Chapter Two of "Morning After"
"The Girl"
Olivia gently extricated herself from the lithe arms of Elliot's niece, whose name she still couldn't remember. She felt a little woozy from the encounter. Her face was flushed and her heart still pounded. Maybe she was still drunk from the night before. Hard to separate all the sensations running through her body on this first day of being 40 years old, waking up next to a girl who looked young enough to be, well, her daughter. Olivia pushed that ugly thought from her mind as she scanned the messy bedroom for her clothes.
"Are you leaving?" A somber voice inquired from the bed. Olivia turned and took another look at this perfect stranger with whom she'd just shared a most knowing sexual encounter. Damn, she's cute. She had propped herself up on the pillowcase-less pillows and was rubbing a bit of sleep from calm blue eyes that were slightly sad, perhaps revealing a mind that thought too much about every moment life endlessly doled out.
"Uh, yeah, I know it seems kind of weird to leave like this, after we, you know.." she trailed off.
"Got really hot for each other and made love?" the girl said, half of her mouth turning up slightly in a softly comic expression. "You can say it. I was there too, you know."
Olivia looked down as she buttoned a cigarette smoke-befouled shirt over her full breasts and smiled a little too. "I'm sorry, it's just that I was kind of surprised to wake up here. I got pretty trashed last night. That's not like me at all."
"I know, and believe me, you were much safer here than trying to stagger to your own place in the shape you were in! Do you remember singing?" the girl asked.
"Singing? Were you singing last night?" asked Olivia.
"No, YOU were singing as we walked you back here."
"We walked me back? Who's we?" Olivia inquired, not really wanting to know.
"Elliot and me." The girl chuckled a little, remembering how Elliot laughed upon seeing a side, or actually, a few sides to his partner he'd never really been privy to as Olivia stumbled and cackled and sang at the top of her lungs all the way home.
"Jesus." Olivia plopped down on a rusty 1950s kitchen chair in the corner of the room. She'd never live this down back at the precinct. She felt her armpits get damp and her stomach flutter with an uncomfortable sensation that was part hangover and part horror.
"It's no big deal, Olivia. He knows about you and Alex."
"Me and Alex? What does he know?" Olivia's eyes got wide.
"He knows you two have a history together and that the current chapter is not too pleasant. He's cool about it."
"Great, everyone's in my business now." Olivia felt sick. Being a very private person by nature, and more than a little paranoid about prejudice by dint of her being a woman in a man's world, the thought of her colleagues knowing anything about her personal life gave her a desperate feeling of being out of control. She hated it. To make matters worse, probably out of some angst over her estranged relationship with ADA Alex Cabot and turning 40, she'd gotten shit-faced in front of her coworkers and had to be babysat by her partner's baby dyke niece. Olivia tried not to think of the kisses she'd exchanged with the girl as they sat at a booth laughing over something that was probably incomprehensibly funny to them but quite banal to everyone else. She blushed. She thought she might cry. The rollercoaster ride of the past 12 hours was just too much for her to handle.
"Hey, you know, you look like you don't feel so hot. Why don't you call in today and hang out with me? We can just chill, go to a diner, get some breakfast later."
Olivia looked at the girl, surveyed her delicate features once more and remembered how good her body felt next to hers. Then she thought about how dirty the bathroom was and didn't feel very inspired to see how disgusting the rest of the place might be.
"Or not, I mean, it's just an invitation. No pressure." The girl shrugged. Smoothed the duvet over her legs a little nervously.
Olivia exhaled loudly. She glanced around the room, at the pile of dirty laundry in a corner and next to that, a coughed-up hairball that looked as if it had become part of the hardwood floor. Her guts rumbled.
She longed to be in her own apartment, in her own bed with clean sheets and pillowcases on the pillows. But both bed and apartment were empty now, Alex having taken a sublet on the Upper East Side following a series of bitter arguments over traveling to Boston together to meet Alex's parents. Alex was not ready for that. Olivia, ever the advocate for equal rights, would not budge on the matter, saying that if Alex would not include her in her life to the extent that Olivia wanted, their future was uncertain. Alex felt cornered, and moved out, unresolved about the relationship. They loved each other, but they seemed to have hit a wall. Both were heartbroken, and having to work together made the breakup nearly unbearable. Their stubbornness, however, prolonged the pain.
"So?" the girl asked.
"I really should go," Olivia finally said. She wanted to get out of there before the girl found out that Olivia couldn't even remember her name. Damn, indecisiveness was so unlike her. But then again, so was being three sheets to the wind and subsequently too hung over and confused to decide whether to shit or go blind.
"Well, I'll make you some coffee first, OK?" The girl swung her long legs out from under the duvet, stood up, and stretched. She had a trim, boyish body, draped in a white wife beater and red pajama pants. "Come on."
They walked down the hall into the tiny kitchen which, to Olivia's continued distaste, was a disaster. Dirty dishes were stacked all the way to the top of the sink. Bits of pasta and spaghetti sauce clung to a plate balanced precariously on top of the arsenal of filth. Olivia glanced around, trying to hide her nausea. A lone tea bag sat marooned in a tiny pool of brownish water on the counter top.
After the girl put a pot of water on the stove to boil, she and Olivia looked each other directly in the eye for the first time at close range. The girl's eyes lingered on those dark, intelligent brown eyes, drinking in their depths, wondering what worlds lived inside them. The girl's heart skipped a little. She looked at Olivia's lips, a little dry but nonetheless full and perfect. Damn. She's a catch. Olivia was the first to break the gaze, nervously looking back at the tea bag dessicating on the counter.
The girl smiled and said, "By the way, my name's Alicia. Alicia Stabler."
Olivia blinked a couple of times and lied, "Oh, I know; I remember." She forced a smile. What a relief, that's over.
"This isn't my apartment, you know, I'm just house sitting during Winter Break. I just got here yesterday and haven't had time to clean it up. My friend Lisa, whose place this is, is out of town on business. She's a real slob. Sorry about the mess," Alicia said as she ducked into the refrigerator to take out a small jar of instant Café Bustelo. She eyed the jar. "Looks like there's barely enough in here for one cup." She got a spoon out of the dish rack and scooped out a heaping tablespoon of instant coffee dregs and dumped them into a clean coffee mug.
"So what do you study in school?" Olivia queried, attempting to subtly lead up to finding out Alicia's age. Maybe she was in grad school. Let's hope.
"Oh, I'm not in school, I teach English at a community college near Northhampton! You thought I was a student?" Alicia laughed.
"Well, I mean I just figured .." Olivia said. Hmm, maybe this was looking better than it did initially, Olivia thought. She's not responsible for this horrific display of housekeeping, and I haven't committed statutory rape!
"I'm actually 33 years old. I don't know why, but it's like I've gotten trapped in a time warp and I still look really young. I guess I should be happy about it, but nine times out of ten, people dismiss me because they think I'm like, 12 years old," Alicia said, not hiding the fact that she knew Olivia was doing exactly that. "At the college, people are always mistaking me for a student."
The water in the kettle was boiling. Alicia poured it into the cup and stirred the coffee. Olivia took notice of her fine hands, making a mental note of approval again, remembering the dexterity of those hands an hour earlier.
"Milk?" Alicia asked.
"Yes, please."
Alicia retrieved a carton of two-percent milk from the fridge, opened it, and tilted it over the coffee cup. Clots of soured milk tumbled grotesquely out of the carton and plopped in quick succession into the coffee mug.
"Aw, goddamnit!" Alicia cursed. "I'm really sorry. That's all the coffee I had too. Shit."
Olivia felt lightness breaking through the dark clouds in her belly and started grinning, then giggling, bending over at the waist as the air rushed out of her lungs in an uncontrollable fit of laughter. She kept pointing at the coffee mug with its bits of curdled milk floating around the edges, the absurdity of the scene being the final straw in this rather unlikely morning of hot sex and leaden thoughts of being 40 and being outed at work unwittingly.
"So much for coffee," Alicia said, and poured the mess into the sink. She put her hands on her slender hips, in a gesture reminiscent of Alex. Olivia's groin throbbed suddenly as her heart twinged a little, so she then pushed the thought of Alex back into a dark closet.
Olivia wiped her eyes, tearing from laughter, and pulled herself together. "Oh God. I feel so much better now. I don't need any coffee, thanks anyway."
The woman's liberated giggling was so incongruous to her guarded façade, her strong, angular features and tall, almost domineering physique. Alicia stared in a feeling a lot like infatuation. She forgot about the coffee disaster.
"Oh, fuck it," said Alicia, taking Olivia's hand and leading her back down the hallway. "Call your office and tell them you're not coming in. Let's go back to bed."
Olivia gave in to the warm hand that held hers. "All right. But can I brush my teeth first?"
*************
Stay Tuned for Chapter Three in this Slow-Moving Tale of Olivia Benson's First Morning of Being 40 Years Old.
"The Girl"
Olivia gently extricated herself from the lithe arms of Elliot's niece, whose name she still couldn't remember. She felt a little woozy from the encounter. Her face was flushed and her heart still pounded. Maybe she was still drunk from the night before. Hard to separate all the sensations running through her body on this first day of being 40 years old, waking up next to a girl who looked young enough to be, well, her daughter. Olivia pushed that ugly thought from her mind as she scanned the messy bedroom for her clothes.
"Are you leaving?" A somber voice inquired from the bed. Olivia turned and took another look at this perfect stranger with whom she'd just shared a most knowing sexual encounter. Damn, she's cute. She had propped herself up on the pillowcase-less pillows and was rubbing a bit of sleep from calm blue eyes that were slightly sad, perhaps revealing a mind that thought too much about every moment life endlessly doled out.
"Uh, yeah, I know it seems kind of weird to leave like this, after we, you know.." she trailed off.
"Got really hot for each other and made love?" the girl said, half of her mouth turning up slightly in a softly comic expression. "You can say it. I was there too, you know."
Olivia looked down as she buttoned a cigarette smoke-befouled shirt over her full breasts and smiled a little too. "I'm sorry, it's just that I was kind of surprised to wake up here. I got pretty trashed last night. That's not like me at all."
"I know, and believe me, you were much safer here than trying to stagger to your own place in the shape you were in! Do you remember singing?" the girl asked.
"Singing? Were you singing last night?" asked Olivia.
"No, YOU were singing as we walked you back here."
"We walked me back? Who's we?" Olivia inquired, not really wanting to know.
"Elliot and me." The girl chuckled a little, remembering how Elliot laughed upon seeing a side, or actually, a few sides to his partner he'd never really been privy to as Olivia stumbled and cackled and sang at the top of her lungs all the way home.
"Jesus." Olivia plopped down on a rusty 1950s kitchen chair in the corner of the room. She'd never live this down back at the precinct. She felt her armpits get damp and her stomach flutter with an uncomfortable sensation that was part hangover and part horror.
"It's no big deal, Olivia. He knows about you and Alex."
"Me and Alex? What does he know?" Olivia's eyes got wide.
"He knows you two have a history together and that the current chapter is not too pleasant. He's cool about it."
"Great, everyone's in my business now." Olivia felt sick. Being a very private person by nature, and more than a little paranoid about prejudice by dint of her being a woman in a man's world, the thought of her colleagues knowing anything about her personal life gave her a desperate feeling of being out of control. She hated it. To make matters worse, probably out of some angst over her estranged relationship with ADA Alex Cabot and turning 40, she'd gotten shit-faced in front of her coworkers and had to be babysat by her partner's baby dyke niece. Olivia tried not to think of the kisses she'd exchanged with the girl as they sat at a booth laughing over something that was probably incomprehensibly funny to them but quite banal to everyone else. She blushed. She thought she might cry. The rollercoaster ride of the past 12 hours was just too much for her to handle.
"Hey, you know, you look like you don't feel so hot. Why don't you call in today and hang out with me? We can just chill, go to a diner, get some breakfast later."
Olivia looked at the girl, surveyed her delicate features once more and remembered how good her body felt next to hers. Then she thought about how dirty the bathroom was and didn't feel very inspired to see how disgusting the rest of the place might be.
"Or not, I mean, it's just an invitation. No pressure." The girl shrugged. Smoothed the duvet over her legs a little nervously.
Olivia exhaled loudly. She glanced around the room, at the pile of dirty laundry in a corner and next to that, a coughed-up hairball that looked as if it had become part of the hardwood floor. Her guts rumbled.
She longed to be in her own apartment, in her own bed with clean sheets and pillowcases on the pillows. But both bed and apartment were empty now, Alex having taken a sublet on the Upper East Side following a series of bitter arguments over traveling to Boston together to meet Alex's parents. Alex was not ready for that. Olivia, ever the advocate for equal rights, would not budge on the matter, saying that if Alex would not include her in her life to the extent that Olivia wanted, their future was uncertain. Alex felt cornered, and moved out, unresolved about the relationship. They loved each other, but they seemed to have hit a wall. Both were heartbroken, and having to work together made the breakup nearly unbearable. Their stubbornness, however, prolonged the pain.
"So?" the girl asked.
"I really should go," Olivia finally said. She wanted to get out of there before the girl found out that Olivia couldn't even remember her name. Damn, indecisiveness was so unlike her. But then again, so was being three sheets to the wind and subsequently too hung over and confused to decide whether to shit or go blind.
"Well, I'll make you some coffee first, OK?" The girl swung her long legs out from under the duvet, stood up, and stretched. She had a trim, boyish body, draped in a white wife beater and red pajama pants. "Come on."
They walked down the hall into the tiny kitchen which, to Olivia's continued distaste, was a disaster. Dirty dishes were stacked all the way to the top of the sink. Bits of pasta and spaghetti sauce clung to a plate balanced precariously on top of the arsenal of filth. Olivia glanced around, trying to hide her nausea. A lone tea bag sat marooned in a tiny pool of brownish water on the counter top.
After the girl put a pot of water on the stove to boil, she and Olivia looked each other directly in the eye for the first time at close range. The girl's eyes lingered on those dark, intelligent brown eyes, drinking in their depths, wondering what worlds lived inside them. The girl's heart skipped a little. She looked at Olivia's lips, a little dry but nonetheless full and perfect. Damn. She's a catch. Olivia was the first to break the gaze, nervously looking back at the tea bag dessicating on the counter.
The girl smiled and said, "By the way, my name's Alicia. Alicia Stabler."
Olivia blinked a couple of times and lied, "Oh, I know; I remember." She forced a smile. What a relief, that's over.
"This isn't my apartment, you know, I'm just house sitting during Winter Break. I just got here yesterday and haven't had time to clean it up. My friend Lisa, whose place this is, is out of town on business. She's a real slob. Sorry about the mess," Alicia said as she ducked into the refrigerator to take out a small jar of instant Café Bustelo. She eyed the jar. "Looks like there's barely enough in here for one cup." She got a spoon out of the dish rack and scooped out a heaping tablespoon of instant coffee dregs and dumped them into a clean coffee mug.
"So what do you study in school?" Olivia queried, attempting to subtly lead up to finding out Alicia's age. Maybe she was in grad school. Let's hope.
"Oh, I'm not in school, I teach English at a community college near Northhampton! You thought I was a student?" Alicia laughed.
"Well, I mean I just figured .." Olivia said. Hmm, maybe this was looking better than it did initially, Olivia thought. She's not responsible for this horrific display of housekeeping, and I haven't committed statutory rape!
"I'm actually 33 years old. I don't know why, but it's like I've gotten trapped in a time warp and I still look really young. I guess I should be happy about it, but nine times out of ten, people dismiss me because they think I'm like, 12 years old," Alicia said, not hiding the fact that she knew Olivia was doing exactly that. "At the college, people are always mistaking me for a student."
The water in the kettle was boiling. Alicia poured it into the cup and stirred the coffee. Olivia took notice of her fine hands, making a mental note of approval again, remembering the dexterity of those hands an hour earlier.
"Milk?" Alicia asked.
"Yes, please."
Alicia retrieved a carton of two-percent milk from the fridge, opened it, and tilted it over the coffee cup. Clots of soured milk tumbled grotesquely out of the carton and plopped in quick succession into the coffee mug.
"Aw, goddamnit!" Alicia cursed. "I'm really sorry. That's all the coffee I had too. Shit."
Olivia felt lightness breaking through the dark clouds in her belly and started grinning, then giggling, bending over at the waist as the air rushed out of her lungs in an uncontrollable fit of laughter. She kept pointing at the coffee mug with its bits of curdled milk floating around the edges, the absurdity of the scene being the final straw in this rather unlikely morning of hot sex and leaden thoughts of being 40 and being outed at work unwittingly.
"So much for coffee," Alicia said, and poured the mess into the sink. She put her hands on her slender hips, in a gesture reminiscent of Alex. Olivia's groin throbbed suddenly as her heart twinged a little, so she then pushed the thought of Alex back into a dark closet.
Olivia wiped her eyes, tearing from laughter, and pulled herself together. "Oh God. I feel so much better now. I don't need any coffee, thanks anyway."
The woman's liberated giggling was so incongruous to her guarded façade, her strong, angular features and tall, almost domineering physique. Alicia stared in a feeling a lot like infatuation. She forgot about the coffee disaster.
"Oh, fuck it," said Alicia, taking Olivia's hand and leading her back down the hallway. "Call your office and tell them you're not coming in. Let's go back to bed."
Olivia gave in to the warm hand that held hers. "All right. But can I brush my teeth first?"
*************
Stay Tuned for Chapter Three in this Slow-Moving Tale of Olivia Benson's First Morning of Being 40 Years Old.