Page 32 of The One That Ran Away
Such a cliché, huh? Drunk at a party and making out with some guy’s girlfriend. It was his idea, of course. He asked me if I would tongue-fuck his girlfriend, and I was drunk enough on cheap beer and liquor to slam my lips against hers and go for it.
I wish I could say that kissing her was the thrill. It wasn’t. It was the excited cheers of a dozen men around us, their hands slapping together and the girl’s boyfriend receiving a million kudos. I don’t remember much about that kiss. Only that it happened, and I was too drunk to savor it.
Who was it? Was it a girl from one of my classes? Did she go to my school?
Do I care?
I know who I thought about for a brief second. When my lips touched hers, I instantly imagined it was Jess, the lesbian my best friend claimed had the raging hots for me.
Was that what it would be like to kiss her? To stick my tongue down her throat and get my fucking freak on?
I blacked out sometime after that. The next thing I knew, I was waking up on a couch with a raging headache. Two women hovered over me, one of them trying to talk to me while the other begged her to call for campus safety.
“Shannon?” I recognized that voice, yet it was so far away it might as well have been my mother’s.“Shannon Marie!”she would shriek.“Get your ass up right this instance!”To this day, I can imagine it was my mother. “Are you okay, Shannon? Do you need help? Are you sick?”
I slowly opened my eyes. It took a while for me to recognize Jess’s flushed face. What was she doing in a frat? How dare she not be drunk or hungover?
“Hey…” I groaned. “What happened?”
“No idea. Found you passed out here. Wanted to check on you and make sure you’re okay.”
Her friend piped up. “Had to beat away a few assholes trying to grab your tits! You need to get out of here!”
They both offered me their hands. I don’t know how long it took me to sit up, but when I did, I dry heaved into my lap.
“We’re calling campus safety,” Jess’s friend said. “This is ridiculous. What if she’s really sick?”
“Do you trust campus safety?” Jess said. “Last time a girl was found passed out at a frat party, they covered up all the nasty shit that happened…” She clamped her mouth shut when I looked up at her.
“What happened to me?”
They both shrugged.
“Seriously. Did someone fuck with me?”
“No,” Jess was quick to say.
“How do you know?”
“Because,” she continued, helping me up with one arm slung over her shoulder, “I’ve been watching you all night. You’ve been kinda hard to miss ever since we got here.”
“You? At a frat party?”
“I’m going to a football game next weekend. Checking off all the boxes before I graduate.”
They helped me out into the cool night air. I lived across the busy public street, in the new dorms and apartments that had been built a few years ago. I shared a four-bedroom apartment with Kelsey and a couple more friends. I should’ve called her to come get me. At least she had a car she could swing by with. Instead, these two girls dragged me across the pedestrian bridge and up the stairs to my door.
I remember Kelsey meeting us in my living room. She shrieked to see me in that state, and quick to admonish Jess and her friend for not taking me to the hospital instead.
Back then, I thought of her as a good friend. Now, I wonder if Kelsey’s problem was that Jess had helped me. I didn’t yet realize how much disdain she had for a woman who rarely said a word to her.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, as Jess and her friend put me to bed. Kelsey crowed in the background, already on the phone with someone. Campus safety, perhaps. I don’t know. I don’t remember. I didn’t care then, and I sure don’t care now. “I’m fine…”
Jess’s friend went out to smooth things over with Kelsey. Jess, meanwhile, pulled the covers up to my chin and gazed down upon me, head slightly shaking.
She was kinda beautiful, you know. Her hair was growing back in, and her shirt stuck to her sweaty body in ways that made me stare at her chest. A convenient place to set my gaze, until I realized it wasn’t kosher.
“You okay, Shannon?”
