Milked

Loren | personal branding.

I woke up next to the girl from the night before, in her bed, in her apartment. Her sheets were black, some kind of fake satin resembling trash bags. That comparison wasn't me being an asshole; that was literally what she had told me when we'd gotten in her bed: "Sorry, my cheap ass sheets looked cool online, but I know they look and feel like black trash bags." That hadn't been the only time she had made me laugh, and those moments were how we'd ended up in her bed in the first place.

A crusty, whiteish streak decorated the side of the sheets I slept on, in stark contrast to the shiny black, which reminded me I hadn't worn a condom. How fucking stupid of me. I had pulled out, but that wouldn't matter. Even if I had worn a condom, it wouldn't have mattered. I wasn't supposed to sleep with anyone, condom or not, between yesterday and tomorrow.

Vaughn, my boss and producer, was going to be pissed.

I stepped off of her bed quietly, finding my clothes in the middle of the floor and putting them on. She didn't move, and I couldn't see her face underneath all that hair. If my memory served me well, her hair was complemented by a pretty, tan face with features that made me wonder if she was mixed race, though she was certainly mostly white. She had hazel eyes and bushy eyebrows and three eyebrow rings on her right eyebrow: one gold, one rose gold, and the other silver; a combination I'd found oddly appealing when I first found her sitting next to me. But no matter how appealing her looks were, last night had still been a mistake. A stupid fucking mistake. I had probably been channeling my generation's mantra, YOLO, you only live once and so seize the night or something, but now that I had woken with a fresh mindset I reinterpreted that: you only live once and so make smart decisions and make the ride long-lasting and smooth (or at least smoothish). Today would not go smoothly, and I had myself to thank for that.

Creeping out of her bedroom, I shut her door quietly and headed for the front door, almost completing my walk of shame without incident before I noticed her roommate was there, a girl who looked Middle Easternish (maybe), with shiny black hair (true black, not dyed black like her roommate's) and beautiful big lips and a ton of makeup—the kind of girl you might see in a beauty pageant, the kind of girl who would probably get completely dressed up to spend the day studying, the kind of girl I would probably never get with, even though never say never. Since she was at their kitchen table with her laptop and some textbooks, I assumed she was studying, which reminded me I should have done that last night. Eyeing me with both intrigue and judgment, she made me feel like I needed to explain myself, but I just put my mouth into one of those one-second closed-mouth smiles you resort to when you haven't had any caffeine yet but you're pretending to be a nice person. "Friend of Skylar?" she asked, and that's when I remembered Skylar was the name of the girl in the bedroom with the trash bag sheets with my come all over them.

"You could say that," I said, and she shut her mouth and looked down and shook her head, smirking like she was amused or disturbed or something in between.

Taking that as her goodbye, I went out the front door of their apartment and into the early sun, lighting up a cigarette and opening my Uber app to catch a ride back to my car. The driver got there quickly and didn't try to force conversation, which I was glad for, because I felt slightly nauseous, thinking of all the vodka Redbulls I'd downed last night. That would not have been my drink of choice, but I wasn't buying.

When I finally got to my car, I drove to McDonald's for a disgusting breakfast sandwich and a large coffee, something I only did when I was hungover. I needed some sustenance before I faced Vaughn.

I finally got to the studio after that, the place where I always felt that sense of belonging, that sense of home. It wasn't really a studio; it was Vaughn's house in South Scottsdale, but he had turned its downstairs into our workspace. Not knocking first, I went in, and spotted him and one of my castmates, Devin, sitting in folding chairs and eating breakfast out of to-go containers, probably discussing Devin's next shoot.