Chapter 2: The Morning After
The phone buzzed on the floor like a trapped insect. RILEY.
Lucas froze, his body still thrumming with the fading echo of his orgasm, now curdling into cold dread. Ava glanced at the screen, then back at him. Her satisfied smile didn’t vanish; it just sharpened, turned defiant.
“Don’t answer it,” she said, her voice low.
“I have to.” He scrambled off the couch, his movements clumsy, and snatched up the phone. He rejected the call. His hands were shaking. “She knows you’re with me. I told her I was getting you an Uber.”
“So tell her I’m in the Uber.”
“It’s been forty minutes, Ava.” He ran a hand through his hair, staring at the black screen as if it might combust. It lit up again immediately. RILEY. “Fuck.”
He accepted the call, turning his back to Ava, as if that could somehow shield her. “Hey, Ri.”
“Where is she?” Riley’s voice was tight, a wire about to snap. “The Uber app says the driver canceled. She’s not answering her phone. Is she with you?”
“Yeah, she’s… she’s here. She’s fine.” He winced at the hollow sound of his own words.
“Put her on.”
“She’s in the bathroom. She, uh, got sick. Too many shots.” The lies tasted like ash. Behind him, he heard the soft rustle of Ava moving, but he didn’t dare turn around.
A long pause. “I’m coming over.”
“Riley, no, it’s late, you don’t have to–”
The line went dead.
Silence expanded to fill the apartment, thick and suffocating. The neon glow from the window now felt like an interrogation lamp. Lucas slowly turned.
Ava was standing now, completely nude. She made no move to cover herself. She walked to where her dress was puddled on the floor and stepped into it, pulling it up over her body with a slow, deliberate sensuality that felt like a challenge. She didn’t put her underwear back on. She simply picked up the damp black cotton, balled it in her fist, and tossed it onto his bookshelf next to the water glass.
“What are you doing?” His voice was a strained whisper.
“Getting dressed.” She smoothed the fabric over her hips. The dress was rumpled, and without the underwear, it clung to her in a way that was obscenely intimate. Her hair was a wild, dark cloud around her face. Her lipstick was smeared at the corners of her mouth.
“You can’t… she can’t see you like this.”
“Like what?” Ava asked, meeting his eyes. “Like a woman who just got fucked? Because that’s what I am.” She walked to him, stopping so close he could feel her body heat. She reached out and tucked his shirt, which was hanging open, back into his trousers. Her fingers brushed against his still-sensitive skin, and he flinched. “You might want to button up. You look thoroughly debauched.”
He fumbled with his buttons, his fingers numb. The reality of the situation was a cement block in his gut. Riley. His friend since high school. The woman he’d once thought, in a hazy, teenage way, he might have feelings for. He was going to have to look her in the eye and lie. Or worse, tell the truth.
The buzzer from the building’s front door jarred the silence.
They both stared at the intercom on the wall near the door. It was a cheap, white plastic thing, suddenly the most ominous object in the room.
Lucas walked over, his legs heavy. He pressed the button. “Yeah?”
“It’s me.” Riley’s voice, crackling through the cheap speaker, was flat.
He buzzed her in.
The wait for the elevator to climb four floors was agonizing. Lucas could hear the shift and groan of the old machinery in the shaft. Ava leaned against the back of the couch, arms crossed, watching the door. She looked like a queen awaiting a challenger.
Three sharp knocks.
Lucas opened the door.
Riley stood there, her coat spotted with rain, her expression a mask of concerned annoyance that slipped the second she looked past him. Her eyes found Ava. They traveled from her wild hair, down the rumpled dress, to her bare legs and feet. They flicked back to Lucas, taking in his hastily buttoned shirt, his bare feet, the general aura of dishevelment that hung around him like a fog.
The annoyance dissolved, replaced by a dawning, horrifying comprehension. Her face paled.
“Oh my god,” she breathed, the words barely audible. She took a step into the apartment, her eyes darting between them, picking up the details: the couch cushions askew, the intimate dimness of the single lamp, the charged, sweat-and-sex scent that Lucas now realized permeated the entire room. “Tell me you didn’t.”
Lucas opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His throat had sealed shut.
Ava pushed off from the couch. “He didn’t do anything I didn’t want him to do.”
Riley’s head snapped toward her sister. “Ava, shut up. Go into the bathroom. Now.”
“No.” Ava took a step forward. A tiny, almost imperceptible shift of her legs, and Lucas saw it—a faint, slick shine on her inner thigh, a traitorous glisten in the low light.
Riley saw it too. Her breath hitched. Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Tell me you didn’t,” she repeated, her voice shaking now, her eyes locked on Lucas, begging him to contradict the evidence screaming in the space between them.
Lucas found his voice, a broken thing. “Riley, it’s not what–”
“It’s exactly what it looks like,” Ava cut in, her voice clear and cold and terribly calm. She took another step, placing herself squarely between Lucas and her sister, a living, breathing barrier. “I did. And it was fucking amazing.”
The words hung in the air, vile and irreversible.
Riley stared at her sister as if she’d never seen her before. The hurt that flashed across her features was so profound it looked like physical pain. Then it hardened into something else—a fierce, protective rage. She turned it on Lucas.
“You.” The single word was a condemnation. “She’s nineteen. She’s drunk. And you’re my friend.” The last part was the real knife, twisted with betrayal.
“She wasn’t that drunk,” Lucas muttered, the defense sounding pathetic even to him.
“Get out,” Riley said to Ava, not taking her eyes off Lucas.
“I’m not leaving with you,” Ava shot back.
“Fine. Stay with him. See how that works out for you.” Riley’s gaze finally broke from Lucas, sweeping over the apartment with utter contempt. “This is who you want? Someone who would do this? To me?” Her voice cracked on the last word. She turned on her heel and walked out, leaving the apartment door gaping open.
The sound of her footsteps down the hall echoed, then faded.
Silence, again. Deeper this time. Polluted.
Lucas walked slowly to the door and closed it. The click of the latch was final. He leaned his forehead against the cool wood.
He heard Ava move behind him. Her arms slid around his waist, her front pressing against his back. He could feel the soft weight of her breasts, the heat of her through the thin dress.
“She’ll get over it,” Ava murmured into his shoulder blade.
He shook his head, a short, sharp movement. “No. She won’t.”
“Then she doesn’t have to.” Her hands slipped lower, over the front of his trousers, finding him already half-hard again, his body betraying his turmoil. “Forget her. She’s not here.”
He turned in her grasp, his own hands coming up to grip her arms, not sure if he meant to push her away or pull her closer. The conflict must have been plain on his face.
“You feel guilty,” Ava stated, her eyes searching his. “So fuck it away. Fuck me until you forget my sister’s name. Until you forget your own.”
She dropped to her knees again, right there in the doorway. This time, her actions were not eager but deliberate, a calculated seduction. She opened his pants, freeing his cock. She didn’t use her mouth. Instead, she looked up at him, held his gaze, and rubbed the head of his dick slowly, firmly, against her cheek, leaving a damp streak. Then she guided him downward, between her legs, which she parted wider, hiking up her dress.
She was still soaked from their first time, swollen and slippery. She notched him at her entrance and then leaned back on her elbows, arching her back, offering herself to him completely. The sight was breathtakingly lewd: her dress bunched at her waist, her sex exposed and glistening, her eyes dark with invitation.
“Use me,” she whispered. “I’m right here.”
With a groan that was pure surrender to the chaos, he fell to his knees between hers. He didn’t guide himself in; he just drove his hips forward, sheathing himself inside her in one brutal, bottoming thrust.
“Yes!” she cried out, the word sharp and satisfied.
He set a ruthless pace, kneeling on the hard floor, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to leave bruises. This wasn’t about pleasure, not really. It was about oblivion. About punishment. Each slam of his body into hers was an attempt to silence the voice in his head that screamed Riley, betrayal, mistake.
Ava met him thrust for thrust, her heels digging into the small of his back, urging him deeper. “Harder,” she panted. “Come on, you feel so good, so deep, fuck, right there…”
Her words were gasoline on a fire. He leaned down, covering her body with his, one arm sliding under her back to lift her closer. The angle changed, and he hit a spot that made her scream, a raw, unfiltered sound. He fucked her into the floor, the hard wood unyielding beneath them. The animal noise of their coupling filled the hallway—skin slapping, grunts, her high, keening cries.
He could feel his release coiling again, a tight, hot knot in his base. “Ava…” It was a warning, a plea.
“Inside me,” she demanded, her nails raking down his back. “Do it. Fill me up again.”
It broke him. His rhythm shattered into a few, final, frantic plunges before he came, a hoarse shout ripped from his throat, spilling into her with a intensity that left him dizzy. She clenched around him, her own climax shuddering through her in violent waves, her inner muscles pulsing, milking him dry.
They collapsed onto the floor, a tangled heap of limbs and spent desire. The cold hardwood was a shock against his skin. He was still inside her, softening, a grotesque and intimate connection.
For a long time, they just lay there, breathing. The only light was the slim strip under the door from the hallway.
Finally, Ava stirred. She wriggled out from under him, the loss of contact making him feel suddenly, utterly empty. She stood up on unsteady legs, letting her dress fall back down. She looked down at him, a silhouette against the neon-tinged window.
“I’m going to shower,” she said, her voice devoid of its earlier bravado. It just sounded tired.
He listened to her footsteps cross the apartment, heard the bathroom door click shut, then the rush of the shower. He lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling, the ghost of Riley’s devastated face floating in the darkness behind his eyes. The smell of sex was everywhere. On him, in the air, on the floor.
He had just burned down a friendship that had survived a decade. For what? For a night with a rebellious girl chasing a thrill?
The water ran in the other room. He knew she’d come out, expect to stay, expect something. He had no idea what to say, what to do. The moral high ground was ashes. The future was a locked door.
All he had was the lingering, physical memory of her body, and the crushing certainty that when the morning came, it would not be enough.