Alice

I race up the steps, and fling my door open, rushing in,  slamming it shut and locking it. I stop with my back leaned on the door and I slide down until my but hits the ground. I can’t catch my breath… what just happened…

  We kissed, oh fuck. I kissed him, he kissed me back, my mom’s husband, I kissed my fucking mom’s husband. What the hell is going on. What is going to happen? I whisper "What the fuck" under my breath over and over. I have to tell her… no I can’t, this could ruin her… ruin me…

  Tears start to fall from my eyes but I can’t seem to connect to my feelings, I stand up and walk over to my bathroom. I get over the toilet and I throw up, the alcohol has my stomach feeling in pieces… but what I just did has me feeling a million times worse.

  I don't know what's even going on. It's like my world has fallen apart in the space of a few days… I sit back and I breathe until I really start to feel it, I really start to feel the gravity of what happened. The tears come and I have no choice but to let them wash over me, its going to be a long night.
                                       ***
I sit up in my bed, its morning...I hate hangovers. Thankfully this one isn’t so bad but its annoying nonetheless. My eyes are red and swollen… every tear I had in them is probably gone, I cried them out last night on the bathroom floor.

  I can barely begin to grasp what’s going on. The moment replays in my head, I feel his lips on mine, smell him, hear his breathing… beneath the guilt, I’d never experienced anything like that before… I’d never felt that surge of pure ecstasy that tore through me in those seconds ever in my life and that leads me to know it now without question… I’m falling in love with Jack. I’m falling for my mother’s new husband and it’s going to destroy me. I know it.
                               
                                 ***

I head downstairs, it feels like I’ve done this too many times before… walked down these steps with tears in my eyes and a confused heart hoping I don’t run in to anyone. With each step, each feel of my feet against the cloth covered wood, I can feel myself sink lower in to despair, the tears start to come again and I stop on the steps, I sit down and I begin to shake as they roll out. I can’t anymore, all of this is too much.

His voice cuts in, smooth and soft.

“Alice.”

I raise my head, tears in my eyes, he stands at the foot of the stairs in a suit, he’s going to work. I can’t find words to respond with, we stare at each other in silence for some moments, we both know what we did. We both know what’s going on. I hate him.

“Leave me alone Jack, Just get the fuck away from me, don’t ever speak to me again."

He doesn’t seem shocked or phased by my words... he just nods and walks off.
My heart drops in my chest and the tears come again.