Girl Code

I think I need to stop drinking. It was beginning to mess with the way my girl downstairs chose the men she liked. I’m a normal functioning human being but add alcohol to the mix and I’m down for bad decisions all the way. I lose my filter, my dignity and all common sense in the department of love making.

And that may be normal for a twenty-three year old who just can’t say no to a good margarita or rum sour, but as an A student at Whitmore University, it was bad. Like really, really bad.

So, you could imagine how absolutely freaked out I was when I woke up in Elijah Hart’s bed. Why freaked out? Oh, I don’t know, he totally wasn’t my best friend’s boyfriend who broke up with her only a short few months ago. Or maybe she was the one who broke up with him, the details were a bit hazy with the massive headache I’m currently sporting.

I was chosen for the Ambassador Program, which basically is a glorified reality TV show about the students of Whitmore, our daily lives, our routines, I could drone on and on. I knew I had to keep my legs closed or else it might ruin my chances at proving to other overachievers that this school was the best choice for them. That was the main goal of this program after all.

And yet, here I was stark naked, sitting up in a bed that wasn’t the one I was assigned, with the memory of a goldfish, not able to recall how I got into this mess. Next to me snoring without a care in the world, is Elijah. God, how could he sleep at a time like this?

Vodka would be the death of me. Literally, because Lisa would hunt me down and kill me if she ever found out about all this.

How could I have been so stupid?

Drunk, a small voice in my head screamed. You were drunk.

I gripped the sheets trying to convince myself that I wasn’t actually naked in this bed and was just in my underwear. I couldn’t be naked. Right?

Last night, I was wearing the silk underwear that made me feel like I was floating on air down there. The fabric just held and kissed my lips the right way. I’d worn them with the intention of getting lucky last night.

Fuck! I did get lucky, just with the wrong guy. And yes, I was still very much stark naked underneath these sheets.

I scratch my head trying to piece together if I’d really slept with Elijah Hart last night and how it happened. Bits and pieces came flashing back like a bad drive in theater show. Then he stirs and I stay as still as I could, just watching him.

He places his hand around my waist and I try my best not to melt at the touch as my vagina activates once again. His hand was as big as a tree trunk and I’d usually wake the guy I’d slept with the moment I woke up for another round or two before I inevitably snuck out or kicked him out, but Elijah being my best friend’s ex, made it ten times worse for me to even think about doing something like that, again. The sex wasn’t even the biggest problem I was facing right now. Not one bit. It was the fact that the clock on the night stand, had a seven and two zeros.

What did that mean?

It’s seven o’clock, duh! There’s no way a clock could go to seventy.

Okay, it meant the cameras in the common areas, IE. the hallway outside, the kitchen and everywhere else there were cameras would go live and I’d be trapped in this room with no way to escape without the public possibly knowing what happened behind this door.

“Morning Beautiful.” I hear a deep, sultry voice rasp, as the hand, still nestled on my waist rubbed a soothing circle into my side.

God, his voice in the morning was like birds singing. It would have been a welcomed tone had it not been coming from Elijah’s mouth.

“Elijah.” I say, while placing my two hands on his arm and pushing gently, trying my best to get the branch he’d rested on me a while ago off of me. “Let go of me.”

His face is still hidden, engulfed in the soft pillows and for a second I think he’d falling asleep again, when he suddenly whips his head up in my direction. He does it with such a force that I wince thinking of his neck and how it almost snapped.

“What are you doing in my bed?” He has the audacity to ask, like I just crept into his bed for the fun of it. His breath smelt of whiskey and something fruity and I could only imagine how much of a distillery I must smell like right now.

“I thought you’d have those answers.” I say honestly back. We stare at the other for a moment as the clock turns from a seven, a zero and a three, to a seven, zero and a four. His gaze is one of confusion and contemplation. I could practically see the gears turning in his head as he manually searches his brain for the answers to our predicament and how we got here.

“We had sex last night.” He says, simply as if coming to terms with the revelation his brain is giving him.

“Please, state to obvious.” I reply, the sarcasm dripping from my throat.

“You were the one who stumbled into my room last night.” He shoots back, clearly his recall was better than mine as I was still running a blank on the events that transpired last night. Surely, I didn’t. Something else must have happened. And yet my brain was bringing nothing back to the surface other than bits and pieces of the night before. I remember drinking with the other Ambassadors, Lisa and a few other students from Whitmore after our soccer team won against Silver Sands University.

“I must have been really drunk to have slept with you.”

“Why’d you say it like that?” He asks, furrowing his eyebrows, only to realize that this was a bad idea as he winces in pain, his own headache must have been bounding his ears off. “You make it sound like it was a bad thing to sleep with me or something.”

“It is.” I reply, slowly shifting so that I’m still covered as he hangs his feet off the bed taking a significant portion of the sheet with him.

“And yet you stayed in my bed.” I point to the clock without saying a word and he follows my fingers to look. He curses under his breath as he reaches for his discarded boxers on the floor to cover himself, before he rises from the bed. “And here I thought you loved it so much last night you were waiting around for another go.”

“Sorry to stomp all over your hopes and dreams but I’m essential trapped here until nine PM tonight.”

“Don’t you have class?” He asks, looking back at me as he grabs a clean towel and heads into his bathroom. He was in fact right to ask that and as a medical student, missing a lecture could be dire. It was like missing three weeks of class by missing one simple lecture.

“Shit, I need to get out of here.” I say, searching the floor for the dress I’d worn last night. I find it and my heart sinks. The back part that once housed the zip that reached halfway to my butt, was now hanging on for dear life by a small piece of fabric at the bottom of the dress. There was no way I would consider risking going out like that. A back out dress was one thing but this, went beyond a simple back out. My ass and everything else would be on full display if I walked out of here like this.

Even if I wanted to claim to the cameras or the other eight Ambassadors who shared the same spaces as us, that I just slept in Elijah’s room without, you know, sleeping with him, the dress and the faint smell of sex would suggest otherwise.

“You could join me.” Elijah suggests, indicating to the bathroom and I stare at him like he’s grow a few more heads since he’s been standing there watching me.

“One mistake is enough for one semester.” I reply to him, now searching for my panties.

“Damn, mistake, got it.” He says, shaking his head with a small smile on his face. “Definitely won’t be back for another one night stand it seems.” I grab the nearest thing I could find, which turned out to be his pillow and fling it at his head missing him, barely as he closes the bathroom door only peeking back out to stick his tongue out at me. I’m not quick enough to grab another pillow as he ducks back into the bathroom this time for good.

I weigh my options carefully, settling back on the bed to get my panties back on. I could go out in the sheets or in Elijah’s clothes and risk everything including my friendship with Lisa, or I could miss class and stay here until the cameras turned off tonight. The latter option was seeming more and more impossible as I still needed to eat something. Water would be covered as I could get it in the bathroom if I was bold enough to drink straight from that particular tap. Both options had their pros and cons but which one was the best? Heck, if I know.

The room is silent apart from the humming air conditioner in his room. It was early September and the weather should have started to chill, instead it was still blazing hot with summer heat. Global warming was who I had to thank for that.

I looked around the room as if noticing it for the first time. It screamed boy but not in the way you’d think. There were only a few shirts on the floor minus the clothes from last night accompanied by the occasional odd sock. Laundry piled up in the corner, which was expected, even I couldn’t be bothered to do my own laundry when the weekend came around. He had a few bits and pieces of trash lying around, like a hot Cheetos wrapper and some empty soda cans. But what I couldn’t unsee or fathom, was the blue Orchid sitting under a small, specialized UV grow light and was a perfectly thriving, like it was in a green house or flower field. Next to it sat a tiny plastic misting bottle, both on top of a dresser far enough away from the edge, so that the enamel plant pot wouldn’t drop and break if anything were to disturb it.

I stared at it, my brain short-circuiting for a second. Elijah Hart; the guy who just nonchalantly admitted we had sex while nursing a hangover, and was currently about to shower thirty feet away from me, took care of a notoriously finicky, high maintenance plant.

The shower turned on in the bathroom, the sound of rushing water muffling the hum of the air conditioner. I looked from the orchid back to my ruined dress. My heart was still hammering against my ribs, a toxic mix of panic, hangover nausea, and a weird, unbidden spike of curiosity. Who the hell keeps an orchid in a college dorm room? It required patience. It required a gentle touch. Two things I never would have associated with the guy who just used a tree-trunk-sized arm to pin me to his mattress and fucked me senseless last night.

Making up my mind that I was going to be getting out of here I step down from the bed. I padded over to the dresser and found a few shirts that looked like they’d fit me just as well as the dress would. It made me accept the fact that Elijah was huge and more sculpted than I initially thought. I knew for a fact the blue t-shirt I held in my hand fit him like a glove with no space for a crumb to slide down into it. I hoist the shirt up over my head tangling in the fabric for a second or two before I finally found the holes for my limbs and head.

There, now I had something to wear out of the room but couldn’t just walk out of here. As I said before that would ruin my reputation and my friendship. So, like if I was in a movie and in slow-mo looked towards the window. It had to be the best option besides the door. I opened the window to its full height and looked down. The second floor of the building looked higher when you were looking down.

At least I wouldn’t quite fall to my death I thought to myself. I may break a few bones though.

I hadn’t realized the shower had stopped or that behind me Elijah stood in just his towel, water still dripping from his hair, until.

“You’re not actually thinking about climbing out of there, are you?” I hear Elijah’s voice behind me ask. I almost fall out the window in shock and surprise. I had to hold on for dear life to the sill of the window.

I freeze, hoping that if I stayed still enough, I might just disappear.