Chapter 2 - Booze and regret

Slowly slipping out from under the arm of the naked, sleeping woman next to him, Daryl kicked through the pile of clothes on his bedroom floor. Finally spotting his discarded jeans, he dragged them on before locating a t-shirt, giving it a quick sniff before pulling it on over top of the white singlet he'd been wearing since the day before. He headed out of the room as quietly as possible, careful not to wake Shelby. There was always a better chance of a girl leaving quicker if he made sure that he wasn't in bed with her when she awoke.

Out on the porch he dropped into the torn armchair and lit a cigarette. The grey light of the early morning filtered through the trees at the edge of the property, and the crisp air did little to relieve the pounding in his head. He'd had way too much to drink last night, courtesy of goddamn Merle. He'd be in an early grave if he kept trying to keep up with the hard partying habits of his older brother. Merle had been on an especially heightened buzz because him and his - what was Gina to Merle? His fuckbuddy, Daryl supposed, one of them anyway - had been keen to show Gina's cousin, Shelby, a good time while she was visiting for the weekend. So, they'd started at the bar, then brought the party back to their place where it carried on until the early hours of the morning. From first introductions, Shelby had made no secret of the fact that she was into Daryl, and he had spent half the night trying to keep some distance between himself and her advances, until he got too drunk to care anymore, and inevitably they ended up in his bed. Taking a long pull on his cigarette, Daryl replayed the parts he could remember after they'd gone to bed, although none of it had been particularly gratifying. For Daryl, sex was satisfying in that it was a release, but there was little more than that for him. He'd never found himself emotionally into any of the women he'd slept with, never really cared about them on any deeper level, and certainly, outside of the act itself, did not enjoy being that physically close to someone at all.

Daryl would have been fine with the fact that to him, intimacy meant little more than a sexual act; could have happily accepted that he just didn't seem to be capable of developing feelings for anyone, connecting with anyone, except... except...

That thought rose again, as it sometimes randomly did - especially in the depressing aftermath of another mediocre fuck. Usually, he pushed it straight down as soon as it tried to stretch in his mind, but for some reason, this morning, he let it unfurl.

except... a long time ago with a girl he'd barely known, he'd felt it. A spark. A something. An everything. A breathless, all-encompassing, high-flying, gut-churning, spirit-soaring everything. And unwittingly, she had become the benchmark that he measured every other girl against, and no one could even come close. He tried to tell himself that the reason he'd felt those things with her was because he'd been a hormonal teenage boy and she had been the girl he'd fantasised about. He tried to tell himself that the spark was just the product of the situation, nothing to do with her, and now, as an adult, the capacity to feel things at that intensity had dampened, leveled out.

This was normal, not that.

Usually, he didn't let himself think about her, because a confusing storm of emotions would flare. A mix of softness and resentment, infatuation and bitterness. But, on rare occasion, he let himself indulge in the memory of how, under her touch, electric jolts had fired through his whole body, goosebumps had risen on his skin, and physical proximity to someone had never felt more natural, more desired. He let himself conjure up her amber eyes and shy smile, the golden freckles across her nose and the fruity scent of her shampoo. Since then, he'd never again experienced that feeling that he was falling and soaring at the same time, no matter how hard he'd tried to chase it.

But, surely all that was just because of teenage hormones.

Although, sometimes, he couldn't help but wonder.