In My Hour of Need

Chapter 19

When I woke up that morning, I swear to God, I thought I was dead. My head was throbbing, the entire car was spinning, and my body wasn't cooperating with me in any way. The date was- oh, who the hell cares anyway; I had no idea at the time which date it was. As I tried to regain consciousness, I noticed where I was. Oh, right, lost somewhere in France. I couldn't remember anything from last night that happened after we started drinking. I was actually afraid that some of it might come back to me, because I did a lot of stupid shit while I was drunk. Rubbing my eyes, I noticed Junior at my side, and that none of us had our shirts on. "Oh, good god", I thought to myself, as I started looking for them. I crawled to the front seats, but couldn't find them there. This wasn't like an enormous car if that's what you thought, so frankly, I had no idea where we could have left them. That's about when I saw that the door on Junior's side was open. I sighed. Great, all our stuff – including our shirts – might have been stolen. I heard Junior waking up from the backseats. He scratched the back of his head, and looked at me. "Morning", he mumbled. I could hear that he was just as hungover as me. "Morning", I replied, "Our stuff's gone". He yawned. "What?" I was still searching, just in case some shithead hadn't stolen all our money as well. "Someone must've came into our car last night, 'cause the map, our shirts, and maybe our money is all gone, and the door's open", I explained. "What about the car keys?", Junior asked. "No, they're here", I said, nodding in the keys' direction, still trying to find money on the floor. I didn't recall leaving the door open, or forgetting to lock it, but then again, not a single detail about last night had appeared in my head yet.

We ended up walking to the closest gas station with the stuff we had in our pockets, which wasn't much: about five bucks, a paper clip, three sleeping pills and a hair tie. I bet we looked like hobos, stumbling around with no shirts, smelling like pizza and alcohol. The money we had were American anyway; we couldn't use them in France, so we were as good as broke, in the middle of nowhere. We couldn't drive back to Paris either, because we were hungover, and in no state of sitting behind the wheel for four hours. We just decided to find a table outside of the gas station, since we had no choice but to wait until the hangovers ended. I gazed into Junior's eyes. "What?", he said. I shook my head. "Nothing", I said, "Do you remember anything from last night?" He thought for a while. "I remember some kinda role play", he said, "I think you were a slave". Alright that was enough; I didn't need to hear any more of that. "Yeah, thanks, that's good, Junior", I said. At last, we have had enough of waiting around, and just decided to drive back to Paris.

I was surprised we made it back to Paris without crashing or being stopped for a control by the cops. The two of us went back up to our hotel room. I fell down on the bed. "My head hurts", I said. Junior agreed. He lied down next to me, and handed me a box of painkillers. "Thanks", I said, and pulled him closer to me. Lying there, cuddling, made me realize how much I actually loved Junior. I wondered how I could have ever made it here without him. Sure, he seemed helpless at times, but without him, I would have just given up. I would still have been at the table outside the gas station, with no money, no shirt and a hangover. "Junior?", I said quietly. "Yeah?", he replied. "I hope you realize how much you mean to me", I said, holding him tighter. He escaped from my grip, and climbed on top of me. Each of his legs were on the sides of my waist, and he was looking right into my eyes. "How much?", he asked. I smiled. "More than you can imagine", I said, and gave him a kiss on the lips. He blushed, and it was the cutest thing. Carefully, he came closer to me, unsure of how I would react if he kissed me back. So I kissed him instead. We cuddled for a while, and later just falling asleep like that.