Social Experiment

19 | The Morning After

The photo above is Nathan, also known as Jessey Stevens :)
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I wake up when I feel a little sliver of light escape from the confines of my curtains and hit my closed eyelids. The feeling of being drawn out of sleep made me groan as I press my head further into my pillow and try to dodge the light on my face. I roll over in bed and accidentally throw my legs over the side before my body tumbles out of bed ungraciously. 

"Aghhhh," A strange noise comes from the back of my throat as my face presses against the hardwood floor after my fall.

With slow movements, I pushed myself onto my feet, but my head began to ache immediately. It was a dull ache by my temples that paired horribly with the feeling that my head was spinning in circles. I quickly sat down on my bed and take my head in between my hands to massage the temples in the hopes that it would alleviate the discomfort.

While I'm giving myself a temple massage, my phone buzzes from the bedside table erratically. I reach over and grab it to see a growing number of missed messages from Stephanie: 21 new texts from Steph, 6 texts from Cole, and 1 text from Brett. Below those, I had 5 missed calls from Stephanie and 2 from Justin, which I assumed was also Stephanie's doing. 

As I stared down at my phone in confusion, I couldn't help but think, what happened last night? I figured that a good start to finding out would be to look through some of my messages so I opened my phone and scrolled through my inbox. The first few messages were in all caps asking where I had gone, and then from there on, I found some pretty interesting content. 

Steph: Someone said they saw you and Nathan having sex in Brett's bedroom????? 

Steph: Some guys on the football team said you kissed Thomas at midnight... Is that true?? 

Steph: WTF???

My eyes were wide and jaw dropped at her messages. I knew that there's been plenty of rumors ever since I came back to school changed, but I had no idea they would go to that extent. Still, my mind was hazy about what happened last night, and I decided to check Brett's message. 

Brett: Where are you?

I checked the time stamp on the message and say 11:57 in the corner. My heart began pumping when I realized that he was trying to find me right before midnight, right before everybody kissed. And then with that realization came another one.

Nathan was my New Years kiss. 

Suddenly, the memories hit me like a truck. Me wanting to get away from Thomas but not being able to move, then Nathan pulling me to him and kissing me, and going to the park to talk, and then falling asleep on the couch downstairs. But if I fell asleep on the couch, then how did I get in my bed?

"Lauren," Coles sleepy voice came from behind my door before he walked in and rubbed his eyes. "Where's your Advil?"

I snapped out of my daze and looked up at him. "Um, I think there's some in the bathroom."

Cole nods but before he can shuffle out of the room, he frowns at me. "Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Just trying to remember last night," I admit sheepishly as I let out a discouraged sigh.