woke up with a start, a chilling sweat streaking down her forehead and her heart thumping hard against her rib cage. Her vision swam before her eyes as they struggled to make sense of her surroundings. The taste in her mouth was strangely fruity. She didn’t know where she was or how she had ended up there. All that she knew was that her friend had been hosting a party – evident from the hangover brewing inside her head – and that she was cold. She sat up slowly, clutching the duvet to her. As the room came into focus, her racing heart stopped. She wasn’t in her bed or even in her own bedroom. Instead she found that she had woken up on the king-sized mattress in one of her best friends’ bedrooms, the sunlight streaking through the gap in the partially closed curtains barely grazing the furniture. A memory for her friend telling the party-goers that this room was strictly off-limits materialised under a haze of fog. Her mind flipped back to the realisation that she was cold and with a sense of dread she let her trembling hands slowly peel back the duvet. Her body went stiff and her blood ran cold as her heart plummeted, for beneath the cover there wasn’t a stitch on her. No, no. No. This could not be happening. With her eyes she frantically searched for the clothing that she had been wearing the night before. She could see the leather jacket which she had left on the chair in the corner for safekeeping when she had arrived and she could just make out the outline of her ankle boots amongst a pile of her friend’s. That part of her undressing her remembered. She hadn’t even had a drink when she had tossed them hap-hazardously into the room knowing full well that a party at this particular location meant that she wouldn’t be returning home until the early hours of the morning – or at least until she had rid herself of her hangover. What she couldn’t find during her limited search was her dress… or her underwear. Where was her underwear? She was pretty sure she had still been fully dressed at eleven when the house had suddenly filled to capacity and the party had really started. Whomever she had been with had left a trail of an all-too-familiar scent that her nose refused to place and they had seemingly already left taking their clothes with them.
All too soon she was alerted to someone walking past the door, her in all her duvet-covered glory for anyone to discover. Harry strolled into the room, spooning the contents of a bowl of cereal into his mouth and clad only in a pair of boxers. He gave her a nod and a broad, knowing smile. The notion made her feel sick to her stomach. They hadn’t…? She yelped as she pulled the duvet tighter across her chest. “Why am I naked?” “Because you decided to take your clothes off.” His words were matter-of-fact and they hit her like a wrecking ball.
She could feel her frustration growing, and a harsh whisper tone took over, “Why am I naked in your bed?”
“That will be because you decided to have sex in it last night.”
Her face turned a ghostly shade of white, her forehead still oozing a chilling sweat that dripped relentlessly down her face and down the back of her neck. A sickly lump formed in her throat and she could almost taste last night’s alcoholic intake coming back up. She willed it to stay put. She would never be able to live down the embarrassment of spray painting Harry’s sheets all the colours of the rainbow, and she was sure Harry wouldn’t be best pleased with her chosen ‘art’ medium.
She gulped down hard. “Did we….?”
He nodded as he licked the inner curve of the spoon. He placed the bowl on the dresser and sat down on the bed just in front of her.
The room started to spin and the urge to redecorate the bed spread with her stomach contents was overwhelming as she gripped the duvet even tighter in order to ground herself. Whilst Harry was her friend he was just that: her best friend. They may have been kindred spirits and soul mates but not on a romantic level. She had never even thought of him as anything more than her friend – the thought had never even occurred to her. He was too much like her brother. Besides, there was someone else she had been feeling drawn to recently. Not that there was much chance of anything happening with that now, she thought sadly. Her relationship with Louis was a weird one. They would stay out all night partying away, drinking each other under the table, flirting heavily and be tethered to each other’s lips but come the time to leave he would see her off back home, make sure she got in safely and then leave. They would never get any further than her front door and by the next time she saw him he would act as though nothing had ever happened, barely offering her a smile. It was weird and complicated and just something they never talked about. She wasn’t even sure if he felt the same way about her or if she was just there when he felt vulnerable and needed some comforting from a friendly face. If she tried to analyse it any more it would surely add to the headache currently hammering away at her head and make the room spin even more.
Her brain was on overdrive, her tongue tied as she finally managed to splutter, “How?”
“Well, , when a man and a woman like each other very much sometimes the man will whack out his p-“ He was struck by her hand whipping out, a sound backhanded slap landing right on the side of his skull. He rubbed at the stinging burn that came after it in an attempt to sooth it.
“I know how that happens, Harry. How did we end up…?” She couldn’t bring herself to say it outright knowing that the second she did it would solidify the deed even more.
“Oh, you mean how we end up doing the horizontal tango?” His grin was wicked and made her feel all the more sick.
“I swear, Harry, call it that again and I’ll vomit right over you.” She put her hands in her head, breathing deeply. Her chest had become tight, her breathing restricted.
“We were pretty magnificent, if I do say so myself.” He was having far too fun much torturing her. He continued talking but she couldn’t hear a word of it, muttering to herself as she tried to make sense of the information he had given her.
“How did we end up here? Why did we end up here- and why with Harry of all people?”
“Hey, I heard that!” She couldn’t tell if he was genuinely insulted or not.
She shook her head, “I’m sorry but you’re like my brother – my younger brother and you just don’t do that with your brother.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You’re definitely not like my sister now.”
“How could I have been so stupid? And why would we do it here of all places? I can never come back here and have tea with your mum knowing full well I ended up naked and having sex in her son’s bed in the bedroom right above her head.”
“Yeah, I don’t think she’d appreciate knowing that either. I didn’t exactly appreciate being shoved out of my bed in the middle of the night by two drunkards who clearly had no idea that I was even in there.” He shuddered.
“Oh my God, Harry. I’m so sorry. Hang on – wait! You just said you were shoved out of your bed by two people. If I didn’t sleep with you then who did I end up in your bed with?”
“That would be Louis.”
“Oh my fucking God. We did not.”
“We did.” The voice was muffled but it rang out as loud as a thousand drums.
’s eyes widened as she leaned to the right and peered over the side of the bed to see Louis curled up in a ball on the floor, his eyes shut, his body half covered by her missing dress, her underwear abandoned on the other side of him. “Now if you could please shut up my head is banging.”

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