The Affair

Chapter 13.1 - A Disconnect

Sunday, June 26, 2022, 8:17am

The next morning, Fallon wakes in her bed with a raging headache and a dry mouth. Lifting her head from the pillow, she looks across her bed and into her vanity mirror positioned across the foot of her bed. The left side of her face was rather red from being pressed into the pillow all night, her hair was in disarray, and she had a bit of drool on the side of her mouth. Off put by her appearance, she looks down to her body and notices that she was still wearing her romper from the party.

"Oh god, what happened last night?", she nervously thinks to herself, "The last thing I remember was stepping outside after the cake was cut.".

Holding her throbbing forehead, she turns to the small nightstand to the right of her bed and sees her phone and pink tumbler.

"Please be water...", she says with a raspy voice.

In desperate need of water, she brings the tumbler to her lips and begins to chug the liquid for several seconds. To her relief, it was water and she feels refreshed after a long and generous drink. She then picks up her phone and sees that she had three missed calls and four unread text messages with time stamps each around 10:00pm. She had one call and one text message from Camille, two missed calls and two texts from Mr. Reiner, and one text from Dylan.

She opens the text string from William and reads his messages first:

Mr. Reiner (10:27pm): Dylan just texted me that he left your apartment. Is everything ok?

Mr. Reiner (10:36pm): You must be in bed. Please text me tomorrow when you wake up. Goodnight, bunny.

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Reiner!", Fallon thinks to herself, "I don't remember coming home!". She hastily texts him that she was just now waking up and that she had a headache but was overall okay. She then moves on to her message from Camille:

Camille (10:19pm): Hey girl, I just wanted to make sure you made it home safe and feeling ok. Colin just got word from Dylan that he left your apartment but I wanted to check up on you. Text me tomorrow please!

Fallon was excited to read her message, she had really enjoyed speaking with Camille at the party and was even more excited when Camille had asked to exchange numbers. "Oh my god, that's right! I made a friend!", Fallon happily thinks to herself, "She's the coolest girl I've ever met, and she wants to be my friend!". Fallon excitedly replies to Camille that she was now awake but had an awful headache and that she enjoyed hanging out with her at the party. She then pulls up Dylan's message:

Dylan (10:50pm): Hey Fal. I just made it home. I know you're asleep right now but I wanted to text anyway. Please call me in the morning. We should talk.

The pain in Fallon's head begins to throb harder as she tries to recount the events of last night. "He says we should talk... I must have embarrassed myself in front of him.", Fallon thinks to herself, feeling panicked by what Dylan had to say.

Fallon takes off her romper and bra and tosses them into her laundry basket before slipping into one of William's cotton undershirts that he had let her keep from their first night together. Feeling a tad bit more comfortable, she takes another big drink of water from her tumbler before grabbing her phone to call Dylan. The phone rings three times before Dylan picks up.

"Hey, Fallon.", he flatly answers.

"Hi, Dylan.", she says, sitting on her bed.

"So... How's your head?", he asks.

Fallon sighs. "Throbbing.".

"Have you taken any Tylenol?".

"No...".