lover/fighter - Finnick Odair

Chapter 47 - Awakening

There is a dull throbbing behind her forehead that slowly torments Rhea out of sleep. Opening her eyes is painful as the morning sun is shining mercilessly down on her through the glass walls. She sits up with a groan and has to squint her eyes for a while until the bright light stops blinding her completely.

As she tries to get her bearings, she immediately notices the smell of chlorine in her nose. The explanation for this comes naturally when her eyes finally adjust to the sunlight, and she realizes where she has spent the night. Immediately afterwards, this also becomes noticeable in her stiff back, which appears to resent her for having been denied a soft bed.

Rhea looks around in a daze and if she felt better, she would certainly like it here. Right now, the glistening of the water in the sun is making her eyes hurt, which doesn't make the pounding in her skull any better. It is warm, almost uncomfortably humid, but when she feels for the collar of her top to open it, she finds nothing.

She looks down at herself in utter confusion and realizes that she is only wearing her trousers and bra. She pushes the headache aside and looks around searching. The first thing she finds is the figure of Johanna, who is obviously still fast asleep in the sun on a cushioned lounger right by the window. The fact that she is wearing even less, namely nothing but a pair of panties, quickly causes even more confusion. The dress she was wearing yesterday is now crumpled up under her head, apparently as a pillow substitute.

Rhea squints her eyes again to make sure she's not dreaming and shakes her head in irritation. When she opens her eyes, everything is just as it was before. How the hell did she get to this point? She remembers getting involved in Johanna's drinking game, but that's all. How she ended up here and how she lost her clothes is absolutely beyond her.

Fortunately, she is too tired to be ashamed of anything, but the thought of what Elaine would say if she knew how the evening had gone reminds her of another unpleasant circumstance. She had to work today. She had even chosen it herself, because she had actually wanted to use that as an excuse not to stay too late, which didn't work out.

Rhea pats down her trousers for her phone but realizes that Tess's designer piece doesn't even have pockets. Her gaze wanders back to the lounger where she woke up. Her jacket is lying there, which she picks up, but there's no phone here either. The bag she had with her is also nowhere to be seen and she assumes, or rather hopes, that she has left everything in Johanna's apartment. As the sun is still low, it still seems relatively early, which gives her hope that she will make it in time, even if she is not sure if she will physically survive a day at work.

Walking around here in a public space half in her underwear is becoming increasingly uncomfortable. She searches her surroundings for any trace of her missing blouse, but finds nothing, at least not until she happens to notice the wafer-thin fabric floating barely visible in the water.

"Great," she murmurs to herself before kneeling at the edge of the pool and carefully bending over the water to fish the garment out of the pool without falling in herself. Unfortunately, it looks more like a wet cleaning rag, even after Rhea has wrung it out. Her blouse is of course soaking wet, but Rhea would probably have put it on anyway if it wasn't also completely transparent due to the wetness.

She is anything but happy about it, but unfortunately there is nothing she can do about it, so she reluctantly slips the jacket over her shoulders instead. The blazer only has two buttons down the front which, even closed, leave a very noticeable cleavage considering she's only wearing her bra underneath, but it's better than nothing.

Her shoes are also gone, and she can only guess that this was probably the first thing she left behind during her night's adventure. All right, she doesn't really want those instruments of torture back, but she must be casting a really strange picture the way she looks right now.