Bite Your Tongue

10:07 A.M.
Korinne;;

Searing head pain woke me in the morning. It seemed that I’d promised my body to never drink again, and now that I’d broken that promise, it was pissed and exacting revenge in the form of slowly ripping my brain apart. Or at least that’s what it felt like, anyway. I opened my eyes slowly and was relieved to see that my current location was almost completely devoid of light. Wonderful darkness occupied ninety-eight percent of the room, with light laying claim to just a small square underneath the not-quite-closed blinds.

I blinked a few times, trying to get my bearings. Somehow this room felt familiar to me, but I couldn’t recall why. I could barely make out the shape of a desk and some things that might have been shoes strewn haphazardly about near the door. I searched through my memory for some sort of indication as to how I’d ended up wherever I was, and when nothing surfaced, I started to panic. Where the hell am I? I started to sit up and was quickly stopped by a realization that hit me like a ton of bricks.

There was a muscled arm wrapped around my waist.

Instantly, memories came rushing back. Wine. Brian. Strawberries. Brian. Everything was a blur—a painful, wonderful, surreal blur. I remembered being closer to Brian than I’d ever been to anyone. I remembered our bodies pressed together, flashes of discomfort; his lips on my neck, my chest, everywhere. I remember my head spinning and my hands shaking and my mouth whisper-begging for more even though it hurt like hell and tears were stinging at my eyes.

Holy shit, I thought. I had sex with Brian last night.

How could I have forgotten that, even for an instant? I was suddenly hyperaware of him—of the warmth of his slumbering body mere inches away, of the shivery-delightful feel of his breath on my neck. For a few seconds I just lay there, letting shock wash over me. My first thought was that I really needed to stop drinking. My second thought started off as What have I done? and rapidly snowballed into an avalanche of self-doubt and over-analysis. Had I let him take advantage of me? Maybe he hadn’t really been drunk. Maybe he’d just been horny and seen my poor lapse in alcohol-resisting judgement as an opportunity to get some ass. Maybe—

You need therapy. And possibly some solitary confinement.

It couldn’t be that hard to fake being drunk, could it? He…he could have…

Brian is not a rapist, Korinne.

Even if he’d been really and truly intoxicated, who’s to say that he wouldn’t regret what had happened? Our already complex relationship had just gotten about five trillion times more complicated. He wasn’t supposed to want me. He was taken, technically. He was going to have a baby to take care of pretty soon. This was just going to make things worse for both of us.

I had to get out of here. I needed time to think without the distraction of Brian right next to me. Slowly, I lifted his arm off of me and replaced my presence with a pillow. Brian groaned and shifted slightly, but thankfully, he remained asleep. I slid onto the floor, waited for the dizziness to subside, and began to search for my clothes, pausing every couple of seconds to glance at him and make sure he hadn’t woken up. It took me only a few minutes to find everything and get dressed, but in the dark, with my worry level slowly rising, it felt like forever, and by the time I was slowly edging the door open, my panic level had risen to an alarming state.

I wanted to run from the house, but I didn’t know if Mrs. Haner was there or not, and I certainly didn’t feel like explaining why I was fleeing from her son’s room in the same clothes I’d been wearing last night. I tiptoed down the hall and paused at the top of the stairs for a full five minutes, listening. The house was absolutely silent—if anyone else was here, they were dead asleep. Quietly, I made my way down the stairs and out the front door. Then I broke into a run, just in case Brian had woken up and decided to look for me.

My house, from the outside, looked just as silent as Brian’s. I tried the front door; it was locked. I went around to the back door and tried that entrance, only to discover that entrance was locked too.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I muttered. How the hell was I supposed to get inside? Decompose myself into mist and slip through the cracks in the door?

Grumbling, my head still pounding, I started toward the tree outside my bedroom window. I remembered Brian using it to come and wish me happy birthday right before we’d started dating, so it couldn’t be that difficult to climb. I stood and appraised the tree for a moment. Several of its branches were low enough for me to grab, but none looked sturdy enough to support my weight. The most promising branch was at least two feet out of my reach. I sighed and prepared myself for the possibility of falling and breaking some bones. With a wild flying leap that must have looked comical from a distance, I jumped high enough to grab one of the lower branches. Before it could snap I grabbed another, pulling myself up within reach of the sturdy branch. Somehow I managed to maneuver myself into a sitting position on it and a neighboring limb, which placed me at a convenient distance from my window. And by some stroke of luck, the window was open slightly.

“Oh, thank God.”

I inched close enough to open the window the rest of the way. A part of my thumbnail nearly died in the process, but I told myself I’d lament that near-loss later and instead dropped onto the floor of my room to catch my breath. The pain in my ribs had been coming and going for some time, and now it was back. I suspected that having sex and climbing trees probably weren’t part of the recuperation plan I was supposed to be following. Apart from that, the hangover, my throbbing thumb, and a few small cuts and scrapes from the trees branches, though, I was fine. When the fire in my lungs and chest started to fade away, I got to my feet with the intention of going to find a band-aid—one of the cuts on my palm was starting to bleed.

My attention was quickly diverted, however, by the sound of running water in the bathroom. Frowning, I waited and listened as the water was shut off. A minute later, Elias emerged with the bottom half of his body wrapped in a towel, his hair dripping wet. He jumped when he saw me, surprise registering on his face.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“What the hell are you doing in my room?!”

His eyes lingered on the open window. “Did you just climb in through the window?”

“Answer the question!”

“Your shower is a zillion times better than mine,” he said, like it was the most obvious truth on the planet. “And hey, I asked first. Where were you?”

“Nowhere,” I said quickly. I pushed past him and went into the bathroom to look for a band-aid.

“Last time I saw you, you went looking for Brian for some reason,” Elias continued.

When I didn’t respond, he came to stand in the doorway. I ignored him and proceeded searching.

“Korinne. Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.”

“Then where were you?”

“I told you, nowhere.”

Finally, I located the box of band-aids and put one on my hand. As my headache persisted, I made a mental note to add aspirin to my bathroom arsenal.

“Isn’t that the dress you were wearing yesterday?”

“Of course not,” I said, pushing past him again to go and close the window.

Elias was silent for a moment. Then: “Oh my God.”

“Get out of my room.”

“Oh. My. God! Korinne!”

“Shut up!” I turned toward the closet, hiding my red face, and started looking for a change of clothes.

“Are you blushing? Oh my God, you’re blushing. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out of my room.”

He started to chuckle in disbelief. “Holy fuck, my little sister had sex—”

“Get out of my room!”

Over the noise of Elias’s incredulous laughter, I heard footsteps approaching on the stairs.

“Shut up,” I hissed at Elias. I didn’t want the entire damn house to know.

The footsteps turned out to belong to Delia, who poked her head cautiously into the room.

“Is everything okay?” she asked, eyebrows raised. “I heard yelling.”

“Korinne had sex,” Elias blurted out.

“SHUT UP!”

Delia gaped at me for a few seconds before closing the door behind her. “…Are you serious?”

“Yeah. She went looking for Brian late last night, and well…I guess she found him.”

“Elias, I’m going to kill you! With something sharp and pointy!”

“Hey, I’m just trying to help ease the mood. You seem pretty freaked out.”

“Yeah, well, you’re helping about as much as a shipment of cigarettes at a ‘Quit Smoking’ convention. Get out.”

Rolling his eyes, he left. Delia immediately converged on me, her eyes wide.

“Did you really…you know…”

“Yeah.”

“With Brian, right?”

“Yes, Delia. With Brian.”

“Sorry. Just trying to keep all the facts straight.”

“It’s fine.” I sank down onto my bed, running my hands through my hair. Delia looked at me with concern.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I said, truthfully. “I’m kind of…freaking out.”

“Why?” She looked genuinely confused. “I mean, it’s Brian.”

“I know, but…” I sighed. “I feel like it was a mistake.”

“You love him, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Then it’s not a mistake.”

I had just opened my mouth to refute her statement when the house phone rang. I nearly jumped out of my skin. My heart skipped a beat, and my hand trembled as I reached for the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Maddie.”

Oh thank God. I’d been so scared that it was Brian. I didn’t know how I was going to face him after this.

“Sorry to call the house,” Maddie continued, “But Elias isn’t answering his cell phone. Is he home?”

“Didn’t you spend the night here?”

“Nah. My mom wanted me home by midnight so we could have our own Thanksgiving celebration.”

“Oh, okay. Hold on.” I got up stuck my head out into the hallway. “Elias!”

“I’m in the bathroom!” was his muffled reply.

I was still kind of irritated with him. for how annoying he’d been earlier, so I decided to have a little fun.

“You might have to call back later, Maddie. He’s in the bathroom at the moment. With explosive diarrhea,” I said loudly.

“WHAT?!” Elias screeched from somewhere down the hall.

“Ew,” Maddie said.

“Yeah. The turkey just didn’t agree with him for some reason.”

“KORINNE!”

Maddie made a disgusted noise. “Tell him I’ll call back later.”

“Okay.”

I hung up the phone and turned back to Delia, who was giggling.

“You’re evil.”

“I know.”

After the giggles died down, we sat in silence for a moment.

“So…you guys were safe, right?” Delia asked.

“What?”

“He used a condom, right? Or are you on birth control?”

The answer was right on the tip of my tongue. The ‘yes, of course we were safe’ was ready to be vocalized, like it’d been waiting in the back of my throat until this very situation arose. But in an instant, a wholly terrifying instant of uncertainty, I realized that I wasn’t absolutely sure. I just didn’t remember. And that, more than anything I’d worried about so far this morning, completely freaked me out.

“SHIT!”

“What?”

“Oh no. Oh no no no no no.”

I wasn’t on birth control. I’d never had a really super-serious boyfriend before, so there’d been no point.

“Korinne? You’re turning white,” Delia said anxiously.

“I can’t remember.”

“What do you mean, you can’t remember—”

“I don’t know if he used a condom or not! I just…I don’t know!”

I got up and started to pace around my room, unable to sit still any longer. I couldn’t focus on anything but the grave mistake I might have just made. There was a very real possibility that we hadn’t used any protection. I could get pregnant. I could be pregnant, right at this very moment; I could end up like Zoe—

“OH MY GOD, I DON’T WANT TO END UP LIKE ZOE!”

“Calm down!” Delia was on her feet, following me. “You’re not going to end up like Zoe.”

“YES I AM! WE MIGHT NOT HAVE USED A CONDOM, AND WHEN YOU HAVE SEX WITHOUT CONDOMS, YOU GET PREGNANT! SHIT! SHIT SHIT SHIT—”

Delia grabbed my shoulders and shook me until I stopped shouting.

“Have you talked to Brian?”

I shook my head, feeling dangerously close to tears.

“Well, you should. He might remember.”

Her sensible words calmed me somewhat.

“Yeah…he might…”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

Delia studied me carefully, probably to make sure I wasn’t going to start freaking out again.

“You’ll be okay by yourself?”

“Yeah. I’ll just…go talk to him. If he’s awake.”

“Okay. I’m going to go check on Johnny—the poor kid drank himself practically into oblivion and passed out behind the couch.”

With Delia gone, I headed for the shower. I needed at least a good half hour in which to compose myself.

Because once I talked to Brian, I was probably going to freak out all over again.

+++

11:17 A.M.
Brian;;

I wasn’t the only hungover one at the breakfast table. My mom was suffering, too, her head in her hands as she stared disdainfully at her coffee. In the background, on the TV in the living room, was an episode of Spongebob Squarepants. I tried to watch it, to keep my mind off of things, but it was no use. All I could think about was Korinne.

Waking up to find her gone had been disappointing. I didn’t blame her, though—once I’d remembered last night’s events, I wasn’t quite sure what to think. And I knew she would be just as confused as I was. She was probably off hyperventilating somewhere, and I felt like an asshole. I hated myself for not having better self-control, for not avoiding the complications that usually stemmed from drunken sex. In a way I wanted to apologize, but I didn’t want her to think I regretted it, because I didn’t. I loved her. And even though a lot was still fuzzy and garbled in my mind, I knew last night had been one of the best nights ever.

I just hoped that it hadn’t ruined everything.

“It’s too bright down here,” my mom declared suddenly. She grabbed her coffee and stood up, pausing for a moment to get her balance. “I’ll be in my room until the sun goes away.”

“Okay.”

She left, and I was alone with my thoughts once more. For ten minutes, I debated the pros and cons of calling Korinne.

Pros: I would get to talk to her.

Cons: She would probably think I was a psycho stalker, since I’d already called her cell phone and hung up three times.

Sighing, I shoved the phone away from me and went to heat up another microwaveable burrito. I snatched one out of the freezer and ripped the wrapper off, taking out my frustration on a frozen snack food, and threw the burrito into the microwave. A combination of misery and hangover nonsense weighed my body down. I wanted to go back to sleep, but that would require shutting my brain off, and I knew that would be impossible if I went into my room. Even thinking about going into my room triggered thoughts about Korinne. I felt like a pathetic loser and I wanted to slap myself.

The phone rang, jolting me out of my thoughts. I jumped and snatched the phone off of the table. I didn’t check the caller I.D. to see who it was; I just answered, hoping it was the one person I wanted to talk to the most.

“Hello?”

“Hey!”

It was Zoe. I resisted the knee-jerk urge to beat my head against something sharp. She’d been in Las Vegas all week visiting relatives, and I’d hoped she would be having so much fun she wouldn’t think to call. But of course, she always seemed to be able to find the time necessary to ruin my day.

“Hey,” I said. The microwave beeped and I retrieved my burrito. The small roll of beans and cheese looked a hell of a lot more appealing than this phone call.

If she detected any note of loathing in my voice, she didn’t call me out on it. “How was your Thanksgiving?!” she continued cheerfully. “Mine my okay; my mom’s being a total bitch, but you know, what else is new—”

“I can’t really talk right now, Zoe.”

“Why not? Are you hungover? You sound hungover.”

“Yeah. My mom threw a party last night.”

“Really? That must have been fun. I ate dinner with a bunch of my mom’s relatives, and they all wanted to know about the baby—”

I started to tune her out and pick at my burrito. I’d eaten about a quarter of it when I heard the doorbell ring. I dropped my plate onto the table and practically flew down the hall. When I opened the door, Korinne stared back at me. I instantly hung up on Zoe. We looked at each other for a few seconds.

“Can I come in?” she asked eventually.

“Sure.”

I stood back slightly; her arm brushed against mine as she walked inside and my heart gave a mighty lurch. I closed the door and took a deep breath to compose myself before following her into the kitchen.

“Is everything okay?” I asked. I stayed near the refrigerator, keeping a safe distance from her, but it didn’t really help. I could still smell the apple scent of her shampoo; could almost imagine the wet texture of her hair if I were to run it between my fingers.

Korinne raised an eyebrow. “Uh, sure. Yeah. Everything’s fine.”

“That didn’t sound very convincing.”

She sighed and leaned against the counter. “Well, what do you want me to say?”

“Tell me the truth. What’s wrong? Are you…I mean, I’m sorry about…you know…last night.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. You deserve better. Like…candles, rose petals, The Spill Canvas playing softly in the background—shit like that. Out of all the times I thought about it, I never wanted it to happen like it did. ”

A slight blush colored her cheeks. “You thought about us…having sex?”

“How could I not?”

There was a moment of awkward silence, and then we both burst into tentative laughter.

“Sorry. Thought I’d be honest.”

“It’s okay. I thought about it too. I just…wish I remembered more of what happened.”

“You don’t remember what happened?”

“I remember bits and pieces. Not…detail, or anything.”

For a second she looked so sad that I was unable to stop myself from going over to her and taking her in my arms. Surprise flashed on her face but she didn’t make any moves to push me away.

“I can help you remember,” I offered.

“…Okay…but…wait, I was going to…uh…”

“What? Oh, right. What did you come over here for?”

Her face took on a vacant, glazed over look as she looked away from me and tried to remember.

“Did we use protection last night, Brian?”

Her question nearly stopped my heart. I searched my memory banks over and over, only coming up with a supremely unsatisfying answer. “I don’t know. I can’t…I can’t remember.”

Korinne’s eyes filled with tears. “Shit.”

“I’m sorry. Fuck! Why don’t I remember?!” I clutched at my head, hoping the increased pressure would spur the retrieval of the correct memory.

“Brian if you don’t remember, that means—”

“It doesn’t mean anything. You don’t remember everything about what happened, but it still happened, didn’t it?” I rationalized.

“That makes no sense,” she said tearfully.

“Please don’t cry. We’ll…we’ll figure this out.”

“How!? I don’t want to get pregnant!”

She started walking around the room at a frenzied pace.

“Korinne—”

“I don’t want a baby, Brian!”

“I know—” I followed her as she circled the couch numerous times.

“I want to go to college!”

“I know! Will you just calm down—”

“I CAN’T CALM DOWN, I MIGHT BE PREGNANT!”

I finally managed to catch her, holding her arms gently but firmly.

“Look, Korinne. I know you’re scared, but having a panic attack and making me chase you around the couch isn’t going to help. And there’s no way you could be pregnant already—”

“I MIGHT GET PREGNANT, THEN!”

Her face crumpled and she burst into distressed tears. I did my best to comfort her, stroking her hair and whispering soothing things, but deep down, I shared her fear. She was absolutely right—she could very well be or get pregnant, and since I’d already become responsible for plaguing someone else with a child, I certainly didn’t want to do it again. I also didn’t want to become known as California’s resident Girl Impregnator. I was more worried than I’d ever been in my life, but I knew Korinne needed me, so I pulled myself together and tried to appear like I had a plan.

“It’s okay. We can…um…” My sentence trailed off helplessly. Korinne just stared at me, sniffling. Something about her watery eyes and tear-marked face struck me as beautiful, and before I could quash the urge, I leaned forward slightly and kissed her. She gasped against my mouth, her fingers gripping my arms.

“Sorry,” I said. I was making things worse. Way to fucking go, Brian.

Her eyes sought mine seriously. “Don’t be sorry.”

The force of her reciprocal kiss instantly erased all rational thought from my mind. I crushed her against me, reveling in the weak noise she made as our bodies touched. When she fell onto the couch, pulling me with her, I didn’t object, merely wrapping her long limbs around me and kissing her more. The fact that my mom was upstairs or that this was probably the least helpful thing we could do in the current situation didn’t halter the proceedings. Nor did the fact that my cell phone was emitting a near-constant ring in the background. Last night’s events were soon duplicated on top of the black leather; every touch, every feeling intensified by the absence of an alcohol-induced haze. We were idiots, I knew, for thinking that more sex would comfort the distress of having sex in the first place, but we were idiots in love, and we just couldn’t seem to keep our hands off of each other.

At least we definitely used a condom this time.