Chapter 4
When Charlotte wakes up the next morning, the memories of last night come crashing down on her right away. Her body doesn’t give her much time to process them as her stomach clenches and her temples throb.
She didn’t have that much to drink, but she hasn’t gotten any younger lately. She reaches for her sleeping mask in the drawer of her night stand, puts it on, and tries to go back to sleep.
'Thank you soooooo much. Had THE BEST time. You?'
Charlotte grimaces and wants to start typing something, but as it dawns on her that she has no idea how to answer the question, she pauses.
Dropping her phone for a second, she presses her knuckles into her eyeballs for a sense of relief, but her stinging headache only gets worse.
Potent margaritas. She scoffs, and lets her head fall back on the pillow.
The next time she wakes up, it’s already dark outside and her body feels clammy. The covers are twisted around her legs so she kicks herself free, needing some space and air. Shit, has she really slept through the entire day?
She pushes herself up to fetch a glass of water and take care of her dry mouth, but the room starts spinning.
She grips onto the mattress to ground herself, breathes in and out, and gets up slowly.
Keeping one eye closed, she walks to the ensuite and fills her glass in the sink, downs it in one go, and fills it up again.
Stumbling back toward her bed, she finally allows herself to replay the events of last night. It’s an overwhelming amount of information and another bolt of lightning strikes her right between the eyes.
This isn’t working. She decides to kill it with an ibuprofen that she keeps in her night stand, and after shuffling back onto the mattress, she sits back against the headboard, knees up, clinging to her glass of water for dear life. Okay, she says to herself, so what has happened exactly?
She’d kissed Riley. Let’s start there. Or Riley kissed her—it doesn’t really matter, but she figures it was bound to happen at some point, with all their taunting and flirting. Big fucking deal.
Up next; the way she’d felt during the kiss, the way her mind and her soul had responded to Riley’s touches, the way her body knew exactly what it wanted… nope.
Nope, she’s not going to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. She’ll get back to that later.
Then; Riley’s rejection. Was it a rejection? Things had heated up quickly and Riley had hardly been unfazed, judging by the want dripping from her eyes and her rapid breathing. She could’ve had Charlotte right then and there, but she’d tapped out. Why?
The words slowly drift back to her. 'That’s not how I do things.' Charlotte squeezes her eyes shut, but Riley materializes in her imagination; she can’t walk away. 'I will teach you things about yourself that even you didn’t know.'
As the memory reminds her of what she’d done next, when she’d gotten home, she’s in a sudden dire need of fresh air.
She crawls toward her bedroom window and all but yanks it open.
Despite the cool air hitting her face, she feels dirty.
She hasn’t showered all day, which definitely doesn’t help, but the idea that Riley had wound her up so much she couldn’t stop herself from masturbating, thinking of her… It leaves a sour taste in her mouth.
She leaves the window open as she strides back to the bathroom, determined to wash it all away. She takes her toothbrush with her in the shower, where she stays for nearly twenty minutes.
When she feels clean enough, she steps out and dries herself off, frustrated that the shower hasn’t done anything to subdue her raging headache. Wrapped in a towel, she walks back to the bedroom, now pleasantly cooled down by the open window.
She closes it and lets herself plop to the side. Oof, she really shouldn’t have done that, she should’ve slipped back into a fresh set of pajamas first...
The sound of her phone ringing startles her awake. She’s confused about her whereabouts: her feet are near her pillow and she’s stretched out on the bed diagonally. She’s still wrapped in the towel too; she must’ve fallen asleep like that.
Her phone rings again and she hoists herself up, but her head feels stupid heavy. She vaguely registers Gabi’s name on her screen, closes her eyes and swipes to answer.
“Norwich residence, lady of the house speaking.”
“My god, Charlotte. Did you make sweet love to a steamroller?”
“Wh— what?”
She opens her eyes and realizes she is on a video call. Gabi looks somewhere between amused and horrified, and in the tiny rectangle that displays her own face she notices the way her hair clings to her from falling asleep right after her shower.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” she growls, angling the phone away. “Just tell me why you’re calling and go back to minding your own business.”
“You’re my business, actually,” Gabi says. “I was worried because you haven’t replied to my texts.”
Charlotte furrows her brows and swipes down the notification menu; she’s missed various texts from Gabi with an exponentially increasing demand to respond. She groans.
“That bad, huh?” Gabi asks, a hint of amusement still in her voice. “You seem to be the living example that hangovers well over the age of 30 last three to five business days.”
Charlotte whips her phone back around, holding it close to her eyes.
“Now listen here you bitch, if you keep bringing up—”
She suddenly pulls away, squints into the light, lifts a finger, and sneezes into her elbow. Loudly.
“Jesus Christ, Charlotte, my glassware just rattled.”
“If you keep— If you keep bringing up—”
She pulls away and sneezes again. And again.
“Uhm, so… have you considered the possibility that it might not be a hangover?” Gabi suggests carefully.
Charlotte sniffles, then scoffs. “Selling Tylenol and condoms doesn’t make you a doctor, Gabrielle.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, you just sneezed yourself back to factory settings. Go to bed, I’ll bring you some food.”
“I’m fine, there’s really no need to play the hero.” Charlotte’s whine is met with a challenging eyebrow.
“Alright. So then tell me, because I was going to ask anyway: what happened in the club bathroom?”
“You know what Gabi, I actually do feel kind of feverish.”
“We saw you leave together.”
“I think I’ll get delirious if I don’t hang up now!”
“Did you kiss or fight? Please. You can blink twice for kiss—”
“Oh, the pain!” Charlotte yowls, draping the back of her hand against her forehead like in a Victorian painting. “The tragedy! The end is near!”
She makes a theatrical choking sound and hangs up.
The rest of the day she spends in bed too, slowly coming to the realization Gabi might be right. Her nose clogs up and her throat starts producing increasingly unappetizing sounds. She keeps reminding herself to drink water, but can’t really do much more than that.
Her heart aches a little when Gabi, the absolute superhero that she is, does drop off a care package by her front door later that afternoon. There’s soup, tea, tissues, more ibuprofen, fresh juice, and tupperware with a home-cooked meal. That’ll get her through the night.
But the night stretches out, and she’s haunted by not only her body’s betrayal, but also by flashes of Riley chasing her through that damn bathroom. While she restlessly stares at the ceiling, she keeps telling her brain that she can’t deal with this right now, but it's futile.
The next morning Charlotte isn’t doing much better, and she’s forced to do something she’s never done before: she cancels her clients for the day.
That day turns into two, then three, then the whole week. And while her body slowly recovers, she can’t for the life of her figure out why everything feels so damn dark all of a sudden.
On Friday, her phone buzzes from a text: it’s Riley.
'Hey, I heard you came down with something? Hope you feel better soon!'
The text ends with a stupid, stupid flower emoji and it’s the most offensive thing anyone has ever said to her.
While Charlotte vaguely considers a restraining order because of this completely unreasonable behavior, she comes to the realization that at some point she will have to face Riley again.
Her breath catches—what if she’s given Riley the wrong idea?
She’s clearly reading into things, or she wouldn’t be reaching out like this.
Would Riley expect more? She can’t have her thinking she has a chance with her now.
It was just a stupid one time thing. Riley knows that, right?
But what if… what if she doesn’t, and the next time they see each other, Riley kisses her because she thinks they’re in some kind of situationship?
Oh god, she’s going to be humiliated in front of her friends, Riley is gonna put her on the spot.
She’s probably gonna try to be all cutesy and clingy and…
ask to be her girlfriend? Or something? And then she’ll have to explain and turn her down publicly?
Slowly but surely losing the battle to the demons in her mind, Charlotte spirals into multiple full panic attacks. It’s exhausting, the strain it puts on her body and the immense focus she needs to keep breathing when it happens.
Every time her mind brings up Riley, she drowns and drowns, surfaces for a few seconds, only to get pulled under again. She feels completely and utterly betrayed by her body and the loss of control she has over her thoughts.
It incapacitates her for a couple more days, until by Sunday night she figures: she should probably message her. Clear communication is key.
She grabs her phone and spends over an hour formulating her reply to Riley’s well wishes.