A long, hot shower didn’t do as much to clear my head as I hoped. A large part of my brain was still out cold and the other part was having to lug it around like deadweight. My balance had improved some, so navigating the path back to the bedroom wasn’t quite as difficult as the walk to the bathroom had been. I threw on a sweat suit, and then I ventured out into the living room. I wasn’t yet sure I wanted to know what had happened during all those missing hours, but I was sure my roommates would tell me.
“It lives,” Marcia said drily from her seat at the dining table when I shuffled in. Gemma glanced up from the fashion magazine she was reading with a grunt.
“Yeah, it lives. More or less,” I said, sitting very carefully on the sofa to make sure it was where I thought it was. I felt like I had a skewed perception of the world, as though everything was just a bit off from where it seemed to me to be. I noticed as I sat down that one of my red stilettos lay on the floor in front of the door. There was no sign of the other one. Maybe Prince Charming had snagged it when I lost it while fleeing the ball and he’d use it to find me again. “Would anyone mind filling me in on what happened after midnight? ’Cause I’m drawing a blank.”
“Oh, it’s quite the saga,” Gemma said. “I’m not sure we have time to tell the whole story.”
“How about we start with what should be the easy part: How did I end up at home and in bed?”
Marcia got up from the table and came over to stand in front of me. “When things got out of hand at the party, Owen and Philip dragged you out of there. Owen called for a car to drive us home. Owen and Philip got you up the stairs between them, and then Gemma and I threw you in bed.”
I nodded. “Okay. That makes sense. Well, the coming home part does. But what do you mean by things getting out of hand?”
“Ha!” Gemma’s response was somewhere between a snort and a laugh.
“Come on, y’all. What happened? I’m missing a lot of time here, and I don’t know why. I remember kissing Owen at midnight, and after that everything is a big blank.”
“Let’s just say I never had you pegged as a mean drunk.” Marcia tossed her hair, which still held some of the Marilyn curl, and stalked off to the kitchen.
“But I wasn’t drunk,” I protested. “I had one cup of punch, which seemed pretty watered-down even to me, and then a glass of champagne at midnight, and I don’t remember drinking all of that.”