Aftermath

Aftermathby Nicole LarsonMy head was pounding--absolutely pounding--when I woke up. A spear of sunlight had shot through an errant slat in my vertical blinds and lanced right into my eye, waking me up. The pain was close to unbearable, but I didn't have the strength to stand, or even move, other than to drape a hand over my eyes. I told myself to go back to sleep. Too early to deal with a hangover, especially one of the epic proportions this one seemed to be taking on. It was as I was falling back under I noticed movement next to me. Strange, because I've been alone in this bed for the last six months. I took my arm away from my eyes, and somehow managed to crook my head around and coax my eyes open.What I saw was easily identifiable as a woman's hip, naked and turned away from me. Next to that another, and then another. This woke me up a bit, and I forced myself to sit upright and gauge the situation.When I did manage to get myself upright, I noticed that I was naked too. Jaybird naked. I thought about covering myself up, but just didn't have the energy. I sighed a little bit when I noticed that it was my friend Stacy next to me, not some stranger. Stacy was also naked, and next to her, locked in a comfortable sleeping embrace were Chloe and Natalie. Chloe's hand was cupping Natalie's breast, and Natalie's hand lay limply on Chloe's hip.What the hell had happened last night?There were vague memories, coalescing and solidifying as I worked to remember them. First thing I remembered was that yesterday was Chloe's 22nd birthday (she was the youngest of our little group). I remembered the four of us having dinner at the sushi restaurant. The sake bombs and spicy tuna. Then the Wheel House for more drinks, then down to Broad Street for more club hopping. Dancing, dancing, dancing. Stacy, who had just lost like ten pounds on some diet she was always raving about, constantly tugging at her purple tube-top that was now a size too big for her. Natalie, in the corner with that guy that the rest of us swore she was going to go home with. I remembered how close we were dancing to the speakers. How these guys kept buying us drinks, and we gladly accepted them, but no further offers. We closed down the club, and took a cab back to my apartment, and from there, things seemed to get more and more fuzzy.By now, I mustered the energy to swing my naked legs over the side of my crowded bed and stand up. There were clothes strewn everywhere. Not just the normal pile of clothes that always littered my room, but the other girls' clothes as well. There was the strapless Kadıköy Escort yellow dress birthday girl Chloe had been wearing, and Stacy's purple tube top. There were the tight black jeans that I'd worn and my underwear were still inside them.What in the world had happened here?I didn't remember anything weird going on, but I didn't remember much of anything after we got back here. There was a vague, blurry image of Stacy and Chloe kissing, but that seemed to be out in the living room, each of them were holding a drink and the music was still kicking.I tugged a fresh pair of panties on, then slipped into my pink robe and sashed the belt around my waist.Leaving the others in the bedroom, I made my slow way to the bathroom where I gathered up my robe and sat down on the toilet to relieve my aching bladder. I cradled my pounding head in my hands, toying with the idea of going back to sleep. The bathroom was littered (I saw when I gathered up the courage to open my eyes) with further strange clues from last night. A pair of blue panties lay balled up in the corner, next to the skirt Natalie had had on, and a can of my Pure Silk shaving cream stood by the sink next to my Gillette Venus razor. The counter was an absolute mess and the mirror was streaked with finger- and hand-prints. Had I left this out from before we'd met for sushi? Had I shaved my pits and forgot to put the can away?I finished urinating and wiped myself. I tried to flush the toilet quietly so as not to wake up any of the others, and realized as I was about to push down the plunger how stupid it was to try to flush a toilet quietly. I kept the door closed until the toilet cycled and was again quiet. Only then did I venture out.I delicately tiptoed past my three sleeping friends (check that--my three sleeping NAKED friends), and made my way to the kitchen, my pounding head thinking of nothing more than a debilitating need for coffee. As I started the coffee maker, my admittedly hangover-addled mind whirled trying to come up with a solution to the puzzle in the other room. What had happened that made us all fall asleep in my bed totally naked? Had we decided to go swimming in the middle of the night and the passed out on the bed not wanting to sleep in wet clothes? Had we been in the process of changing for bed and just said fuck it, let's sleep naked? Had it been some kind of weird truth or dare thing?The kitchen was a mess. Sticky red strawberry daiquiri residue was everywhere, and the kitchen was littered with half-drunk glasses of the Kadıköy Escort Bayan stuff. I toyed with the idea of drinking off the rest of one, to test that old "hair of the dog" theory, but the idea of drinking more alcohol was so repugnant to me I just poured all the stuff down the drain.As I poured, I caught a whiff of the stuff, and like magic, like being smacked in the head with a tennis racket, an image came to me. The four of us dancing to loud house music in my living room. Natalie grinding against Stacy, hands on hips, and Chloe dancing behind me with her hands on my breasts. I remembered the feeling of her caressing me. How it felt kind of weird and bad and yet really good at the same time. Then: the unthinkable thought. The perfect solution to the puzzle in the other room, the one that had been staring me in the face the whole time, but I hadn't wanted to see it.We'd had sex! All four of us? Together?It was the only logical explanation. But how had that happened? I never remember wanting to be with another woman, or even being curious! How had we gone from sushi and drinks to a four-way lesbian orgy on my bed?The coffee maker hissed and gurgled, signaling the completion of its cycle, and I turned dreamily to shut the machine off. I poured myself a cup in my favorite coffee mug (it has a picture of Garfield on it looking cross, and a caption that reads, "I don't do mornings." I sipped blankly at the coffee, relishing the bitterness and the aroma, trying not to think any further about what had happened last night.But the harder I tried to deny them, the more the images kept floating back at me. Chloe and I kissing. Natalie and Chloe kissing. Stacy with a hand down the front of Natalie's skirt, Natalie craning her neck backward to kiss Stacy. Chloe getting bold and putting her hand down the front of my tight black jeans. Me--Oh, God--realizing it was too tight for her and unbuttoning my jeans to give her easier access.The sound of the toilet flushing broke my reverie, and soon, Stacy came around the corner, strawberry blonde hair an absolute mess. She was holding her head in a way that said her hangover was as bad or worse than mine was, and she was clad in the hockey jersey Tad had given me before we left high schools for different colleges. "Hey," she said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind an ear."Hey," I said, "want some coffee?""I'd kill for a cup of coffee right now," she said, her voice slurred with sleep and hangover. She sat down in one of the three barstools at the kitchen's Escort Kadıköy breakfast bar."Well," I said, "luckily it won't come to that. I have a nice big pot right here.""Well stop yammering and pour me some."As I poured, I wondered if Stacy had remembered anything from last night, or if she was still in a hangover fog. Would she ever remember? Or would it come to her some time this afternoon? Would any of us remember? Would I be the only one who knew what had happened?"Some night, huh?" she said.I handed her the mug of coffee and she breathed deep of the steaming black liquid. I raised my eyebrows and nodded non-committally while she drank."How much do you remember?" I asked, immediately regretting that I had."I remember dinner, I remember the club. Not much else.""Nothing about after we came back here?""No," she said and sipped at her coffee.Pushing myself past a sudden fear, I asked, "Did it seem strange to you that we were all naked in bed together?""Yeah," she said. "I did wonder about that a little bit.""Do you remember dancing in the living room?"She turned to look behind her at the living room, probably hoping it would spark some kind of memory. Obviously it did. She turned back to me as realization slowly washed over her face."Oh, my God," she said simply, and raised a hand to her mouth. "Oh, my God!" she repeated, then, "what did we do?"I shrugged.We sat there in silence for some time while we sipped at our coffee and had our own private thoughts. After a long time, during which our eyes had locked and then turned away a few times, she stood up and came out into the kitchen to refill her coffee mug. "It wasn't bad, though," she said finally.I had been thinking about this very thing. Shocking, yes. disturbing, yes. But bad? No. What I could remember of it, nothing bad had happened at all.A naughty smile crept over her mouth. "Especially when you and I were..." She trailed off as if she wanted me to finish her sentence."Were what?" I asked. "I don't remember much after the living room."She waved off my question and sipped at her coffee. "So you don't remember Big Red?" she grinned wolfishly as she said this.Embarrassment shot through me. "No!""Yep," she said. "We were all on the bed and you leaned over and reached into your nightstand and pulled out Big Red."Big Red was, of course, my name for the dildo that I kept in my nightstand. My sister had bought it for me when I was still in high school because she was old enough to go into the porno shop and I wasn't. It was kind of a gag gift at first, but after a while, it turned into my regular date. But I had never told anyone about it! I had even told my sister that I'd thrown it away! I was mortified to think that the other girls knew about Big Red. Almost more than the idea that I'd had sex with them!"Jesus!" I said, hiding my face in my free hand."Don't be embarrassed!" Stacy said.