The awkward morning after
My tongue is a dried cocoon. My head is caving in. I have been dreaming of draining pitchers of water into my depleted body. I always forget to drink water when I’m back in Denver.
“I drank too much beer and smoked too much weed,” I said to her.
“Welcome to Denver, now go back to sleep,” she responds without opening her eyes.
Rolling her off my arm I try to remember her name.
Her toilet bowl is freckled. Clearly she did not intend on having company last night. The only glass in the bathroom, smudged white with toothpaste, has toothbrushes in it. I rinse the glass with hot water and hand soap and then fill it with lukewarm tap water. As I drain the third glass I can hear my cells crackle back into form. My pee is dark. I drain two more glasses of water and go back into her bedroom.
I pray to god to see the empty, golden, foil wrapper indicating good decision making on the floor next to the bed, or glinting somewhere in the folds of the sheets. I see none.
“Fuck,” I think.
Her bra is crumpled at the foot of the bed.
As she sleeps I trace what may have been her bra history. From her first one, purchased six months before she needed it, but a long four months after her best friend got one. There were the bras that didn’t fit, the ones that chaffed, the one bought and worn for the first boy she ever loved, the one she calls her favorite, the one she can wear with a backless dress and the one now crumpled at the foot of her bed.
Her hair covers her face. I delicately brush it back behind her ear. She is beautiful.
I kiss her softly. She opens her eyes and smiles rolling on her back. She is really beautiful.
Her smile grows as I brush more hair from her face. I smile back.
“Water,” she says.
When I return with the bathroom glass filled with tap water she sits up and drains it. I fill it up again for her. We are both naked sitting on her bed. She puts her arm around me, rests her head on my shoulder and whispers in my ear shamelessly “tell me your name again. “
We did not leave her room the rest of the day.
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