot, steamy, wet, close, animal sex grows too difficult to ignore, I can always ask Carol to get me his phone number. Even if he has made it clear he doesn’t want to exchange numbers, I can always take that step.
I’m about to leave when I remember that I’m in a hotel room. What if Roman hasn’t paid for it?
I go to the phone and dial down for reception. The woman who answers is chirpy and bubbly. “Hello, how can I help you this morning?”
“Uh, hi,” I say. “I was just wondering . . . um, this is going to sound strange, but—”
“Your room has been fully paid for, Ms., eh . . . Sherlock. Wow, cool name!”
I grin to myself. “Thank you,” I say, and then hang up.
Perhaps it’s the nurse in me, but I find I can’t leave the room without first giving it a quick tidy. With that done, I leave the room and make my way downstairs to get a cab. I’m in such a good mood, such a step-bouncing, ear-to-ear grinning, giggling-randomly mood that I don’t even feel embarrassed when people look at me. And why should I? I’m not doing the Walk of Shame. I’m doing the Skip of Shame, the Spring of Shame, the Dance of Shame. Once, I even start whistling a tune, something I never do. Was the sex really that good? I wonder as I climb into the back of a cab and give the driver my address. I look out of the window, at the neon signs and towering buildings, all dull now in the rising sunlight.
Was the sex really so incredibly that it’s going to put me in a good mood for the rest of the day? The answer is in my body, in my burning nipples, the aching between my thighs. I curl my toes in my heels and remember how my toes curled last night, endlessly, as orgasm after orgasm surged through me. I close my eyes, see his muscular, chiselled body, leaning over me, tight, tense. Then, as the cab comes to a stop, I shake my head, try and shake the memories loose. Soon I’ll be at work, with no room for Roman in my head. I pay the driver and go into my apartment building, up a flight of stairs, and into my one-bedroom apartment.
The place is neat, which is a product of me somehow dragging my double-shift-tired body around the apartment and tidying when all I can think about is sleep. Even now, when I need to shower and change quickly, I undress and put my clothes in the wash basket neatly, and then stand in the shower. Last night and this morning is strangeness stacked upon strangeness, because as I stand here, the water cascading down my body, I am slightly annoyed: annoyed that the water cleanses away Roman’s touch as well as the sweat and the grime of last night; annoyed that now I cannot pretend I still feel his lips on my nipples.
I step from the shower, dry myself off, blow-dry my hair, and then get dressed in my scrubs. I think about applying makeup—I have a whole bag of it, just in case—but I can’t really be bothered. Some of the girls come to work plastered in makeup, eyes all black-ringed and panda-like and sexy, cheeks blooming red (not flustered red like mine often are), painted nails, the works . . . But that’s never for me. When I go to work, I go to work, not to walk up and down the hallways pretending it’s a catwalk.
By the time I stand in front of the full-length mirror in my bedroom, it’s difficult to accept that only a few hours ago I was writhing around with Roman in the sheets. And it really is only a few hours ago; we were touching and kissing and screwing until around four o’clock in the morning. This woman, with her hair scraped close to her scalp in tight no-nonsense ponytail, her scrubs like a military uniform on her body, sneakers battered and needing to be replaced, does not look like the moaning conquest of a yin-and-yang tattooed man. I shrug. That woman will always exist in memory, and, anyway, I can always ask Carol for his phone number. A bit stalker-ish, perhaps, but he did walk out on me without a single word.
I take the bus to work, as I usually do, and despite what I consider to be my world-rocking experience last night, the first five hours of my shift proceed as normal. I deal with patients, surreptitiously help some doctors diagnose illnesses, treat the patients, comfort them, bathe them, change their sheets, talk to them, make them feel like humans instead of half-lives with their tubes and beepers and wires. And then, with my feet aching and my forehead damp with sweat, I go into the breakroom and tuck into my lunch/dinner: a microwavable pasta bake.
I’m sat at the corner table, some soap opera playing on the small wall-mounted TV, when Carol comes in. Even now, after years of knowing her, it can be a shock when she walks into the room. For a second, I think: why is somebody carrying a mirror in here? Then I grin at my stupidity. Carol, looking like my slightly more carefree twin (her ponytail is a little looser) drops into the seat opposite me.
“So I heard,” Carol says, her face difficult to read as she tears open a yogurt container with her teeth.
“You heard? Really?” I’m so surprised by this that I drop my knife and fork. So we had the best sex I’ve ever had, and then he snuck out, and then he . . . what? Went and told Carol’s boyfriend, who then told Carol? Why would he do that? “Oh,” I say, but still, I’m not annoyed. It was fun. I don’t regret it. And I was going to tell Carol, anyway. So I guess it’s okay. As long as he doesn’t go around telling everybody who’ll listen, in which case we’ll need to have words. “Yeah, well—I know what you’re going to say. I told you so. You said I needed a good time, and you need to hear the words, don’t you, you psychopath? Fine, Carol, fine, I’ll play your wicked game. I had a good time. Okay? Understand?” I lower my voice. “I had a great time, if you get my meaning.”
I giggle, expecting Carol to giggle along with me. She’s always ragging me about men, about fun, and now here I am, triumphant. But she doesn’t giggle. She squints at me, her hazel-brown eyes—eyes that could’ve been transplanted from my head, I swear—full of confusion. “Wait, what are you talking about?” she says.
“I’m talking about Roman—well, Sam, as you called him. Are you sure your boyfriend’s his friend, Carol, because he told me his friends call him Roman. I went on that date, and I had a great time, and—Why are you looking at me like that?” I demand, as she continues to squint at me.
“I heard,” Carol says, “that Sam had to cancel, but because of my idea not to give you his phone number, he had no way to contact you. I only heard about it at lunchtime. I expected you to be in a bad mood about being stood up. So, hang on . . . Roman?”
I give her a quick rundown. When I finish, Carol asks me in a quiet, sensitive voice, “Are you okay?” Her quiet, sensitive voice cannot hide the laughter which she manages to contain only by bulging her cheeks like a hamster, though.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m fine. You can laugh.”
She laughs, and after a moment I laugh along with her.
“It was crazy,” I say. “I . . . he was so smooth about it. He didn’t miss a beat when I asked him if he was Sam, and I even mentioned you, and he went right along with that, too. I thought I was a human lie-detector, Carol, I really did.”
“Well, it seems you found somebody who is even more skilled than you,” Carol says, clearly delighted. “Are you really okay?”
“Listen,” I say. “He was gorgeous, charming, and we had incredible sex. Surely that’s all that matters?”
Carol nods in agreement, still smiling.
But I won’t be able to reach him now, I reflect. I’m never going to see him again.