Chapter 5: The Interrogation
The blare of the alarm was a physical intrusion, a jagged saw cutting through the warm, secret haze of the room. Jake’s eyes flew open a fraction of a second after Mia’s. They were frozen, a tangled sculpture of limbs and morning breath. His arm was a dead weight across her ribs, his hand, as if it had a mind of its own, still curved possessively over the soft swell of her breast over the thin cotton of his t-shirt.
She sat up first, a sharp, sudden motion that broke the contact. The cold morning air rushed in where their bodies had been fused. She didn’t look at him, instead focusing on yanking the hem of the shirt down where it had ridden up her stomach. Her movements were brisk, rehearsed.
“God, my head,” she muttered, voice raspy with sleep. She raked a hand through her tangled blonde hair. Then, the question, tossed over her shoulder like a spent cigarette. “You, uh… you feel anything weird last night?”
Jake’s heart, which had been pounding a frantic tattoo against his ribs, seemed to stutter. Weird. The word hung in the air, loaded with a thousand meanings. The way he’d woken up hours before dawn, hard and aching against the warmth of her ass, his hands boldly claiming territories he’d only ever mapped in dreams. The slow, stolen minutes of tracing her shape through the fabric, feeling her stir and press back against him in her sleep. That had felt like heaven, not weird. It felt like the answer to a question he’d been too afraid to ask.
He pushed himself up on his elbows, the old bed-frame groaning in protest. Her bright green eyes were on him now, searching his face for a crack in his easygoing mask. The static of everything he’d done in the dark hour before dawn crackled under his skin. He manufactured a slow, confused blink, scratching at the stubble on his jaw.
“Weird?” he echoed, his voice a gravelly rumble. He let out a short, breathy laugh that didn’t quite land. “Like, metaphysical weird? Or ‘I-think-I-ate-bad-pizza’ weird?” He kept his gaze steady, ignoring the phantom weight of her breast in his palm, the memory of her damp heat against his hand. “I slept like a rock. You know I’m dead to the world when snoozing.”
He watched her, his hazel eyes holding hers. A slow smile played on his lips, not quite reaching them. "My turn," he said, the words soft but deliberate. "Did you? Feel anything weird, I mean."
The air between them thickened. Mia’s pulse, already tripping from the sudden wake-up and the ghost of his hands, kicked into a higher gear. She could feel the phantom pressure of his palm, the specific, shocking heat of his not-quite-an-erection erection nestled against her through the night. She remembered the dark, liquid thrill that had shot through her half-dreaming body, the way she’d arched back just once, seeking more of that warmth before guilt and shock had frozen her.
“No.” The word came out too fast, a flat dart of sound. She forced a little laugh, turning to swing her legs off the bed, presenting her back to him. She focused on the cracked paint of the baseboard, the dusty floor. “Nope. Just a standard epic drunk coma. Why, do I look weird?”
She thought it was convincing. The delivery felt casual, disconnected from the riot of memory under her skin.
Jake was quiet for a beat too long. “You never look weird,” he finally said, his voice a low rumble that did things to her stomach. He pushed himself fully upright, the sheets pooling around his waist. “You reek of bargain-brand brandy, though. That’s new.”
“Oh, shit, do I?” She brought the collar of his t-shirt to her nose and inhaled, grimacing. It smelled like him—laundry soap, a faint musk of sleep—and beneath it, the sour, sweet tang of last night. The smell was suddenly unbearable, a spotlight on the intimacy of wearing his clothes, of sharing his bed. She needed a barrier, new fabric, a reset.
She needed a barrier, new fabric, a reset. The dampness between her thighs was a clammy, undeniable secret, and the fleece of his sweatpants felt suddenly like a testament to everything that had happened in the dark. She cleared her throat, the sound too loud in the quiet room.
She cleared her throat, the sound too loud in the quiet room.
“Do you have, like, another set of these?” she asked, plucking at the grey sweatpants she’d borrowed. She kept her eyes on the frayed cuff, avoiding his. “These kind of reek. Like, brandy-sweat.” It was a half-truth, a useful lie. The real reason was the undeniable, humiliating dampness between her thighs, a sticky reminder that her body had reacted to things her mind was still scrambling to file away.
Jake nodded, a quick jerk of his chin. “Yeah, sure.” He swung his legs out of bed, the muscles in his back flexing as he stood. He moved to his dresser, the second drawer sticking before he yanked it open. He fished out a pair of heather-grey pants, holding them up. “These are cleaner. Older, but softer.”
He tossed them to her. The fabric was thin from countless washes, the grey faded to a cloudy haze. She caught them, and the material felt insubstantial and incredibly soft against her fingertips. That softness triggered a flash—the phantom scrape of his calloused hands over her hips in the dark, the heavy, warm weight of him snug against her backside. Her breath hitched.
“Bathroom’s all yours,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. He turned and busied himself with the rumpled sheets, giving her his back.
Mia clutched the pants and practically fled, closing the bathroom door behind her with a soft click. She leaned against it, the cool wood pressing into her spine. The small, tiled space smelled like his soap and stale steam. She peeled off the borrowed sweatpants, the damp cotton clinging briefly to her skin before she shoved them into a ball at the bottom of his tiny hamper.
She stood there in just his borrowed t-shirt, the hem brushing her mid-thigh.
The silence of the bathroom was a vacuum, pressing in on her ears. Her own breathing sounded too loud, too quick. The borrowed t-shirt was a furnace now, soaked in the scent of him and the lingering panic of their morning-after performance. She couldn’t wear it anymore.
She grabbed the hem and pulled it over her head in one frantic motion, the cotton catching briefly on her chin before she flung it toward the hamper. The air in the small room was cool against her bare skin, raising goosebumps. She braced her hands on the edge of the cold quartz countertop, head bowed, trying to steady the riot in her chest.
The memories weren’t pictures. They were physical echoes. The exact pressure of his palm over her breast. The hot, insistent line of him soft nestled in the cleft of her ass. Her own treacherous, sleepy arch back into that sordid heat. A low whimper built in her throat. Her fingernails scraped across the smooth, hard quartz, a futile, grating sound that encapsulated how utterly helpless she felt against the truth of her own body’s response.
Then, she made the mistake of looking up.
The mirror above the sink was a stark, unforgiving rectangle, wiped clean of any steam or smudge. It captured everything. Her reflection hit her with the force of a physical blow, rooting her to the spot. The morning light, pale and diffuse from the small, high window, poured over her bare skin, carving her shape out of the bathroom’s shadows.
She was naked. Fully, irrevocably naked. The girl in the glass was a stranger weaned on secret yearnings. Her blonde hair was a magnificent ruin of tangled waves cascading over her shoulders, the kind of artfully disheveled mess she’d only ever seen in glossy magazine spreads shot for expensive cologne. It was sleep-mussed and wild, framing a face still puffy from alcohol and restless sleep, yet rendered somehow more compelling by its raw honesty.
Her eyes, usually so bright and controlled, were darkened pools of blue confusion, fixed on their own twin. They traveled down, a slow, dreading pilgrimage, and her breath vanished entirely. Her nipples were drawn into tight, diamond-hard points, dusky pink and pebbled rigid from the cool air and something else, something humming just beneath her skin. They ached with a sensitivity that felt brand new, a direct echo of the phantom weight of a sleep-roughened hand she could still feel imprinted there.
Her gaze skated lower, over the flat plane of her stomach, the faint muscle definition from a lifetime of dance and cheer, and then— Her heart stuttered, then resumed at a frantic, pounding gallop.
Between her legs was bare, shaved smooth as polished stone. She always kept it that way, a private preference under her cheerful skirts and sequined uniforms. But now, in this clinical light, on display for her own horrified eyes, it looked different. Exposed. Intentional. The neat, bare skin glistened. A delicate, transparent sheen coated her inner lips, making them look swollen and rich with blood, and the slickness gleamed under the light. It was a wetness far beyond the morning’s clammy discomfort, a blatant, shocking flood that felt like a betrayal. Wetter than any ocean she’d ever waded into, a silent, physical confession the mirror threw back in her face.
A tremor started deep in her belly, rolling outward. She both loved and hated how much hornier she felt looking at her own reflection. The sight of her body in this state of pure, undeniable arousal—the wild hair, the hardened peaks of her breasts, the blatant evidence of her excitement—didn’t calm the storm inside her. It fed it. It was a feedback loop of shocking, escalating need. A hot coil of shame tightened in her chest, but it was inextricably woven with a thicker, darker thread of pure, dizzying lust. She was the most turned on she’d ever been, and she was alone, witnessed only by herself and the ghost of his hands that had coaxed her body into this silent, screaming alert.
“No,” she whispered to the girl in the mirror, the word a puff of condensation on the glass that briefly blurred the obscene image. Her hand, acting without her mind’s permission, rose from the counter. Her fingertips, cold from the quartz, trailed down her neck, over her collarbone. They hesitated for a fractured second above the aching tension of her left breast before skimming over the tight peak.
A sharp, vivid gasp bounced off the tiles. The sensation was electric, a direct live wire to the pulsing heat between her legs. It was his touch and her touch, all at once. Her eyes slammed shut, but the image was burned on the back of her eyelids: Jake, asleep behind her, his big quarterback’s hand possessing her, his body a furnace at her back. The way she had, in the deepest reaches of a dream, shifted just so to feel him better. The memory wasn’t fuzzy anymore; it was HD, crystalline, and her body responded to the replay with an enthusiastic, damning tremor.
Her eyes flew open, defiant now. She stared herself down, her breath coming in short, visible puffs. Her other hand joined the first, both palms sliding down to cradle the undersides of her breasts, feeling their full, heavy weight. She remembered the exact pressure of his palm, the slight, possessive curl of his fingers. A low, desperate sound escaped her throat.
This was Jake. Jake. Her goofy friend who stole her fries and remembered her weird allergy to artificial strawberry flavor. The one who’d held her hair back when she puked after her high school prom. But the man in the memory—the one with hands that knew exactly where to settle, whose body fitted against hers like a missing puzzle piece—was someone else entirely. A stranger built from years of sidelong glances and easy touches that now felt like blueprints.
Her exploration grew bolder, one hand abandoning her breast to trail lower, over the quivering flat of her stomach. The clean, soft sweatpants he’d given her were a forgotten heap on the closed toilet lid. Her fingertips brushed the neat, smooth skin, and she jerked at the contact, hypersensitive. She was so wet her fingers slid effortlessly through the slick folds, finding the stiff, desperate nub of her clit already protruding, throbbing with a rhythm that matched her hammering heart.
“Oh, God.” This time it wasn’t a whisper; it was a fractured plea, swallowed by the humid air. Her head fell back, her tangled hair brushing the small of her back. She pressed the heel of her hand hard against herself, a crude, frantic pressure. It wasn’t enough. It was too much. The pleasure was a sharp, sweet ache, instantly tangled with a tearing loneliness. She wanted his calloused hands there, not hers. She wanted to know if his mouth was as clever as his sleeping touch had promised. She wanted to turn in that snug bed and see his hazel eyes looking back at her, dark with the same knowing hunger she saw in her own reflection.
The fantasy was so vivid, so corporeal, that her hips gave a slight, involuntary roll against her own hand.
The motion sent a jolt of pure feeling straight up her spine. Her middle finger, already slick, slid lower, breaching her own wetness with a shocking ease. Driven by a hunger that obliterated thought, she pushed. A single knuckle sunk into that impossible heat, a shallow invasion that was somehow a thousand times more intense than anything she’d ever done to herself in the flat, functional dark of her own bed.
The shock of that small penetration wasn't just physical—it was a seismic shift in the room's atmosphere, stealing the air from her lungs. A mangled, guttural moan ripped out of her, far too loud, raw and unvarnished, echoing off the sterile tiles. It was a sound that didn't belong to the cheerful, controlled head cheerleader; it belonged to the naked, trembling woman in the mirror.
Her eyes flew open, wide with panic. The moan still seemed to hang in the humid air. She stood frozen, finger still tucked inside herself, listening with every fiber of her being. Could he hear? The walls were thin, the dorm old. Jake was just on the other side of this flimsy door, probably pulling on a fresh shirt, maybe scrolling his phone. Did he stop? Did his head tilt? Did that soft, easy smile of his falter at the sound of her absolute undoing?
Silence from the bedroom. Or was it? Her own heartbeat was a thunderous drum in her ears, masking everything. The possibility, the terrifying, electrifying possibility that he had heard, didn’t make her stop. It lit a fuse. A fresh, hot rush of dampness coated her finger, a traitorous affirmation. The idea of his ears perking up, his body going still, his mind wondering what precise thing had pulled that sound from her… it sent a destructive thrill straight to her core. Her hips gave another tiny, involuntary rock, pushing her finger a fraction deeper.
She yanked her hand away as if burned, her breath sawing in and out. She stared at her glistening fingers, then at the wild-eyed woman in the glass. Get it together. You’re losing it. She stumbled to the sink, turning the cold tap on full blast and thrusting her hands under the icy stream, scrubbing violently. The shock of the water grounded her, but the fire between her legs was a smoldering rebellion. She patted her hands dry on a rough towel, the coarse fabric another stark sensory slap.
In times like this, Mia knew of only one person who could help: Lucy. Lucy, who treated desire like a weather system—natural, unpredictable, and not worth freaking out about. Mia fumbled for her phone, which she’d dumped on the counter next to Jake’s toothpaste. The screen was a lifeline. She unlocked it, her thumbs clumsy.
She unlocked it, her thumbs clumsy. The brightness of the screen glared in the dim bathroom, a sterile window into a world that still made sense. She opened her messages, her focus tunneling to Lucy’s name. The words poured out of her, a frantic, uncensored dam break.
The words poured out of her, a frantic, uncensored dam break.
Mia: lucy there is literally a swamp between my thighs right now. i feel like i could strip the paint off a car with my bare hands. or claw through granite. literally. what is happening to me.
She hit send. The message whooshed away, a digital scream into the void. She stared at the screen, waiting, the phone a live wire in her damp palm. The three blinking dots appeared almost instantly. A jagged relief cut through her panic. Lucy was awake. Lucy was there.
Lucy: first of all, good morning, sunshine. second of all, who the fuck opens a dialogue with that? actually, don’t answer that. i would. details. IMMEDIATELY. Why are your panties in a state of national emergency?
Mia’s breath shuddered out. She slid down the bathroom door until her bare ass hit the cold linoleum, pulling her knees up to her chest. The cool air from the floor vent raised fresh goosebumps on her skin. She typed, her thumbs a frantic blur, the truth spilling in disjointed fragments.
MIA: I didn’t sleep in panties. I’m not wearing any now.
MIA: I stayed over. We just slept. Nothing happened.
Nothing happened.
The lie sat in the digital space between their phones, pulsing with its own dishonest life. Mia stared at the words she’d sent. ‘Nothing happened’ technically covered the lack of conscious, sober, mutually acknowledged intercourse. It did not cover the archaeology of the morning: the layers of touch, the fossil record of his hands on her skin, the seismic shift in the tectonic plates of their friendship that had left this molten, unstable ground.
It did not cover the archaeology of the morning: the layers of touch, the fossil record of his hands on her skin, the seismic shift in the tectonic plates of their friendship that had left this molten, unstable ground.
The three blinking dots on her screen pulsed, a frantic heartbeat. They stopped. Started again.
Lucy’s reply came through, not in a single bubble but in a rapid-fire volley that snapped against the screen.
Lucy: Okay. Let me get this straight. You lead with ‘I’m a human slip-n-slide.’ You follow with ‘no panties.’ And you close with ‘nothing happened.’
Lucy: Nothing happened? Yeah. Right.
Lucy: What happened before 'nothing happened'?
Mia stared at the words flashing on her screen. What happened before 'nothing happened'? The question was a trapdoor opening beneath her, threatening to spill everything into the glowing digital chasm.
She took a shuddery breath, the cold of the linoleum seeping into her bones. Her thumbs, clumsy with residual adrenaline, began to tap out a reply. She could lie. She should lie. But the pressure in her chest, the ache between her legs, demanded a confession, even an anonymous one.
Mia: Okay. Fine. I went over to a friend’s house last night.
Lucy: Scintillating start. Name, rank, and social security number, please.
Mia: Just a friend. We were talking. It was normal.
She hit send, then immediately added another message, the story starting to tumble out in disjointed pieces as the memories replayed.
Mia: Then it started snowing. Like, really coming down. So we kept talking. The wind got crazy. I tried to leave but my car was already buried. I was snowed in.
Lucy: A wartime romance. I’m already verklempt. Continue.
Mia: So I went back to his room. I was soaked. I took a shower. He lent me clothes.
A pause. Mia glanced at the heap of his sweatpants and t-shirt. The smell of him was still on her skin, under the clean soap scent. She typed faster.
Mia: We found a bottle of brandy. We played drunk truth or dare. It just turned into truth or truth. We finished the bottle.
Lucy: The plot thickens. And your livers weep.
Mia: We went to bed. Me in his bed. Him on the floor.
She closed her eyes, remembering the chivalrous slump of his body on the thin dorm carpet, the outline of his shoulders in the dark.
Mia: I heard him shivering. The heat in that building is trash. He was really cold.
Lucy: And?
Mia: And I’m not a monster. I told him to get in the bed. It’s a twin. It was… close.
The memory of that first contact, the careful, tense inches between them, was excruciatingly vivid. The warmth of his back first, then the slow, inevitable drift into spooning. Her skin prickled.
Lucy: Define ‘close.’
Mia: We kinda… spooned. He put his hands in an uncomfortable but respectful spot. Like, on my stomach or my hip. It was fine.
She was editing, curating. The full, humiliating, thrilling truth sat lodged in her throat. On the other side of the door, a floorboard creaked. Jake was moving around. Living. Breathing. Unaware of the forensic analysis his hands were undergoing.
Lucy: ‘Uncomfortable but respectful.’ Mia, that is the most depressingly virginal phrase I have ever read. It’s giving ‘missionary with the lights off for procreation purposes only.’ My vagina is bored just reading it. If that’s the whole story, then your swamp is a meteorological anomaly. Try again.
Lucy’s bluntness was a slap. It cracked the careful shell of the story she was telling. The raw, wet truth pressed against it. Her thumb hovered. She typed three words, deleted them, then typed them again. She sent it before she could stop herself.
Mia: I may have accidentally moved them.
Lucy: Moved… the hands? From the respectful zip code?
Mia: Yeah.
Lucy: To where, exactly? Be specific. GPS coordinates.
Mia’s face flooded with heat. She could feel the ghost of that sleepy, half-dreaming adjustment. The way she’d taken his wrist in the dark, guided his rough palm up to the aching swell of her breast. The way she’d pulled his other hand down, pressing his broad fingers against the needy throb between her legs, over the fleece. It hadn’t felt accidental. It had felt like the most deliberate thing she’d ever done.
Mia: To my boob. And my pussy. Respectively.
Lucy:
Lucy: Okay.
Lucy: First of all, delete that text. My phone just got an STD.
Lucy: Second of all, ACCIDENTALLY? You ‘accidentally’ piloted his hands to the dual command centers of your body? Did you trip? Was there a seismic event?Lucy: Babe. You manned the controls. You wanted his hands there. Your body wanted his hands there. Own it.