a friend from college-jemily

hungover sunday

JJ's eyelids snapped open. Her head was pounding and her memory was struggling to return. She slowly scanned her surroundings. To her surprise, they were familiar. She had somehow made it back to her bedroom last night. She looked down at her wrist, the screen of her watch read 5:50AM. "Fuck," she whispered under her breath, she pulled open her bedroom door and said "fuck," a little louder. "Anna," she opened her roommate's door to reveal her roommate dead asleep in her boyfriend Matt's arms. "Fuck, Anna. C'mon, we're gonna be late!" JJ frantically gathered Anna's training gear and threw it at her. Anna groaned as she stirred under her covers. "We have like five minutes, Anna. Let's go!" JJ was almost yelling now. That got Anna moving. She groggily stepped in to her training sweats and pulled the navy blue top over her sports bra. The two teammates jogged down to the dining hall where they were supposed to meet the rest of the squad for breakfast before their practice.

"Hey, what happened last night?" JJ asked Anna, still unable to recall much of the party.

"Um, not sure, honestly. You seemed to be having a really good time dancing with some girl, so that's when Matt and I snuck out. When I got back to the room, you were already asleep in your bed. You don't remember?" Anna asked, a little bit concerned.

"No. I mean, nothing bad happened, I don't think. I just can't remember," JJ shrugged. A throbbing pressure was building behind her eyes. "Okay, obviously I'm hungover as hell, my eyes feel like their gonna fall out of my head. Practice this morning is going to be fun."

 A Yale dining hall omelet seemed to be exactly what the doctor ordered for JJ that day. She scarfed down her breakfast and chugged her electrolytes solution. When practice began at 7:00, JJ actually felt alive, feeling the ball at her feet better than she had ever before. As the sun continued to rise over the trees along the side of the field, JJ felt a warmth fill her bones that soothed her aches from whatever it was she was doing last night. When practice came to an end, JJ gathered her gear and prepared for the walk back to campus along the wooded path.

"Jareau," her coach called her over before she left. "Great work today." She smiled at JJ and JJ smiled back. "Thanks, coach." 

That made her giddy, a huge smile plastered on her face for the rest of the day. After grabbing some lunch, heading to the bookstore to pick up all her course materials for the semester, and going for a run with some of her teammates, JJ was exhausted but excited for the start of classes the next day. She shuffled her stack of books from the common area in to her bedroom and set them down on her desk, she pulled out her class schedule and notebooks and stuffed them in to her back pack so they would be ready in the morning. She moved over to her closet to pick out her outfit for the next morning. 

She had done this the night before the first day of school for as long as she could remember, a little ritual that helped calm her nerves and curb her excitement. As she set out her outfit over her desk chair, the corner of her eye noticed a gently folded dress laying on her closet floor. It was the dress she wore to the party last night. She knew there was no way she would have been able to fold her clothes up so nicely after a night of drinking. Usually she wasn't even able to change out of her party outfits before passing out on her bed and falling asleep. JJ wracked her brain to try to remember what the heck she did last night, but she was still drawing a blank. She went over and picked up the dress. She let the folds fall out as the skirt of the dress swayed against her thighs. As she did that, she heard a tiny crinkle as a folded up piece of paper fell from the dress on to the floor. JJ was puzzled as she set the dress down and bent down to pick up the paper. She unfolded it to reveal a handwritten note. 

The swooping cursive letters read: "Great meeting you tonight!" -EP

"who the hell is EP? And what the hell happened last night?" 

author's note: imagine meeting emily prentiss and not remembering. couldn't be me.