Victoria wakes up by the sun shining in her face through the curtains. She has a slight headache due to a glass of wine too much. Or two. Or three. The bright sunlight enhances her pain so she pulls the covers up over her face and closes her eyes as tightly as possible. Suddenly the memory of last night hits her, the next second she´s sitting upright in her bed, eyes wide open in shock, all pain forgotten.
"Oh my god" she whispers, "What happened?"
The last thing she remembers is snuggling up to Charles on the sofa and looking up into his bright blue eyes. He smiled down at her.
"Damnit. He´s gorgeous." She falls back on the pillow. "That´s not at all what I came for."
A knock on the door pulls her back to reality. "Yes?"
Raven enters the room.
"Oh my god. The angels send you!" Victoria pulls her to sit on the bed and explains her situation in a whisper.
"And you can´t remember what happened afterwards?" Raven asks grinning.
Victoria shakes her head.
"Oh, this is too good, too exciting!"
"Stop it Raven or I´ll regret I told you about it. Will you help me?"
"What can I do?"
"Have you seen Charles, yet? Did he act – I don´t know – strangely?"
"Haven´t seen him, yet."
"Could you find him and…"
"Find who?" Charles´ head pops through the door that Raven has left ajar.
The girls look startled.
"Sorry, didn´t mean to interrupt you, carry on, I´ll be going."
"No, no!" Raven calls after him. Victoria looks at her in surprise.
"Come in, sit down. We were talking about that guy that works in the bakery down the street."
Victoria looks confused.
"Yeah, yeah. He´s totally into Vic here. And she asked me if I could give him a message."
Victoria looks like she wants to hide under the covers again.
"What message?" Charles asks intrigued.
"That she´s not interested."
"Poor lad. By the way, is he new there? Never saw him there, only women."
Victoria hides under the covers.
"Everything alright?" she feels his hand on her back on top of the cover.
"There is no bakery-guy." A muffled sound emerges from under the cover. Raven sees her opportunity to flee the awkward situation.
"Raven tried to cover for me. We were talking about you." Victoria speaks into her pillow, hoping she will suffocate. The headache, the embarrassment, it´s too much.
"I wanted her to go and see if you were acting differently today. Like maybe something happened yesterday." She couldn´t hold her breath long enough to pass out.
"But, what happened yesterday?" Charles asks confused.
"You tell me." Victoria says sarcastically, pulling the cover down from her face.
It took Charles a second to understand what she was talking about, but then it hit him.
"Oh. Oh! Got it." He laughs. "I could try to retrieve the memories of the evening for you. Or do you have more butt staring to hide?" he asks with a wink.
"No. I decided I won´t hide it anymore."
"I see." They burst into laughter.
"Well. Shall we?"
Victoria nods, scared of what she might see. She feels two invisible hands holding her head gently, she closes her eyes and lets Charles into her mind.
After a few seconds some blurry pictures emerge in front of her inner eye. The two of them sitting on the sofa side by side. Them laughing, talking, drinking. To her relief she sees that Charles seems to be equally drunk as her.
The next images are similar to what she remembered last: His beautiful blue eyes in close-up. What she didn´t remember is him putting his hand on her back smiling at her. He comes closer and closer and finally leans in to kiss her gently. The memory of the touch of his lips sends a jolt through her body. He kisses her again before they continue to cuddle snuggled up in the blanket. After a while she fell asleep, the next memory is of her waking up by the sunlight, so she opens her eyes and Charles leaves her mind. They look at each other, not saying anything, for a while.
"I carried you to bed after you fell asleep." He says shyly. She never saw him like that.
"Thank you. For carrying me. And for the memories, too."
"Apart from the kiss, nothing happened."
She nods, not sure what to say, then she has an idea. She slides closer to him, locking eyes.
"Do you trust me?" she whispers, and it´s his turn to nod.
She puts a hand to where his heart is, takes a deep breath and concentrates on the images of the kiss. She feels something gathering near her own heart. Nothing cold like when she made Raven cry. More like a warm bubble of energy floating in her blood, travelling through her veins, down her arm, into her hand. And then it´s gone, it left her body.
She looks up to Charles. He closed his eyes to. A smile forms on his lips, his cheeks turn a little pink. Victoria takes her hand from him and he opens his eyes to meet hers.
"I feel so happy and warm."
"I know."
"You did that to me?" the colour in his face is gone again.
"I wanted to let you know how I felt when you kissed me."
He looks at her dumbfounded.
"So… So you´re not mad at me?"
"For what?"
"For taking advantage of you?
"Oh come on, we were both a little drunk." They laugh.
"I wish I would´ve remembered it without your help, though." Victoria admits sadly.
"I think there is a solution to that problem, too?"
"Wha-"Victoria started to ask. But she was interrupted by Charles lips on hers. He kisses her passionately but by far too shortly for her liking.
When he pulls away he smiles at her one last time before leaving her room.
She stares after him for quite a while before realising she actually just stared at her door.
So she gets out of bed humming and starts to dress.
Best morning ever.