The Morning After the Night Before

Lilly quietly rolled to the edge of the bed and tried to sit up. Only when she tried it was like hitting her head off a brick wall. Lilly was never any good with hangovers, and she often remembered this one as one of the worse ones.

"Ugh, I hate hangovers", she groaned.

Luckily her underwear had not fallen far from the bed and after a while of fumbling with clasps, she managed to get her knickers and bra on.

Taking a few a minutes to recover from that effort, she stated to look around for her dress. It was tossed haphazardly across a chair in the corner of the room. Lilly stumbled across the room, ignoring the urge to throw up, and attempted to put it on. This transpired to be quite difficult in her current state. After a lot of cursing and falling over, Lilly finally got the dress on, relieved Matt was such a heavy sleeper.

She was nearly ready to go when her message alert went off. Cursing, she dived into her bag trying to silence the offending object, but it was too late. Matt was starting to stir.

He groaned and mumbled something along the lines of "I 'ate 'ango'ers" and rolled over to come face to face with Lilly.

"Lilly? What are you doing here?" he asked confusion written clearly all over his face. Lilly said nothing but just pointed at Matt's still naked body. Matt looked down and shock and realisation hit him all at once.

"We didn't, did we?" he asked in a quiet voice.

Lilly just nodded in confirmation.

"Crap."

Silence filled the room until Matt spoke.

"I'm sorry, I should have known better."

Lilly shrugged, "I guess it's both our faults, what with the amount of we were both drinking."

"Yeah, but I'm the one with the freakin' purity ring. Oh man, Josh and Mike are going to kill me", Matt said putting his face in his hands.

Lilly sighed, running a hand through her hair, "It's not as if the ring puts a barrier up," she suddenly stopped short, "Wait, you did use protection didn't you?"

Matt paled, "Well umm…"

"Great, after all those years of sex-ed classes, and he forgets to use a condom."

"Well, if I was drunk enough to actually do it, I was definitely too drunk to remember a condom," Matt said, slightly snappily.

Lilly sighed and stood up, "Look I have to go, Miley's probably wondering where I went last night."

"Hey, you don't think you could, you know not say anything about this? It's just…" Matt trailed off, starting to play nervously with his sheets.

"Yeah, I know, I understand."

That uncomfortable silence started to fill the room again.

Lilly started to move towards the door. She was about to leave when Matt spoke again.

"Hey Lils, we're still good right?"

Lilly smiled sadly, "Yeah Matt, we're still good. I'll see you later."

Lilly left the building and walked the few blocks to where her own flat was. She put on some coffee and toast and then took out her phone to see who the message had been from. As she had thought, it was Miley.

"Hey ave fun last nite? Didn't c u leave"

Lilly paused for a moment before sending her reply.

"Yea lots of fun Matt gave me a lift huge hangover "

Twisting the truth, but not too much. Her toast popped, and she spread peanut butter and jelly all over it. Grabbing her coffee she headed into her bedroom.

She had just got into her pajamas and was settled in bed when she got a reply from Miley.

"Coolies ill let u recover c u 2moro"

And thus Lilly was left with her own thoughts.

She had just lost her virginity to Matt Marshall.

In comparison to most girls of her generation she was relatively old. When everyone else started doing it she had been either single or dating Matt. But since Matt had the whole purity ring thing going on, she had thought it would never happen unless they were married. Had being the operative word.

She supposed she was glad it had been with Matt, someone who loved her and who she loved back. But did this mean he would want them to get married now? She had just turned 21, no way was she ready to marry yet.

And then there was the whole fact that they had had unprotected sex. Not that she was worried about STIs or anything, but what if she was…

Lilly couldn't even let the word formulate in her mind. There was always the morning after pill, but wasn't that kind of like an abortion? She has always been pro-choice, but would never be able to actually do it herself.

But then was it a living thing yet? When did life begin? Was it really an abortion if it was only a few cells?

Oh boys… Too much thinking for one hungover mind to take.

Lilly closed her eyes and in seconds she was asleep, the remains of her coffee and toast left forgotten on her bedside table.