The 0714 Files: File #1 Inferno (Remake 2)

Chapter 19

September 28th, 11:21 P.M EST, Winchester, Ohio

"You wanna go upstairs?"

I double take at the girl I've danced with for the last twenty minutes. Everyone else around us is in every sense of the words, "dirty dancing" while she's got her arms over my shoulders and my hands are on her waist. I'm too drunk to try anything else, and even then, I'm barely able to keep standing. More times than I'd be proud of if I was sober, I've actually rested my forehead on her shoulder while she's laughed in my ear at our awkward drunkenness. It seems okay though, because she's done it in return as well.

Her green and black flannel is tied around her waist, white camisole strap is drooping off her shoulder, and her jean skirt is just the slightest bit intriguing. For some reason though, I'm surprised to hear her shout what are magic words to every drunk person at this party. I couldn't have guessed that in a million years, our terrible attempt at slow dancing whilst laughing between each other at our state of intoxication would lead to her wanting to go so far as that with a complete stranger.

If I'd known Ark was going to throw me a party on the last day I was staying at his house. I might've decided to forgo staying with him and checked into a motel instead.

Especially if I'd known if it was going to end with me staggering drunkenly up the stairs to the guest room he'd set up for me with said girl in tow. Too drunk to reason that a rebound this soon after that entire ordeal with Grace yesterday morning wouldn't do anything for me.

It wasn't for lack of trying though. I did try getting out of this, tried politely declining the offer for a "farewell" party. Reasoning with him I better get on the road since we're still a full nine hour drive from the city and I need a full eight hours for when my first shift starts at the station tomorrow morning. If they'll even allow me to, because I've still tried calling them multiple times yesterday and today to be answered with the same busy tone.

"Hey! They told you to not even come in, I think they'll live if you come in a little later than planned," he argued when he could see me becoming antsy to leave when people started arriving unexpectedly in the early afternoon. None of them were people I knew; everyone was undoubtedly his friend through one way or another. Since he'd taken off straight out of high school for the military, and then became a P.I. a few years later, he's met a lot of people. We grew up on the same street in Syracuse, and all through middle school and high school, were pretty tight knit. Even if he was two years older than me and long gone when I was only in my sophomore year.

He'd handed me a bottle then, "Kennedy. Don't pull that, 'I'm fine,' crap, okay? I know you two were together a long time and how she was this last month. She left you a wreck, and now you have to get over her like you were never with her. But you're getting ready to start a new chapter too! You need to let loose one last time before you become a party buster. It's just a few drinks and then you can get going, I swear!"

What a load of shit that was.

I didn't even learn the girls name before we went upstairs, she just came up to me when she noticed I was sitting in a chair in the corner. Quietly observing the party without much interest, sipping cold beer from a solo cup. The number of how many I've had by then, I wasn't sure. Ark had replaced the cup in my hand with a full one so many times by now. It was well over a dozen, I'm sure. The music I didn't recognize, I don't know if even Ark liked this, or if someone else helped themselves to the stereo and turned it on.

"You're looking lonely," she'd commented on my obvious state of mopping. The alcohol amplifying the breakup instead of dulling it like I'd intended when I finally gave in.

"Haven't been to a party in about... seven months," I'd confessed, to the wavy, strawberry blonde haired girl who'd decided to pull up a chair next to me. Her pink lips spread wide in an earnest smile at the joking tone of my words. "I also just broke up with my girlfriend yesterday."

She looked towards the packed crowd of bodies as if in thought. "You wanna dance?" she proposed, standing and crossing her arms over her chest. "Dancing with a stranger won't hurt you," she teased, and before I knew it. I was setting the cup down and following after her to the crowd of bodies.

Now she's sitting on my lap in the unmade bed upstairs, lips pressed to mine and the strong smell of beer on her breath filling my nose. Her hand are fumbling with the button of my jeans impatiently, and when she realizes she's too intoxicated to undo them herself. She settles for undoing the buttons of my white short sleeve button up instead. I shrug the shirt off with some difficulty in trying to not throw her off, or topple over from that in my state. "Haven't been this wasted in a while," she admits aloud when her swollen lips leave me. She grinds her waist against mine where we sit on the edge of my bed.

"Used to party back in high school," I slur the words as I tell her, she sloppily reaches for the bottom of her camisole and pulls it up. Revealing the light pink bra she's wearing underneath that I've seen the straps to since we met only a half hour ago. "Ark used to throw parties like these even back then."

She chuckles, "Yeah... he definitely knows how to throw a kegger," she slurs too. She presses a little harder into my shoulders, and we fall backwards onto the bed. She then breaks into a fit of giggles, "Oh god!"

"What?"

"This is so stupid," she laughs into my bare shoulder at the statement, and I do too. "I can't even think straight..." she then whispers and suddenly, even through the alcohol. My brain sobers enough to put on the brakes and really think about what we're about to do.

"Hey... I don't even know your name?" I ask her then, beginning to doubt if we should be doing this.

"It's Annabelle," she hardly gets her own name out of her mouth.

We... can't... my mind eventually gets the words out through the haze. "I think... I think you should go back downstairs, Anna," I shorten her name when I fear I also won't be able to pronounce it right in my state.

"What?" she pushes up and straddles me. Her jean skirt is hitched high up around her butt and shows off the matching underwear she's wearing underneath. If I could even get hard through the alcohol, I probably would. That's when I finally realize—

"I don't even have a condom," I tell her. Fully changing my mind now and hoping the excuse will be enough.

She sits back and stares down at me, "Oh... Well..."

I don't even let her finish, "We really... shouldn't."

Her lips form a pout, it'd be cute if it weren't for the fact even in my state, I think she's just trying to get her way. But I didn't escape one bad relationship to get a girl whose full name I don't know yet pregnant.

She ended up climbing off me, putting her shirt back on, and heading downstairs without another word when she realized I was serious. I'd finally looked at a clock for the first time in hours then and saw just how late it'd become. At this rate, Ark was right. I'm going to be late to my first shift after all.

I went to bed immediately then. Not even wasting the time to get undressed the rest of the way, I just kick my sneakers off and crash into the pillow. Marvin and Raymond are going to kill me . If the hangover I have tomorrow morning won't do it itself. Going to have to drive another nine hours like this, I bemoan in my head.

Maybe it's good we came upstairs and almost fooled around. Who knows how much longer I would've stayed up if I hadn't?

Ark busts into the room a few minutes later, checking to see where I've run off to. But I'm already passed out, the alcohol making falling asleep easy when thoughts of Grace started coming to mind. He just shuts the lights off in my room and actually cover my half-undressed form with the comforter. He was always like the older brother I didn't have; he once admitted to me how he saw me as the younger brother he'd always wanted. Even in his time in the military he made sure to write and check in on me to ensure I wasn't becoming stupid in his absence.

"Get some sleep man. You're gonna have a long day tomorrow," his voice reverberates in my head through the sleep.