Anything But Practical

3. Aiden

I awoke the next morning to the sun streaming through the blinds and a fierce headache throbbing in my temples. My throat was parched, and when I tried to move my limbs felt leaden with fatigue. For some reason I had fallen asleep on the floor with only a thin blanket covering me. Not quite ready to get up yet, I rolled over and buried my face in my arms in a vain attempt to block out the light.

I hadn't been this hungover in a long time—not since I was a teenager, at least. God, how much had we ended up drinking?

We.

Francis!

"Ow!" I sat up so suddenly I banged my head on the coffee table. Memories of the night before came flooding back in a rush, and I felt my stomach quite literally turn over in a mixture of elation and fear. I'd had sex with Francis. Holy fuck, we'd actually done it. This was the real deal. Oh, God, what the fuck had I done?

I had been fantasizing about this morning for ages. In my imagination we would wake up in bed together, our legs entwined as we kissed lazily between the sheets. When we finally disentangled from each other I would cook Francis breakfast in bed, since I knew how much he loved my cooking. And after that? A shower, where we would talk and laugh and shampoo each other's hair before getting off again.

There were already so many things wrong with this picture it was difficult to know where to start. For one thing, the futon was still folded up in the couch position, since we hadn't bothered to put it down the night before. If my memory served, I had allowed Francis to take the futon in a drunken gesture of chivalry while I slept on the floor, which explained the stiffness in my neck and why I'd hit my head on the coffee table sitting up.

This would have been fine—not perfect, but fine—except for the fact that Francis was nowhere to be found.

"Francis?"

My ears rang in the ensuing silence. Lurching unsteadily to my feet, I tugged yesterday's boxers on and performed a quick sweep of the apartment, ducking into the bathroom and opening the only closet just in case. It was useless. The apartment was empty, and Francis' shoes were gone from beside the front door.

"Shit. Shit! "

I dove around, knocking things over in pursuit of my missing cell phone. When I finally managed to locate it in the pocket of my discarded jeans there was nothing on it. Not a single missed call or text notification from the man in question, nor from anyone else.

Without thinking, I dialed Francis' number and began to pace, heart pounding erratically in my chest. After what felt like forever the phone went to voicemail, and I collapsed back onto the futon and smothered my face with my hands.

This was bad. The whole situation felt utterly surreal. I couldn't be certain I hadn't just dreamt it all, since this was exactly the sort of thing I did dream about. And with Francis gone, there was no way to prove it hadn't all just been my imagination.

But no, that wasn't entirely true. The empty beer bottles were still on the table, and my t-shirt and jeans were strewn around the floor where I'd left them. Even the condom wrapper, torn in two, lay discarded by my feet. Francis may have been gone, but the evidence of what had happened, what we'd done, was all around me.

It wasn't a one-night-stand, was it?

Francis had certainly left as if it was, but somehow I couldn't accept that. I had told him I loved him. Kissed him. Made love to him. Yes, we had been drunk, but there was no way he could possibly mistake my feelings for him as anything else, one-sided though they undoubtedly were.