"Stop it," I scolded myself, turning the water to cold. "It doesn't matter who he was."
Clean and dressed in worn sweats, I finally called Ryan.
"Where the hell did you disappear to?" he demanded without preamble. "One minute you were there, the next you'd vanished. I had to tell Mom you took an early Uber home with a headache."
"I'm sorry," I said, grateful he'd covered for me. "I just... needed some air and things got complicated."
"Complicated how?" His tone shifted from annoyance to concern. "Cait, did something happen? Did someone—"
"No! Nothing like that," I cut him off quickly. "I'm fine, really. Just embarrassed. I had too much to drink and made a stupid decision."
There was a pause, then understanding dawned in his voice. "Wait. Did you hook up with someone?"
I closed my eyes, mortified. "Can we please not discuss this?"
Ryan's laughter burst through the phone. "Holy shit! My straight-laced sister had a one-night stand! I don't believe it!"
"Keep your voice down!" I hissed, though he was miles away. "It's not funny, Ryan. I can barely remember what happened, and now my necklace is gone—Grandma's necklace."
His laughter stopped abruptly. "Your silver pendant? The one you never take off?"
"Yes," I said miserably, fingers again finding the empty space at my throat. "I woke up and it was just... gone."
"Do you think he took it?"
I sighed, sinking onto my couch. "I don't know. Maybe it broke. Maybe I took it off. I just don't remember enough."
"Who was he?" Ryan asked, his protective instinct finally kicking in. "Was it one of the guys from my party?"
I hesitated. "I think so? Dark hair, tall. That's all I can really remember."
"That describes half the men there, Cait." He sounded frustrated. "Look, I can ask around. Someone must have seen who you left with."
"No!" The thought of Ryan investigating my hookup was mortifying. "Please, don't. I just want to forget it ever happened."
"But your necklace?"
"Is gone," I finished firmly. "And I'll deal with it. Please, Ryan. Just let it go."
A long pause stretched between us. "Fine," he relented. "But if you change your mind..."
"I won't. But thank you."
After extracting a promise to meet for brunch the following weekend, I ended the call and tossed my phone onto the coffee table, suddenly exhausted. The adrenaline that had carried me through the morning was fading, leaving behind a hollowness that had nothing to do with my hangover.
I curled onto my side, pulling the throw blanket over me. Sleep wouldn't come. Instead, more fragments surfaced—his fingers threading through my hair, my back pressed against the cool glass of a window high above the city, his whispered words against my skin that I couldn't quite recall.
My stomach growled, reminding me I hadn't eaten. I forced myself up and shuffled to the kitchen, settling for cold cereal while leaning against the counter.
My reflection caught in the microwave door—pale face, shadows under my eyes, hair still damp from the shower. I looked exactly like what I was: a woman regretting her choices.
"It's not the end of the world," I told my reflection. "People have casual sex all the time. It's normal."
But it wasn't normal for me. I'd had relationships—three serious ones, to be exact. Each had ended amicably when we'd realized we wanted different things. I planned. I analyzed. I didn't go home with strangers whose names I couldn't remember.
My phone chimed with a text from my friend Mia: How was the party? Meet anyone interesting?
I stared at the message, unsure how to respond. Mia had been trying to get me to "live a little" since our college days. She'd be thrilled by this development, which somehow made me feel worse.
It was fine. Tell you later, I replied, noncommittal.
I spent the rest of Sunday in a fog, alternating between napping, half-heartedly catching up on work emails, and obsessively checking my neck as if the necklace might magically reappear. By evening, I'd convinced myself that Monday would reset everything. I'd return to my structured life, and this aberration would fade into an embarrassing anecdote I'd never share.
That conviction lasted until 3 AM, when I bolted upright in bed, suddenly, violently ill.
I barely made it to the bathroom in time. Kneeling on the cold tile, I attributed it to the lingering effects of too much alcohol and the greasy takeout I'd ordered for dinner. But as dawn approached and the nausea returned for a third time, a different possibility began to form—one I refused to acknowledge.
"No," I whispered to the bathroom mirror, splashing cold water on my face. "That's not possible."
Except it was. Despite the fuzzy memories, I knew with absolute certainty that whatever had happened in that hotel room, protection might not have been a priority.
I dressed mechanically for work, applied extra concealer to hide the evidence of my sleepless night, and stepped outside into the already-warm Arizona morning. The walk to the light rail station felt longer than usual, each step weighted with growing dread.
At lunch, instead of joining coworkers at the usual café, I ducked into a pharmacy three blocks away. Standing in front of the family planning section, I felt surreally detached, as if watching someone else select a pregnancy test and carry it to the counter.
The cashier—barely twenty with bright blue hair—didn't even look up as she scanned it. "Do you want a bag for this?"
"Yes, please," I managed, my voice sounding distant to my own ears.
Back at the office, I locked myself in the furthest stall of the women's restroom, hands trembling as I opened the package. Three minutes. That's all it would take to know if my one night of recklessness had consequences that would extend far beyond a missing necklace.
I set the timer on my phone and waited, staring at the blank wall of the stall, mind racing with calculations. I was due for my period in a week. It was too early for a test to be accurate. This was just paranoia. A waste of twenty dollars.
The timer chimed softly. I looked down.
Two lines. Clear and undeniable.