Driving Miss Catherine

Recurring Nightmare

Cat awoke to the sound of Seb snoring. Annoyed, she covered her head with her pillow and tried to get back to sleep. She was hung over, and every sound made her want to scream, and the morning sunlight pouring through her window only made it worse. 'I need some coffee,' she thought.

And then it hit her. Seb was snoring loudly because he was in her room, in her bed, right next to her. She sat up too quickly and sent her head spinning; not looking at him, she swung her legs over the side of the bed so her toes touched the cold wood floor. She took a deep breath and tried to recall the events that had led to these circumstances...

There was alcohol, and lots of it. There was that kiss, and then Cat climbing over the table, pushing her engineering homework aside. There was more kissing (a lot more), and Seb mumbling something romantic in German that Cat didn't understand, yet still found shockingly alluring. And then there was...

'Wow,' she laughed to herself. 'I've slept with the chauffeur.' She hopped out of bed and found her robe and slippers, without glancing back at Seb, and made her way out to the kitchen to make some coffee. She ignored the trail of clothes left behind from the night before and headed straight for the medicine cabinet to find something for her pounding headache.

'God, I've really slept with the chauffeur. I'm like Sybil from Downton Abbey!' Cat stopped opening the bottle of aspirin and laughed to herself before she continued getting a glass of water

"What's the quietest way to make coffee?" she said to herself out loud and looked around the kitchen.

"I would suggest the French press, although you still have to grind the coffee first." Cat froze when she heard Seb's voice and slowly turned around.

"French press?" She asked. Cat had only made coffee using a Keurig, so she didn't know how to make coffee, let alone use a coffee grinder.

"Let me do it," Seb smiled tiredly and set about making them some coffee, so Cat sat at the table with her head resting in her hands. She couldn't think straight, and really didn't want to talk about it with Seb, not yet at least. She tried to remember what exactly had happened the night before, but there were blank spots. Seb sat down across from her and slid her a mug of coffee. She didn't look up until most of her coffee was gone and the caffeine was starting to work. The first thing she noticed, once her eyes focused, was how guilty Seb looked. Or perhaps it wasn't guilt, but he was upset about something; it was not the face of a man who'd just gotten laid, that's for sure.

"We don't have to talk, if you don't want," Cat mumbled and avoided eye contact, resting her head back on the table. "You obviously feel guilty about it, or regret it, or something, so..."

"It's not that, it's..." he looked at her, and realized she didn't know. He almost considered not telling her. "Do you not remember saying Heikki's name in the midst of everything? Actually, you kind of screamed it and then fell over and passed out."

It was worse than Cat imagined; she thought he felt bad about sleeping with her, and she might have been okay with that. But yelling another guys name- a creepy ex boyfriend at that- was beyond embarrassing. She started laughing quietly, but Seb thought she was crying, so he put his arm around her.

"It's okay, I don't hold it against you. He was really hot, I'm sure I'd scream his name too if I were into guys," he was trying to make her feel better, but ended up sounding oddly homoerotic. He closed his eyes and tried to think of a way to come back from that, but Cat sat up suddenly.

"You know, it's weird. I hadn't thought about him for three days (which was my new record), until we went to see Kimi. I wondered if he knew him, isn't that crazy? Why would Kimi know Heikki? Just because they're Finnish doesn't mean they know each other." Cat leaned back in her chair and laughed, eventually Seb started laughing too. She realized now nice his eyes looked when he smiled. "At first I thought of calling him, or even texting him, just to see if he was okay. But lately I haven't thought about him."