Summertime Sadness

Chapter 7

I wake up in Marina’s arms. I lay in bed motionless for a few moments, remembering everything that happened last night. I smile at the thought and turn around in the bed to look at her. She’s still asleep. She looks so peaceful when she’s sleeping, so beautiful. I notice that her face is covered with lipstick marks…as was her neck and her chest. I gently wipe some of it off of her cheek and since she was asleep, I plant one small kiss on her lips. Marina begins moving around, she looks like she is about to wake up so I close my eyes and pretend that I’m asleep.

She shifts around some more and then I hear her start to panic. An “Oh my god,” escapes her mouth. She begins to shake me and I pretend to wake up. “Lana,” she says. “Lana, what happened last night?”

I open my eyes and stretch. I couldn’t tell her anything. I had to pretend that I was drunk last night as well, drunk enough to get with her. Even though I was actually sober enough to remember every single detail that’d happened last night. “What?” I ask.

She sits up on the bed and looks at me. “What happened last night?” she repeats.

I shrug and close my eyes again. I needed to pretend I was hung-over. I didn’t want to have to lie to Marina, but I also didn’t want her to know I had feelings for her and make our relationship complicated. She keeps shaking me.

“Lana, what did we do? Did we have sex?” She asks.

I open my eyes again, this time I pretend to be more alert. “What?”

She points to the ground next to my side of the bed. “Your clothes are all over the floor.”

I blink and look at the floor. My clothes were, indeed, on the floor. And I remember taking them off and throwing them there as well. Marina didn’t remember that though. I look at her in surprise. “I don’t know. Did we?”

                She shrugs and looks unnerved. I try as well as I can to hide how upset I am. It hurt knowing that she didn’t see me in the same way as I saw her. I mean I already knew that she was incapable of having feelings for me but still. She acted as if having sex with me was the worst thing she could have ever possibly done. And on top of it all, we didn’t even have sex. But I couldn’t tell her that. I wanted to tell her something, but I couldn’t say a word. Marina holds her head and walks out of my bedroom. I sit up in my bed and sigh.

I look into the mirror that sits on top of my dresser. An unsatisfied face covered with lipstick marks stares back. My reflection looks gloomy and dirty; which were the exact things I was feeling. I decide to take a quick shower and change into some clean clothes. When I finally leave my bedroom I walk into the kitchen and see Marina texting on the couch in the living room. I wished she would have paid attention to me instead of whoever she was texting.

“Want some coffee?” I ask.

“Sure,” she says without looking at me.

I bite my lip and pour coffee into two mugs. I wish I could tell Marina that we didn’t have sex, but that would mean explaining everything. Maybe explaining myself wouldn’t be as I thought it would be. Nothing could be as bad as this; I could almost feel the tension between us, it was awful. “How do you take it?” I ask smoothly.

“Black’s fine,” she replies and puts her phone down.

I pour a bit of milk into one of the mugs and bring them over to the living room. I pass Marina one of the mugs and she smiles. “Thanks,” she says.

I lean back on the couch and look at her. Only now I notice that she wears the same thing she wore last night; which was the shorts that I’d put her in and her bra. “You might want to put on some clothes,” I say.