We went to bed after a long night at the pub, me and this new girl Breanne, with braids and a red bandana, and she gave me head, right into my subconscious, and we did the thing, from top and bottom and behind, and it was good. Real good.
We talked about getting brunch the next morning. We were both drunk and naked and hungry—but my messy bachelor pad had no food.
There’s a certain late-night hunger that even sex can’t satisfy.
Toxic sunlight shocked us awake. I looked at her and she looked at me and neither of us looked as pretty as the night before.
She didn’t say a word but got up and got dressed and I saw the scars and tattoos on her back that formed a lovely pattern. I lurched up and leaned against the bedside table, struggling to stay stable.
"Still wanna do brunch?" I asked, my stomach gurgling.
She smiled. A soft smile that meant something, but I was too dumb and young and hungover to understand.
We went to brunch at this quaint little, red-roofed restaurant by the river and the strawberry-stuffed French toast was good, and so were the mimosas despite my ice pick headache.
“So, what do you do?” I asked, unable to recall the small talk from the night before and trying to make conversation.
“Well, I just graduated law school,” she said, finishing her mimosa. “Got an interview at a law firm in Harrisburg this week.” She shook her empty glass at the waiter, then looked back at me. “You?”
“I—” I thought for a few moments, but I had nothing. No ambition to match a lawyer’s. So—for once—I just told the truth. “I drive for a pharmacy, and I dabble in filmmaking.”
She smiled in a language I couldn’t quite decipher, and the waiter brought us each another mimosa, and we finished our brunch. We split the bill and she left a generous tip on the table.
We stood in the parking lot after the meal, my belly full and nauseous, flies buzzing around the macadam. She stared at me as if waiting for me to say something, to do something. But the early sun was a heat lamp. The alcohol bleeding out of my pores. I was never good with women when I was hungover, or sober. It was a fruitless combination.
She finally kissed me on the cheek and walked away and I looked at her ass and flowing hair and wished she was my girlfriend. Or my wife. Or my mistress. Or, hell, even my lawyer.
But she never looked back. She had lost her appetite for a mid-twenties loser.
That captured my attention. Oh, but how bleak!