Chapter 3: Morning After

The silence that followed their voices through the wall was total. It felt heavier than the noise had been. I lay there, the mess cooling on my stomach, listening to my own pulse hammer in my ears. The shame arrived a minute later, a dull, creeping wave. I got up, stripped the t-shirt, and wiped myself clean with it before balling it up and shoving it deep into my laundry hamper. I found a clean one and pulled it on. The sheets were fine. I got back into bed.

Sleep didn’t come. The images played on a loop behind my eyelids. The sound of her laugh cutting through the party noise. The flash of silver against her skin. The wet, rhythmic sounds. My own hand moving in the dark. I turned onto my side, facing the wall I shared with her. I imagined I could feel the residual heat from their bodies. I must have drifted off eventually, because the next thing I knew, gray morning light was seeping around the edges of my blinds.

I sat up. The house was quiet. The deep, unsettling quiet of a place that had been loud for hours. My mouth tasted like stale beer and bad decisions. I needed coffee. I needed to not think.

I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and padded barefoot out of my room. The hallway floor was cold. Her door was shut. I moved past it and down the stairs, stepping over a red plastic cup that had been crushed flat. The living room looked like a crime scene. Empty bottles and cans littered every surface. The air smelled of spilled liquor and sweat. Someone had drawn a second, larger penis on the wall with what looked like black marker. The couch cushions were on the floor.

I walked through to the kitchen. It was worse. The mustard artwork remained. The island was sticky with dried liquid—beer, maybe vodka. A tower of empty pizza boxes teetered by the back door. I filled the kettle and set it to boil, moving on autopilot. I scooped coffee into the French press. The routine was grounding. Measure, pour, wait. I leaned against the counter, staring at the mustard dragon until the kettle clicked.

I was pouring the hot water when I heard movement upstairs. Footsteps. A door opening and closing. The bathroom sink running. I braced myself, but the footsteps went back into her room. I pressed the coffee, poured a large mug, and took it black. The bitter heat scalded my tongue, but it was a clean, sharp sensation. I needed it.

I stood in the ruined kitchen, drinking coffee and not knowing what to do with myself. I couldn’t go back to my room. That felt like hiding. I couldn’t start cleaning. That felt like admitting this was my problem. I settled on toast. I found a loaf of bread that looked untouched and put two slices in the toaster.

That’s when she came down.

She moved slowly, each step careful. She was wearing a pair of tiny black shorts and a faded band t-shirt that had been cut into a crop top, the hem frayed. Her black hair was a mess, half of it escaping from a loose bun. She had dark smudges under her eyes. She looked young and fragile, which was a lie. She held her phone to her ear.

“Yeah, I’m alive,” she said, her voice husky with sleep. “Barely. My head is a war zone.” She listened, padding into the living room. She didn’t even glance at the mess. She just collapsed onto the one clear spot on the couch, tucking her legs underneath her. “No, he left like an hour ago. Had some bullshit rugby training thing. Typical.”

I stood very still by the toaster, holding my coffee. She hadn’t seen me yet. The toast popped up, the sound startlingly loud in the quiet. She glanced over, her eyes meeting mine. There was no surprise in them. Just a slow, tired blink. She gave me a tiny, closed-mouth smile and looked away, focusing back on her phone call.

“Uh huh. Yeah, Harman’s up. Making breakfast. Or burning it, by the sound.”

My toast was fine. I buttered it, the action deliberate. I put the knife down. I could take my food upstairs. That was the smart move. The safe move. Instead, I walked into the living room. The armchair opposite the couch was relatively clear. I moved a half-empty bag of chips off it and sat down. I balanced my plate on my knee, my coffee mug on the floor by the chair leg. I took a bite of toast. It tasted like nothing.

Mandy was talking about the party in general terms. How many people showed up. How someone spilled an entire fishbowl punch on the new rug. How Leo from the wrestling team tried to do a backflip off the coffee table and nearly took out a lamp. Her voice was animated even through the hangover, painting pictures with her words. I ate my toast and listened, a silent spectator.

“Oh my god, the topless thing was so stupid,” she was saying, laughing a little. “Sarah dared us. I was so drunk I didn’t even think about it. The look on Ben’s face… priceless.” She listened, then grinned. “No, the piercings got all the attention. Obviously.”

I took a sip of coffee. My throat felt tight.

The conversation drifted. Sara, whoever she was, must have asked a question. Mandy’s tone shifted. It became lower, more intimate. She adjusted how she was sitting, curling deeper into the couch cushions, the phone pressed close to her mouth.

“Okay, so about Jake,” she said, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial range. “Yeah. He was… intense.”

I froze, a piece of toast halfway to my mouth. I put it back on the plate.

“No, from the second we got up here,” Mandy continued, her eyes drifting across the room, not landing on me, but not avoiding me either. They were just… passing through. “He didn’t even let me turn on the light. Just pushed me against the door as soon as it closed. His hands were everywhere. Like, immediately.”

My own hands were clenched around the edge of the plate. I made myself relax my fingers. I stared at a water ring on the coffee table.

“He’s so fucking strong,” she went on, and her voice took on a dreamy, appreciative quality. “He just manhandled me. Picked me up and carried me to the bed like I weighed nothing. Tossed me down. It was kind of hot, actually. That whole caveman thing.”

I could see it. The dark room. The shape of him lifting her. The sound of her body hitting the mattress. I shifted in the chair.

“So I’m lying there, and he doesn’t even take his shoes off,” she said, a laugh bubbling in her throat. “He just gets on the bed, knees on either side of my hips, and he looks down at me. And he says…” She paused, lowering her voice to mimic his, a rough, commanding baritone. “’Open your mouth.’ Just like that. No ‘please.’ No ‘can I?’ Just ‘open your mouth.’”

A flush of heat went through me, settling low in my stomach. I picked up my coffee mug just to have something to do. The ceramic was warm against my palm.

“So I did,” Mandy said, her own voice returning, breathy. “And he… well. You know. He just shoved himself in. Not gently. And he put his hand on the back of my head. His fingers were tangled in my hair, pulling just enough to sting. And he started… fuck, Sara, he started fucking my face. Properly. Holding me there. Telling me to take it. To swallow.”

Her free hand, the one not holding the phone, came to rest on her own thigh. Her fingers tapped idly against her skin. My gaze was locked on her face now. I couldn’t look away. Her eyes were half-lidded, focused on some middle distance as she relived it. Her lips were slightly parted.

“He kept talking,” she murmured. “All this dirty shit. Calling me a greedy slut. Telling me he was going to use my throat. And I was just… I was so into it. The way he was completely in control. I couldn’t do anything but what he told me. I had tears in my eyes. My makeup was probably wrecked.”

Her hand on her thigh stopped tapping. Her fingers spread out, pressing into her own flesh. She drew in a slow breath.

“When he finally let me up, I could barely breathe,” she said. Her voice had gotten quieter, but every word was crystalline in the silent room. “My throat was so raw. He wiped my mouth with his thumb and told me I did good. Then he pushed me onto my stomach.”

My coffee was forgotten. The plate on my knee was a distant object. The only things that existed were her voice and the slow, deliberate movement of her hand. It began to slide upwards, under the frayed hem of her shorts. She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at the ceiling, a faint smile on her lips. "Spanked me once, really hard. It stung so bad. He ate me out right there. Then he was inside me. Just like that. No condom. Nothing.”

A jolt went through me. My breath hitched. It was an audible sound in the quiet room. Mandy’s eyes cut to me. She saw me sitting there, rigid, my breakfast abandoned. She saw the fixated stare I couldn’t break. A slow, knowing smile spread across her face. It wasn’t her usual teasing grin. This was darker, more intimate. A smile of pure, predatory recognition. She held my gaze for three long seconds before turning her attention back to the phone, but the smile remained.

“Yeah,” she said into the phone, her voice dropping to a husky murmur. She was still looking at me. “He just took what he wanted. And I wanted him to. I was so wet for him. The way he filled me up… god. He’s so big, Sara. It almost hurt at first. The good kind of hurt.”

Her hand was moving under the fabric of her shorts. I could see the subtle shift of the muscles in her forearm. My face felt hot. My own body was responding, a traitorous ache building that had nothing to do with jealousy and everything to do with the graphic, unsparing picture she was painting with her words.

“He was on top of me, his weight pressing me into the mattress,” she breathed. Her eyes drifted shut for a moment, then opened, glazed. She was here, but she was also back in that bed. “One of his hands was braced by my head. The other was on my hip, holding me in place. His rhythm was… brutal. Perfect. I could hear the bed slamming against the wall. I could hear us. The skin sounds. Him grunting. Me… I was just moaning into the pillow. I couldn’t form words.”

A tiny, choked sound escaped me. It was meant to be a cleared throat, but it came out as a strangled mutter.

Through the phone, Sara’s voice became a tinny, questioning buzz. “Is someone there with you?”

Mandy laughed. The sound was breathless, ragged at the edges. Her eyes locked back onto mine, gleaming with a kind of wicked delight. “Yeah,” she said, her voice thick. “Harman’s here. He’s having breakfast. Listening.”

She said it so casually. An observation. A fact. The humiliation was instant and scalding. She knew. She had known the whole time. This performance was for me. The phone call was just the conduit. I was the audience she’d intended all along.

And she didn’t stop. Her narration became more fragmented, her sentences breaking apart as her physical focus split.

“He… he changed the angle,” she gasped, her free hand gripping the couch cushion. Her hips gave a tiny, involuntary rock against her own fingers. “He pulled me up onto my knees. Pulled me back against him. Oh, god…”

She was panting now. Small, sharp breaths. Her story was dissolving into sensation.

“He was so deep like that… I could feel him… everywhere…” Her words were interspersed with gasps. Her eyes were wide, unfocused, staring right through me. The hand under her shorts was moving faster. I could see the tension coiling in her body, the line of her throat as she threw her head back against the couch cushion.

“He was talking… saying he was gonna come inside me… fill me up…” Her voice was a ragged whisper, barely audible. “And I just… I lost it. I came… I came so hard. Screaming. Couldn’t even… couldn’t control it…”

Her body went rigid. Every muscle tensed. Her back arched off the couch, her free hand clawing at the fabric. A choked, guttural gasp ripped from her throat, cutting off her story completely. Her face contorted, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open in a silent cry. She held that peak for a long, suspended moment, trembling.

Then she collapsed.