One Swinging Summer (23 page)

"Did you? Did you sleep with anyone?"

"No, we had a deal. One girl kept backing her ass up to me, but I didn't. I touched her. A lot, like last time, but I only had sex with you."

"Wait, we did it? There on the floor?"

"Yeah, at the end. There was no way I wasn't sticking it somewhere, you were so hot. Oh, shit, then you don't remember licking that lady?"

"Licking a lady?" I groaned. "What do you mean?"

"You ate her out. It was so hot. You said you'd never done it before. She sat on the couch and you knelt down between her legs. I sat beside you, you said you needed pointers. I was all set to talk you through it, tell you how to move your tongue in the shapes of the letters in the alphabet, but before I could say anything, you just dove in there. Like you did that every day. It was amazing. She said it was the best she's ever had."

"OK, now you're just fucking with me. It is mean to fuck with someone who can't remember. Stop it, tell me what really happened."

"I'm not kidding. You had her moaning so loud. That's how it all started. You and I were on that mat, and we started messing with her, while her man watched. She asked if you liked women." He laughed at the memory. "You said, 'Hell no. I can barely stand to be one, we are so hormonal and bitchy, why in the hell would I want to date one? You are pretty though.' And then she said something about how much she liked being touched by both men and women, and then something, I don't remember, and then you were just going to town. I felt a bit left out, actually. She said there was no way that this was your first time, she came like three times. Somehow the third couple came over, asked if they could join us. You said yes, soon it was just hands and fingers, mouths and tongues everywhere. You were on the bottom, laying on the mat."

Oh, no. That must be the part I kind of remember, the people above me. I was laying flat on my back, heads and body parts above me. I tried to remember feeling anything. Hands, mouths, anything. I can't recall any sensation. I certainly don't recall eating anyone out. How gross. I admire the female form and all, but that is the last thing I'd want to taste. And willingly diving in? The best she'd ever had? No, that can't be right. I would never do that. Shadow dancing, yes. Watching people get it on, sure, but girl on girl starring me? I don't think so. Why can I not remember anything?

I shake my head in disbelief, but that just sets off new waves of nausea. I start retching into the toilet again, not sure if it is the alcohol, the panic of not being able to remember or the thought of eating a woman that set me off.

"How about some coffee?" I hear Caleb ask above me. He sounds far away and in a tunnel. I start to nod a 'yes, please,' but stop myself before more waves come from the motion.

By the time he gets back with a hot mug, I am curled up on his cold tile. He offers me the coffee, but I just say "Thanks, but I am never moving again." It feels good here, the cool bathroom floor on my hot skin. He left again to make some breakfast, hoping to get some food into my stomach. I agreed to try eating, but I would have agreed to anything to get him to go away, if only for a while.

As I lay very still, trying not to breath too fast or too loud, I try again, in vain, to pull memories from my dark mind. "OK, think, damn it." I try to focus on everything Caleb had said, but it didn't help. Everything he relayed to me seemed so foreign, I just couldn't picture any of it. 'Oh, God, what did I do?'

I remembered thinking 'I'm not drunk enough for this,' I guess I took care of that little problem. What the hell? Caleb had asked me if I remembered wanting to lay down. Well hell, no wonder I wanted to lay down, I was blitzed. And I had been having such a fun night. I remembered hanging out with Kate...

Oh, fuck. Kate. Did she see everything? Was I really the bottom of a puppy pile in an orgy room with Kate and Michael just outside? The relative calm my stomach had found on the cold tile was over, thoughts of Kate and Michael knowing everything made me gag all over again. We weren't supposed to do this there, that was the whole reason behind finding a second club. I asked my tortured brain if it would be OK with any of this if it had happened at The Lakehouse. The answering roll of my stomach said no. If only my head would shrink back to it's normal size, and stop pounding with my heartbeat, maybe I could think.

Caleb came back and forced me to at least down some Tylenol and a few bites of salty bacon. Salt and protein. I thought, 'Damn, bacon is even good in times like this.' I managed to stumble back to Caleb's bed, determined to push the panic away until I was better equipped to deal with it. 'Later,' I thought, 'I'll freak out later, now I must just survive, and hopefully sleep.'

I woke hours later. Thankfully it seemed that the Tylenol had taken some of the edge off while I slept. I thought I could keep some food down now, and slowly went in search of some, or preferably, of Caleb to make some.

I found a note on the fridge, directing me to warm up the plate he had prepared for me earlier. It also stated that he was outside working on his truck, but I wasn't quite up to sunlight yet. I sat at his kitchen table and slowly forced food down, a bite at a time. I waited a few minutes between each bite to be sure it was going to stay. The bacon really was good. It settled my stomach better than I had imagined it would. I swallowed two more Tylenol and headed to the shower, I was sure I smelled even worse than I felt.

After a long hot soak I felt vaguely human again, put on a set of Caleb's sweat pants and a t-shirt, the darkest sunglasses I could find, and dared to go outside in search of Caleb. He looked up at my slow approach and grinned, saying "It's alive."

"Barely," I grunted back, settling into a lounge chair in the shade near him.

"I figured we would just hang out here today, in honor of your hangover. I'm almost done with the truck, we can do our normal curl up on the couch and you can sleep through some bad TV or old movies. I will force feed you dinner later if I need to, and we will see what tomorrow looks like. Sound alright?"

"Yeah, sounds better than anything else. I did eat though, thanks for making me a plate. And I showered as well."

"Haven't you been productive?" He teased.

"Don't make me come over there and throw up on you." I tried to tease back.

He just smiled his non-hungover smile and went back under the truck.

I laid very still in the lounge chair, soaking in the heat of the day even in the shade. I let the warmth seep into my muscles, feeling them relax a little. With my eyes closed behind my sunglasses, I gingerly poked at my memories, trying to see if a calmer examination would pull any new memories out of the darkness. No such luck.

I tried instead to go over everything Caleb had told me about the night, piece by piece, to see how I felt about everything. It felt like Caleb had told me a story of something that happened to someone he knew, I was in turns fascinated and disgusted, but oddly unaffected. I thought of the question, 'If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?'

I applied it to myself, 'If a woman is part of an orgy, but doesn't remember it, like at all, does it effect her psyche?' But I kind of remembered a small part of it, the laying on my back, seeing people above me.

I wondered if this was how roofie victims felt? If you don't remember the offense does that make it better or worse? From what Caleb had said, I was no victim but a willing and seemingly enthusiastic participant.

I took a sip from the water bottle I had brought out with me, and concentrated on my mouth. It didn't feel any different, didn't taste any different. Surely if I had been eating some lady out, just hours before, something should feel different. I just couldn't picture doing it, it just didn't sound like me at all. I remembered my first blow job vividly, I was awkward but willing to learn. How is it possible that I had this new experience, a major new experience, with no memory of it ever happening. There is some woman out there that has this memory of me that I don't have. I couldn't wrap my mind around it, and trying was making my head hurt more anyway. 'Later,' I told myself again, feeling like Scarlett O'Hara, "I can't think about this now. I'll go crazy if I do. I'll think about it tomorrow."

CHAPTER 29
REFLECTIONS

I managed to survive Saturday, with Caleb's help. He spent the evening laying with me on his couch, mindlessly rubbing my back while we watched bad TV. He made me sip on an oddly wonderful concoction of frozen lemonade and Sprite, which he said he and his buddies swear by when they are hungover. Something about the health benefits of frozen concentrate lemonade made with water and then mixed with the electrolyte replenishment of Sprite, which doctors usually recommend when you are sick. Whatever the reasons, the drink helped immensely. Add a strict Tylenol regimen for the day, and the heavy, greasy pizza he ordered for dinner, and I was feeling closer to human. Trust a cop to know his way around a hangover.

We turned in relatively early for a Saturday night, and the world was a completely different place by Sunday morning. We once again enjoyed a beautiful morning on his patio. The deer were out in force and the coffee tasted amazing. Funny how the day after feeling like death warmed over is usually followed by an I-feel-so-good high.

I had almost even managed to push my memory loss to the back of my mind, so to speak. I thought it was funny that the part that bugged me the most wasn't what Caleb had said happened, but that there was a big, dark, blank spot in my own brain that was hiding itself from me. I did not like not being able to access the most personal part of me. I couldn't remember, so I couldn't examine. I relied on examining my thoughts and feelings of remembered experiences, but now there was nothing to turn over and prod.

I felt like a kid who's friends were playing keep away with my prized possession- frustrated, inept and just plain powerless. It is our decisions and our experiences that define us, and without a memory of such a huge experience, how do I know it really happened?

I could tell you all day long that I was with you when you robbed that bank, what you said, where you hid the money, how you escaped the police. But if you do not have memory of that experience, you'd just laugh at me. 'I'd never do that,' you would say. And you would just shake me off as being silly, and go about your life, sure in your memory. So it was weird to be basically unaffected by the news of my behavior and actions in that back room. 'Sure, whatever, say what you want but I would never do that,' was the reaction I kept getting from my gut when my brain couldn't provide the back up to what Caleb had said. To know, but not remember, is frustration at it's highest level.

I shook off my thoughts, determined not to let them shape my day. I was who I was, no matter what I could recall, and I wasn't going to let this black hole of frustration suck me in. It's not like I could change anything at this point anyway.

Over breakfast we decided to spend our day cooling off at the local water park. It was late June, hotter than hell, and soaking in the sun in my bikini, with my own personal police escort was just what the doctor ordered. We packed a cooler, grabbed towels and swim suits, sunscreen and a paperback, and headed out into the sun.

We rode all the rides, but spent the majority of the time on inner tubes, relaxing on the little river that went around and around the park. A Pepsi in my lap, my legs on Caleb's tube and his leg propped on mine, we read in a warm compatible silence, circling, reading, and pretending we were on a tropical vacation.

They practically had to kick us out at closing. We were relaxed and hungry and decided that since we already smelled like sun and chlorine, we would head to our marina, where they smelled like sun and fish.

After we ate we headed back to Caleb's exhausted, full and sleepy. I showered downstairs since Caleb hadn't had any weekends free to work on the upstairs bathroom. I was warm, wet and soapy when Caleb slid into the shower with me.

I felt the cold rush of air as he opened the glass shower door, and then the warmth of his hands sliding around on my soapy body. He pressed up against my back, and pushed us both farther under the stream of water. Hot water rained down on us as he grabbed my loofah and started running it over me. His arms enveloped me as he scrubbed my stomach and the underside of my breasts, lifting them and feeling them drop back into his hands, heavy and slippery.

His teeth bit at my ear as his hands explored under the suds, washing every inch in reach. I turned in his arms, enjoying the feel of his continuing to scrub my back, down over the curve of my butt and back up toward my shoulders. I kissed him in the steam of the shower, pressing myself against him as he hardened further against my stomach.

I took the loofah and returned the favor, running the slick sponge over his chest, hitting his broad shoulders and granite biceps on my way down his taunt, flat stomach. I lingered on the hardness of him, using the loofah's rough texture and warmth to slid up and down the length of him. I slid the loofah around behind him, rubbing his cheeks with it, while pressing him against me and kissing him again. I ran it up his solid back, enjoying the feel of him under my hands.

He guided me back under the water's spray, kissing my breasts after the soap ran off. He pulled me close to him, and rotated us so that we both were rinsed of soap, and he turned the water off, saying, "You, upstairs, on my bed, now."

I exited the shower quickly, grabbed my towel, and dried myself as I hiked up his stairs. I could hear him shutting off lights and preparing to follow me upstairs, so I dried as well as I could, wrapped the towel around me and climbed up onto his bed. I placed myself right in the middle, still dripping, wrapped in his white fluffy towel, kneeling on my knees in wait for him.

He walked in gloriously naked, and smiled when he saw me in nothing but a towel. He passed the TV, and then paused, looking at me. "Wanna put some porn on?"

"Yeah, sure." I responded, surprised. I was no stranger to porn, but we hadn't had it playing in the background before. 'Well, at least not on TV,' I thought as Caleb turned on the TV. God knows we've had plenty of porn going on in the background of our club adventures. Maybe he was trying to recreate some of that?