14. Donna
FOURTEEN
Donna
AMERICAN HANGOVER STORY
Oh God.
Where am I?
Oh no.
It’s the house.
Am I on the bed?
How did I get here?
I can’t move.
Everything hurts.
Or wait.
I don’t feel anything.
I feel dead.
Am I dead?
Am I the ghost?
Did I lick a hairbrush?
It feels like I have lava in my belly. Wait. It’s in my throat. I’m gonna vomit. Wait. No, I’m not. Yes, I am! …No.
Wait. I’m a nurse. Am I? I am. Check vital signs. Without moving body. Or thinking too loudly. Or blinking. Or breathing too much…
Slowly, slowly, my index and middle fingers move to the opposite wrist, and I find a pulse. I can confirm that I am physically alive. Now I have to count…one, two, three, four, yeah, I’m hungover.
What happened?
…
Billy.
Billy Mothafuckin’ Cocksucka Boston happened.
My brain is smiling, but my face is trying to go back to sleep. Where is that maniac? And how is it possible to be this hungover and so horny at the same time?
“Afternoon, sunshine!”
“Shhhhhhh!”
“Oh, sorry,” he says, but I swear his voice is exactly as loud. “How do you feel?”
He leans over me, and I grab his shirt to pull him down for a kiss. Ten seconds ago, my tongue was so dry I could have used it to sand the back porch rails, but even though I’m barely conscious I am salivating for this man all of a sudden. There’s no telling if the elevated heart rate, body temperature, and blood pressure are hangover related or Billy related, but I know for sure that the hangover is a direct result of hanging out with this guy.
“Horrible,” I say when our lips finally part. I’m smiling now, I think. Maybe not with my face, but with my fatigued, dehydrated soul. “Just awful.”
“Sorry to hear that, Red.” He stands up, and I have to close my eyes again because looking up at him is bad. “I had groceries and hangover food delivered. What strikes your fancy, milady?” I can hear him moving around and taking things out of paper bags. “I got all the bottled water you can drink. Ginger ale. Gatorade. Coconut water. Saltine crackers. Greasy fast-food burgers, because I have personally found that this helps best with hangovers. You need protein and fat to digest the sugar from the alcohol.”
“That is not how alcohol metabolism works.”
“Trust me. It is. I also got Tylenol, Advil, Tums, Alka Seltzer, Pepto Bismol, Bloody Mary ingredients, mimosa ingredients, Guinness… I got coffee, tea…”
“You drank even more than I did. How are you not hungover?”
“Oh, I am, but y’know. I get knocked down, I get up again. It takes a lot to really knock me down, though.”
“Oh my God.” I try to laugh, but it comes out like a yawn and then a groan. “Ow. You’re a maniac.”
“You’re kind of a maniac yourself, Red. You really kept up with us. We were all impressed. ”
I snort. “Please. I believe it was the three of you who had to keep up with me.” I don’t actually remember what they had to keep up with, but it feels like the right thing to say. I try to arch an eyebrow with my eyes closed, but I don’t think my face is moving. “Did my eyebrow go up?”
“Nope. Did you want it to?”
“Yeah. Where are your cousins? Are they okay?”
“Yeah, those cocksuckas made it home just fine.”
“They’re back in New York already?”
“Yeah, we dropped ’em off at the airport before we came here, remember?”
“No.”
“Maddie and Cora both sent me pictures of them sleeping in their respective bathtubs.”
“Aw, that’s nice.”
“So, you, uh…” He massages my thigh. “You weren’t spooked?”
“By what?” I hear buzzing in my head. Or near it.
“By me.”
I snort. “Why would I be spooked?”
“Well, some people find the full Billy Boston experience a little extreme.”
“You were magnificent.” I reach for him. With the tip of an index finger. There’s that buzzing again. “Do you hear that? The buzzing? Why is it so loud?”
“It’ s your phone. You want it?”
I sigh. “I don’t want to open my eyes. Can you check to see who it is?”
I feel him reach under my pillow. “It’s your friend from last night. Chelsea.”
“From last night?”
“Yeah, she’s textin’ to make sure you got home okay. And she thinks I’m hot. And she sent you a bunch of pictures and a video.”
“Huh?”
I squint my eyes to watch the video that’s playing on my phone. It’s of me and Billy on a small stage, singing “Monster Mash” into microphones. The camera pulls back to reveal Declan dancing and Nolan playing the keyboard. Declan appears to be taking his shirt off. And then it pans around to show one or two hundred people in Halloween costumes singing and dancing along with us. Then there’s a close-up of Harley Quinn, who says, in Chelsea’s voice, “That’s my bestie, bitches!” right before the video ends.
I get strobe light flashes of memories of being in a motor boat and climbing up onto the side of a yacht. “Did we crash a Halloween party cruise?”
“Well, that depends on your definition of crashing a party,” Billy says. “Is it crashing a party if your friend tells us where she is and we decide to join her even though we don’t have tickets and then we make that mediocre party awesome? I think not.”
I text my friend a thumbs-up emoji and close my eyes again. “I’ve never done anything like that before,” I tell him.
“Well, if you hadn’t been there that guy might have died.”
“What? What guy?”
“After we did the Time Warp that guy started choking on an eyeball grape and you Heimliched him.”
“What’s an eyeball grape?”
“You know. Grapes that are decorated like eyeballs.”
I save the pictures Chelsea sent me to my photo library and scroll through some other pictures. I bring the phone closer to my face, blink, and look closer. “That is a fantastic Steven Tyler costume,” I marvel. I am such a huge Aerosmith fan. “That is great makeup. It looks just like him.”
“That’s not a costume,” Billy says matter-of-factly. “That’s Steven Tyler. You don’t remember being at his estate?”
“What? Doesn’t he live in Marshfield? How did we get there?”
“I know a guy with a helicopter.”
I scrunch up my face, hoping that will help squeeze memories out of my brain cells, but I got nothing. “Oh, wait. Did I cry on his couch?”
“For a little while. But it was a happy cry. You told him about how you lost your virginity to ‘Dream On.’”
“Ohhh noooo. I carved penises into all of his jack-o’-lanterns.”
“Yes, but in your defense, he didn’t say you couldn’t.”
I try to cover my face with my hands but end up smacking myself. “Ow.”
“You okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me what you need.”
I smile again. With my face. I think. “Mouth,” I say.
“Mine?”
I think about nodding, but then I remember that I never want to move my head. Ever. “Yeah.”
“You got it, Red.” He places his mouth on my mouth again. And then he parts my lips with the tip of his tongue and kisses me slowly and deeply, exactly the way I want and need to be kissed. The weight of his body presses me into the mattress and nothing hurts anymore. I no longer feel like a corpse, I feel languid and sultry. Except there’s that growing pressure between my legs. A gently throbbing ache. I want to engulf him with my vulva. But in my sleep, without moving or taking my clothes off.
“I am so fucking glad you’re still with me,” he whispers when he pauses for air. Then he kisses my cheek and my jaw and my neck.
I open my eyes. My vision is blurry, but his handsome, stubbly face comes into focus. His wavy brown hair and beautiful brown eyes. “Hey. Somebody drew a W on your forehead. For William ?”
“That’s not a W .” He grins and gently kisses my forehead. “That’s a butt. You said it was a portrait of my butt, in fact.”
“Oh. Your butt’s much nicer than that.”
“Thank you.” He kisses down my neck again, fondling and kissing my breasts over my shirt.
“Why wouldn’t I be with you?” I ask, shutting my eyes again because I have a clearer picture of him when my eyes are closed. My fingers find his hair, the back of his neck.
He’s breathing so heavily now. “Donna,” he exhales. “I know you don’t feel good, but I wanna fuck you so bad right now. It’ll be real fast but also real slow, I promise. I’ll barely take your clothes off and you don’t have to move—you can go back to sleep if you want. I just think I’ll die if I can’t be inside you.”
“Yes. I want that. Yes.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“Billy?”
“Yeah?”
My mouth started moving before my brain could catch up, but I think I know what I want to say. Before I can second-guess myself, I just say it. “I haven’t been with anyone else since we started doing this…” I am too tired to brace my self for his response.
“Yeah? Me neither, baby. It’s just you now.”
Oh, thank Christ. “Good. Put it in me.”
“Fuckin’ A. I will.” He carefully tugs at my sweatpants.
Sweatpants? I’m wearing sweatpants. They feel like big sweatpants. I definitely was not wearing these when I left my apartment. “Whose pants am I wearing?”
“I really don’t know,” he says as he continues to pull them and my panties down to my thighs. “When we were giving those tourists that late-night Freedom Trail tour you kept complaining that your jeans were too tight, and next thing I know you were wearing these sweatpants under your Continental army coat and you said you needed to go to an ATM because you gave Nelson your last five pounds.”
I have no memory of that.
And I don’t care because Billy’s hot, hard cock is already pressing inside of me and I didn’t have to open my eyes or move, just like I wanted.
He moans, and it’s so sexy. It’s too loud, but it’s so sexy how relieved he is just being inside me. “This okay?” he asks as he barely moves his hips. It’s so, so sexy.
“Very. Mouth,” I demand.
He kisses me, and I wrap my arms around him while he fucks me in slow motion. Or I guess this is what they call making love. It’s so good. My blood is pumping again, to the rhythm of his thrusts, and I’m coming alive. Billy is slowly fucking me back to life, and I didn’t have to ask him.
This is the part of being in a relationship that I’d forgotten about. Being in bed with someone, two warm bodies joining together with no big discussion, no fanfare. It feels like a dream. I don’t know what time it is, I don’t even know what day it is, I just know that last night was thrilling chaos and this is the sexiest kind of peace I’ve ever experienced. I never felt this connected to Trevor, ever.
“Why does this feel so fucking good?” he groans quietly. “I gotta move more. Okay?”
“Yes.” I rock my hips and squeeze my thighs together.
“I’m gonna come, baby,” he whispers.
“Come inside me, Billy. Don’t pull out. Okay?” I want to say I love you . I want to say so many things, and I’d like to think it’s just the hangover that’s preventing me from saying them.
Heat radiates through my body from my belly, and I have a deep, slow, expansive orgasm. Different from anything I’ve had before, but it happens right along with Billy’s shudder and heavy sighs. Time stands still, or maybe I fall asleep for a minute, or maybe this really was a dream.
“That was fucking awesome,” he says, kissing me as he slowly pulls out of me .
My eyes flutter open, and the way he’s looking at me, I think he felt it too. That deep, intense connection. That need to say I love you .
He opens his mouth to say something, pauses, then combs his fingers through his hair and says, “I’m gonna go clean up—hang on.”
He’s only gone for a minute, I think, but cold air caresses the skin on my bare thighs where he once was. When he comes back, he uses a damp towel to wipe between my legs, which feels even more intimate than what we just did. I love him. I open my mouth to say it.
But Billy says, “That was like we’re teenagers and your parents are in the next room so we had to be real quiet.”
Oh.
“That was hot, right?”
Oh.
“We never did that one before, huh?”
“Nope.”
“You okay?”
I am now, I think to myself . Thanks to you. I almost gave you my heart. And that would have been a terrible mistake. This is why you’re so good for me, Billy. Not because you’re fun and lovely and kind and generous and sexy and make me feel alive in a way I’ve never felt before. Not because I could imagine giving you my heart for the rest of your life and taking care of yours for the rest of mine. No.
You’re good for me because you remind me why I can’t. Why we just pretend. We make our scenes as ephemeral as life itself. Because it all ends. I lie here feeling like death, in the house of a woman who took care of a man’s heart, my patient’s, until the end of her days. But her days ended too soon, and with no one to care for his heart, it shattered. She didn’t mean for it to. That’s just life.
Thank you, Billy.
“Yup” is what I say out loud.
He twists open a bottle of water, chugs it, then sits on the bed next to me and brings it to my lips. “Can you lift your head to take a sip?”
I nod, raise my head a bit, and drink a little water.
“You good?”
I nod. A lie.
He gets up and looks out the window. “Gettin’ dark already. I’m gonna turn on the light in here, okay?”
“Sure.”
He switches on the chandelier and the light bulbs flicker. They won’t stop flickering. “Oh no,” I groan. “The lights.”
“What about ’em?”
“They’re flickering again. ”
“They aren’t flickerin’.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and then reopen them. He’s right. They aren’t flickering. I just need electrolytes, I guess. “Oh.” I pull up my pants—or Nelson’s pants, I suppose—and slowly, very slowly, sit up. “I’m gonna take a shower.”
“Oh yeah? You ever taken a shower here before?”
“No. But you ran the shower after the caulk dried, right?”
“Yeah. It seemed fine. I still think we need to get a home inspector over here, though.”
“I’ll take my chances,” I grunt out as I hoist myself off the bed and onto my feet.
“You want company?” he asks.
“No. I will take an Advil, though.”
I close the door to the bathroom and turn on the tap in the bathtub, adjusting the temperature of the water before pulling the lever for the shower. The water pressure is impressive for an old house. I brush my teeth and check my reflection in the mirror above the sink. I look exactly as good as I feel, which is not very good. No wonder Billy doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life with me.
Yeesh.
These are hangover thoughts.
I just need to wake up.
I let my clothes fall to the floor and step into the tub. The water is clear and hot and even though it feels like a hundred pinpricks against my skin, this is exactly what I need to get my brain and body out of this funk. The shower curtain billows, like air has been let into the room.
“Billy?”
No answer.
I peer around the curtain, but I see no one in here. The bathroom is slowly filling up with steam because there’s no ventilation. Billy’s right about bringing in a home inspector. If I end up selling this place I’ll have to anyway.
There’s no shampoo or soap either, so I just rinse off, giving myself a blast of cold water before turning off the faucets. I slide open the shower curtain, feeling a rush of icy cold air as I reach for a towel on the towel rack. The lights flicker off and on again, and I’m sure I didn’t imagine that.
Or maybe I’m not so sure of anything anymore.
Drying off my face and body, I grab another towel for my hair. Wrap my hair up in it. That was probably a bad idea, getting my hair wet, I am realizing, because I didn’t bring a hair dryer. I have no recollection of how we got here, but I’m guessing we Ubered. Or cabubered ? Why is that word in my head? I’m not ready to spend the night, so we’ll have to leave soon. Although I can’t assume that Billy’s going back to the apartment too, because apparently I can’t assume anything with him .
I go over to the counter, where I left a comb. The air is still steamy. I pull the hand towel from the wall hook, and just as I’m about to wipe the mirror, I watch in horror as an invisible finger writes the words TELL HIM in the steam on the surface of the mirror.
I freeze.
I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.
“Billy…”
The bathroom door flings open, and a chill runs down my spine, but Billy doesn’t walk into the room.
“Billy?!”
Still not there.
I look back at the mirror, and I see the reflection of a red-haired woman behind me—not me—it’s Lara. I spin around, but she isn’t there. I scream. “What do you want from me?!” I cry out. “We read you the letters! What else do you want?!”
“Donna?!” Billy comes running in.
I keep screaming.
“What?! What happened?”
“She’s here! She’s here!”
“Who is?”
I bury my face in his chest. “Lara! She was right behind me!”
“Donna, there’s no one else here.”
“Look what she wrote on the mirror!”
“Where?”
“In the steam! On the mirror! I watched her write it!”
“Donna…”
I do not like his tone.
“Donna, there’s nothing written on the mirror. Look.”
I turn to look. The steam has cleared. In the room and on the mirror. Which of course it did, because the door was open. “It said Tell him .”
He shakes his head, grinning. “Babe. You’re just seeing things again.”
Boiling hot blood heats my face and my ears. “Oh, of course I am. I’ve just been imagining everything, haven’t I?”
“You’re just hungover, that’s all.”
“But it said Tell him —I saw it!”
“I’m sure you think you saw it,” he says, so loudly I am sure he has awoken my ancestors in Germany.
“Don’t yell at me.”
“I was very much not yelling just now, which is my point exactly. You’re hungover, so all is not what it seems.”
Yeah. Exactly.
And then I hear a knock. Or a thud. Another knocking thud. Like someone’s banging against the walls from inside the walls. I suppose I’m imagining that too, but I look over at Billy, and his eyes widen. It’s so loud. Metallic clanging now. Everywhere. And I know it’s not my imagination that it sounds angry and Billy hears it too, and he’s scared.
“We gotta get out of here,” he says. “Put your clothes on.”
“What do you want?!” I cry out.
“It’s just the pipes,” he says. “I’m gonna hire a contractor, and we are not coming back here until everything’s fixed.”
I cover my ears and close my eyes. I am so tired. “Why is this still happening?”
I can hear Billy’s muffled, loud voice telling me to get dressed.
I do. He helps me get dressed again. I hear him tell me he’s getting an Uber.
The lights are flickering. All of the lights. “The lights?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “There’s a water pressure issue, probably. There might be a leak somewhere, affecting the wires. We gotta go.”
“My hair is wet” is all I can say.
“Keep the towel on!”
He tosses me my bag and my coat, takes my hand, and leads me downstairs.
I stop on the landing, let go of his hand, and say, “I have to use the Ouija board! I have to ask her what she wants me to tell him!”
“Are you out of your fucking mind—we are leaving this house right now!” he yells, and before I can run away from him he’s lifted me up into his arms and he’s carrying me downstairs and out the front door.
“What do you want me to tell him?!” I yell out to the house.
“Donna. Stop yellin’. There’s no ghost. It’s just you and me, all right?”
I guffaw at that. “Yeah. Sure. Just you and me and my colonial parents sleeping in the other room!”
“What?!”
“It was never just you and me, Billy! It was always us pretending to be someone else!”
His jaw clenches. His nostrils flare. I would find it hot if he weren’t such an insufferable man who refuses to see what I see and to feel what I feel and to know what I’m thinking without me having to explain it to him. “Let’s not say anything we’ll regret while we’re hungover, Donna.”
Thank God I didn’t tell him I love him while he was ejaculating inside of me. He could never love me the way Lars loved Lara. “Great idea,” I say. “Let’s not say anything at all.”
He sighs and shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Ohhhh, poor little misunderstood Billy.”
He wrinkles his brow at me. “Okay. Let’s not say anything.”
There’s a flash of headlights up ahead as the Uber turns onto the private road that leads to the house .
I slide into the back seat, lean into the side door, and put my bag in between us so there’s no chance our legs will touch during the ride back to the apartment. I huff and cross my arms across my chest, glaring out the window. I can feel Billy watching me from his side of the back seat. I close my eyes. All I see is the message in the mirror.
Tell him.
Tell him what?
What does she want me to tell Lars?
“Donna.”
The look on her face… I saw her—I saw her in the mirror.
“Donna, we’re home.”
I open my eyes.
We’re parked in the street in front of our apartment building.
I guess I fell asleep.
The towel is still wrapped around my head. We say nothing as we go inside and take the elevator up to the fourth floor. I rifle through my bag, trying to find my keys, with no luck.
“Lemme help,” he says, like he’s an exasperated dad and I’m his bratty kid.
I’m too tired to argue with him.
He pulls my key ring out of my bag immediately, like a magician.
“Thanks.”
“You want me to unlock the door for you?”
“Sure.”
He does. Then he opens the door and hands me my keys.
I start to go inside.
“So, you want me to give out candy with you tomorrow, or…?”
Pausing, I say, petulantly, “Don’t you have a big Halloween party to go to?”
“Usually, but I don’t have to go to that. I mean, unless you wanna go with me?”
“No, I’m definitely not up for it.” He’s just being polite. Or he just wants me to go with him to give him tips on how to pick up other women. “But…you should definitely go.”
“Oh.” He looks surprised and disappointed.
It almost makes me shut up. But I don’t. “I mean, it’s almost November. When’s your grandma’s birthday party? You need to win that bet. Right? You need a real girlfriend.”
He stares at me, blinks once. “Right. I do.”
I reach out to punch his arm. “Congratulations—you’re ready to date for real. I hereby pronounce you a graduate of the Donna Fischer Dating School. You get an A-plus, kid.” I try not to let my voice crack too much by adding, “Whoever ends up being your girlfriend is going to be a really lucky lady.” I pat his arm because I don’t seem to want to stop touching him .
“Right.” His voice has gone so cold.
I shiver.
“’Kay,” he says. “Well, happy Halloween if I don’t see you tomorrow, then.”
“Happy Halloween,” I say.
And then I close the door.