We didn’t get back to Renolds’ apartment it was four am. I was grateful for her lumpy couch that smelled questionable. I let myself fall head first into my dreams.
I woke with an odd aftertaste of last night. My clothes smelled like stoner. I forgot where I was with a panic. I looked for a mirror to make sure I was still myself. Then my memories caught up to me. I sat back and sighed. I wanted something… I couldn’t quite pinpoint what. But I could tell I didn’t want to go home.
My stomach rumbled and the smells from the party swirled around me. I started gagging as the air suffocated me. I ripped off the clothes Renolds dressed me in the night before. I kicked the black dress across the room and clawed at the underwear until I was standing there naked. I closed my eyes and took three deep breaths.
I wanted to shed myself of this dream. I wanted to be back to my normal life. I wanted to stand in front of Lika again and kiss her. I wanted to go through my bicuriousity on my own. I didn’t want to be pushed into all the shit Renolds was pushing me into. I wanted to take it slow.
But I was already past slow. I felt like a gleaming green light. Open for anyone to mess with. I didn’t feel like a person anymore. I didn’t feel like there was such a thing as love. Only lust and sex and other disgusting things. It was like people only went around looking for an orgasm. I wasn’t like that.
On the third deep breath, I realized that I should feel like that. I should be appalled. But I wasn’t. I found it fun, different. It was like I was putting on a show for the world. I wasn’t Florence Lee anymore. I wasn’t the girl with the pigtails and innocent smile who thought kissing boys (or girls) was disgusting. I wasn’t the perfect Christian, waiting for marriage. I was a normal, human, teenager. I was horny and questioning and open to possibilities. I wasn’t perfect. But that’s what being human is: being imperfect. Being sexual. Being whoever the hell you are.
But the person I “should” have been being was strangling the person I was being. So I took one more deep breath and pushed the innocence away. I let go with a smile and felt brand new.
“I hope you didn’t sleep on my couch like that,” Renolds stirred me out of my thought process.
“No. I just needed air,” I hastily tried to cover myself up.
“Go take a shower. I’ll get you something to wear,” Renolds shuffled back into her room.
A shower and a pair of jeans later, I was ready for whatever Renolds had planned for me that day.
