I could practically hear my roommate groaning.
“You were that close to fucking him and this is what happened?” she’d say to me.
I definitely needed new friends.
I tried to piece together the rest of the evening. I’d had a sip or two of whisky, followed up by a bucket of jelly beans. Then we’d been playing Running Pyramid, and I’d been very bad until I wasn’t, probably around the time my jelly bean sugar high hit, and at some point, we had been celebrating winning. Gabe’s dog had been jumping and barking and everyone had been laughing and after that I could remember lying down on the dog bed next to the puppy, who had been so tired and overwhelmed by the party that she’d put herself to bed, and I apparently had tried to do the same thing and now I could remember Gabe trying to get me off the dog bed, laughing as he did, while I kept trying to swat him away.
My stomach and heart both gave a lurch as the rest of my memory came back. Gabe had knelt down next to me—his face close to mine.
“Are you ready for bed?” he’d asked.
I must have nodded or snuggled in even closer to his puppy, who had let out a sigh of contentment, and I think I said that I would just stay there with her, but Gabe said that I couldn’t sleep on the dog bed and then he had put his arms around me and lifted me up against his chest. I wasn’t a small person—I was tall with lots of lanky limbs—and yet, he’d picked me up like I was the puppy herself and carried me into this room.
Into his room.
I vaguely remember some people clapping and hooting and hollering. Gabe had ignored them and put me on his bed. I’d crashed. Hard.
I’d flopped onto the mattress face-first, grabbing a pillow and holding it close. I could vaguely remember him taking my shoes off—I cringed at the thought of him coming into contact with feet that were probably very smelly—and then he’d left, closing the door behind him.
I had no idea what time it was. I didn’t have my purse or my phone. They were probably exactly where I’d left them—with my coat, in the guest room.
Why Gabe hadn’t put me there—with the coats—I didn’t know.
I realized then that the house was quiet. Mostly quiet. There was some noise coming from far away, but it was a hushed nighttime kind of noise, not the kind of noise that you’d expect from a party that was still going on. It sounded like a conversation between people. Maybe Gabe and a friend.
Swinging my feet over the side of the massive bed, I found my shoes, neatly sitting side by side.
Even though the last thing my body wanted was to leave the comfort of an extremely soothing and cozy bed, I couldn’t let Gabe give up his room—and I couldn’t let myself stay any longer. I was light-years away from what was appropriate behavior and I wasn’t sure how I was going to write this article without looking like a complete creep. If I’d hoped to dispel the stereotype of the female reporter getting her story via her feminine wiles, well, I was doing a shit job. Not that my feminine wiles had gotten me that far, but still. It was so unprofessional.
My tape recorder was still in my bag. If I wanted to talk about what had happened tonight—and I wasn’t sure that I did since it was so embarrassing—I would have to re-create it from memory, and right now my brain seemed to shrivel up at the mere suggestion that I might have to do some deep thinking.
That was a problem for my de-sugared, hydrated mind to sort through. First, I had to get out of there. Had to get my shoes on, find my purse and my jacket. I needed to call the taxi company I’d used to get here. I needed to get home.
Shoes in hand, I opened the bedroom door.
The noise was coming from the other side of the house, but it became pretty clear pretty quickly that it wasn’t Gabe. It was a woman and a man—but the man was British. Unless Gabe was practicing his Bond accent in the middle of the night with another guest, it seemed far more likely that he was watching TV.
That was confirmed when I crept toward the sound—which was also in the direction of the guest room—and found the distinct blue light of a TV illuminating the living room.
Part of me hoped that Gabe had fallen asleep, that I would be able to get out of there without him seeing me, but instead, the quiet dialogue stopped immediately, the image freezing on the screen.
“Hey,” Gabe said.
He was sitting on the couch. Alone.
He was still wearing what he’d been wearing at the party—a pair of jeans and a T-shirt—but he looked a lot more rumpled. As if he might have been lying down on the couch.