Carrie Minberg, Female, 20-21

	- Narrator, rising junior at Harvard

	- Beige, freckled skin, 5'6, 145lbs, curly back-length dark-red or blue hair

Elise, Female, 20-21

	- Rising junior at Harvard, Norwegian

	- Pale golden skin, 5'10, 155lbs, shoulder-length light blonde hair

Evan, Male, late-40s

	- Stranger in a bar

	- Ruddy complexion, 5'7, 170lbs, short black hair

Julens, Female, 21

	- Junior at Harvard, Bitterwood graduate, French

	- Light olive skin, 5'8, 140lbs, long silky black hair

Elise and I were able to talk several times a week while I was in Killeen. Her dad had given her a phone card and we talked excitedly about our upcoming trip to Europe. I let the festering guilt fade out for a while, almost excused myself from the responsibility.

I rationalized what I'd done, as most people would have. I acknowledged that the racing clock at Bitterwood had been quickly bringing the end to my time there. I was a horny young woman, and my bisexuality ran strong in both directions. I told myself that I'd missed Elise, that I'd needed to fuck Drew to have one last cock inside my body before fully committing myself to my girlfriend.

It was all bullshit, really, but that's how I was able to manage the secret and push it deep, where it didn't surface as often as it could.

Elise knew nothing about me and Drew, and I planned to keep it that way.

I turned twenty-one that summer. I hung out with Michael those few weeks, but just as friends. My nights with Drew had sated me, almost, and Michael and I enjoyed just being friendly, nothing more. He never tried to fuck me, never suggested anything intimate at all. He'd dated a few different women during his two years at Rice, and his current girlfriend stayed with him for a week while I was there.

Her jet black hair, mocha skin, and the way she wore her cut-up jeans one-size too small framed her as a physical beauty, and when I got to know her over beers on my birthday, she seemed to be a really nice girl. I was happy for Michael, was glad he'd found someone who seemed to fit perfectly.

It made me consider my relationship with Elise, and I hated that I was again digging for holes to exploit. I can't say why. Elise was perfect, beautiful, loved me passionately. She was a great friend, a great lover, and I knew that her future and mine were bound to be bright.

But emotionally, I'd become agitated. I didn't really see it then, but it was obvious as I thought about that time in my life years later. I wasn't perfectly happy, and when I was still that young, I didn't know that 'perfectly happy' was an illusion.

And it wasn't Elise. I've written so often about all of her good qualities that I failed to mention that she had no bad ones. Not that I saw, at least. Despite that, I found myself questioning our relationship, and I don't know why. I loved her, wanted it to be forever, but I had a very restless energy that threatened us, even if I wasn't sure what the hell was wrong.

But for a while, we were good. I flew to Milan and met Elise there, and we set off on trains and on foot across Italy, hitching rides in Greece, and hiking mountains in Austria. It was a fantastic trip and it did a lot to quash my self-doubt about my relationship with my lover.

We fucked everywhere. In hostels, hotel rooms, along canals, near ruins, and my favorite places were when we fucked on our hikes through the mountains and valleys of Austria.

And it was great sex, not just loving. Elise knew when to spank me, when not, when to slide a third finger into my pussy, or a second into my ass. She was a giving lover and I loved doing the same for her.

We spent a week apart before our move to Harvard, Elise in Sweden for ski training, and me sitting on my ass on a beach in Texas. It was relaxing. I got a bit stressed out about the decision to go to Harvard, felt already the pressure to jump in as a junior and immediately live up to the Ivy League expectations. Mom reassured me, gave me some tips for living off campus. Elise and I had rented a small apartment not too far away, and for the first time in my life, I'd be responsible for paying bills and keeping house.

The week ended quickly, and I kissed my Mom goodbye in the morning and kissed Elise hello when I landed in Boston that afternoon. Most of the things I'd shipped had already arrived, and we spent two days unloading, unpacking, and getting settled in. Our apartment and our school were technically in Cambridge, but it was easier to understand for most people when we called our home 'Boston.'

We had several days of free time before classes started. We had our courses set, most of them we shared, though I signed up for a course in African anthropology while Elise selected an extra Lit course on Mongolian mythology and poetry.

- - -

Boston felt like a fresh start. I left behind Drew, and Lawton, checked to make sure Henri and Brown and the others were still long gone in my thoughts. Drew still tugged at me sometimes, and it wasn't just the hatred for my infidelity. Sometimes, I thought about his cock, and many times when Elise fucked me with the strapon, I imagined it was Drew inside me again.

I really did try to fight those feelings, to forget that I liked it. I had a very hard time balancing the fantasy and the reality, but Elise never knew. She was perceptive about my moods, my tendencies, but she never saw this one. I hid it well, and I knew opportunities would challenge me to reject what I was beginning to crave again.

Classes started and Elise and I settled into a comfortable rhythm. We saved our cash and bought bulk food and other items, spent our lunches and evenings together studying or in the new computer lab. We fucked a couple of times a week, and for the most part, our time at Harvard began to feel, well, comfortable.

I guess I never did 'comfortable' well. I tended to seek out new experiences, want to meet new people, had urges to fuck them. I'd held back since Drew, but barely. Elise being at my side kept me in line, though she never knew how much I wanted to stray.

I started to obsess with the idea of cheating. I started to get chills when I fantasized about a classmate meeting me in a car, or in the trees. It wasn't just the sex I dreamed about. It was the cheating. I was disgusted with myself, but day after day, I found myself masturbating to some new illicit secret hookup with someone I'd seen just hours prior which played out in full color and sound in my imagination.

I couldn't talk to Elise about it. She was pretty stressed out as it was, and our sex life took a nose dive very quickly. She had no sex drive, she admitted to me, and she blamed it on the intense stress to perform at Harvard.

I understood, mostly, as I fought those same demons, too. But my other demons, some of them, were driving me to cheat, to find a new thrill, to learn how it feels to fuck just one more person.

- - -

Before I crossed that line for the third time in our relationship, a letter arrived at our apartment addressed to Elise. When I'd grabbed it from our mail slot that morning, I thought nothing of it. I wished I'd have thrown it away. Burned it. Never let the words it contained be known.

I went out while Elise napped, classes over in the mid-afternoon. I enjoyed reading in a park, spent time in the library, and splurged on two gyros to bring home for dinner.

I opened the door to a painful sight.

Elise was red-faced, puffy, crying. She sat on our couch, head in her hands, didn't move when I came in.

I raced to her, took her arm, asked, “Sweetie, Honey! What's wrong?”

She said nothing at first, didn't move, and I held her a moment. She picked up the envelope, the one I'd seen addressed to her earlier, and pulled out the letter inside. It was then that I noticed the stamp that marked the letter's origination as the UK.

My heart sank.

It was a long two seconds between her handing me the letter and me seeing enough to know it was from Drew. I knew, before I read it. I think I did, anyway. It seems so obvious now.

I read it quickly, my tears flowing before I'd finished.

Elise,

Hi, it's Drew, from Bitterwood,

I have gone through some things since I arrived at Oxford. I've converted to Catholicism, and in doing that, I've had to come to terms with the harm I've done others. This includes you.

I'm very sorry, so sorry, Elise. I write this not to hurt you but it will. I'm so very sorry.

While you were in Oslo, before the end of school, Carrie and I were together. I didn't want it, she kinda pushed me to do it, we did it, and it was sin. But I accept my responsibility and I'm sorry.

I hope you can forgive me for what I did to you. It wasn't right, and I see that now. I'm so sorry.

God bless you, Elise,

--Drew

It was over. I knew it, and the shouting hatred that Elise hurled at me, including, “get the fuck out, Carrie!” several times, just piled on to what I knew three seconds into the letter.

I was in shock, really. I cried, pleaded with Elise, promised her everything. But she was done with all that, I'd gotten a second chance and I fucked Drew with it. We were done, and it was only later, when I slept in an alley, curled up with a small bag of my clothes, that it really began to hit me.

- - -

I was crying softly, a bit delirious, exhausted, dehydrated, when the paramedics arrived. I don't know who called them, but they took me to he hospital and I stayed the night. They called my emergency contact from my phonebook, who was, of course, Elise.

I heard she came down at some point, but I never saw her. The nurse said Elise had checked that I wasn't dying and wasn't suicidal, but then she left. I was discharged that morning, nothing more to do for me. You can't heal a shattered heart with surgery, not the kind I had anyway.

I blame myself, I know it was me. I hadn't specifically set out to cheat, but I put myself in all the right positions to do it, and when the opportunity was perfect, I jumped Drew and fucked him for a few days before Elise came home.

I hated myself then, perhaps the worst of my life. I don't know that I was suicidal, but thoughts of wanting to be dead certainly slid through my mind.

I had nowhere to go, the apartment paid for by Elise's father, mostly, but my things were there. I ignored my class schedule and went back to our pad. Elise wasn't home, but her note was clear as day.

Carrie,

I think I made it clear that we're through. You have no idea how sad I am right now. I can't stop crying. I'm broken, all over, I feel so numb. I hate you. I love you. I wish you'd have told me this happened. I can't believe I had to find out this way. I gave you a second chance, I wanted you to be mine, but you aren't.

I told you early in our friendship that you were a free soul, that no one and nowhere would tie you down, not even me. I wished I'd have listened to myself then, and never let myself be hurt by you this way. I truly loved you, Carrie, I truly, truly did. I can't be with you any more, and it is killing me.

Please take your things when I'm not here, I really can't see you any more.

Elise

There were smudged marks on the paper. She'd been crying when she wrote it, and I was crying reading it. I was a leaking zombie as I tried to remember what I was doing every minute or two. I had bags out, why? Clothes. Why is my toothbrush on the bed? Oh, right... What the hell do I do now?

I called my Mom long-distance from a payphone. I was exhausted, hysterical, I think I got across what had happened, but it was hard to keep my thoughts connected and lucid. She wired me cash and I got a hotel room for a couple of nights to give me time to figure out what I wanted to do.

I stopped going to classes. After three nights at the hotel, I had no answers. I got drunk at the hotel bar, almost let a nice-looking guy take me back to his room. But I was numb, and I wasn't yet at the point where that was sexually appealing again.

Mom sent more money, told me to use it get a small apartment, she'd figure out how to get the next month's rent paid. Instead, I booked the hotel room for two weeks and drank most of the rest of it. In the hotel bar, the clubs around Boston, dives. I moved around a lot, drunk, stinking, I didn't shower and I started getting funny looks everywhere I went.

I didn't care. I was numb, felt so broken, nothing felt right. I'd missed two weeks of classes and I didn't care that that was a death sentence for my semester.

The first night I had any sexual energy at all, I hooked up with an older married guy named Evan. I was drunk at a place called 'Ivy,' a trendy sort of place where someone like me didn't quite fit in. So long as they served the vodka straight, I fit in well enough for me.

Evan was a sleazeball. Even drunk, even in my state of mine, I knew him for what he was. But he bought me drinks and started to lean in to talk to me. He must have been desperate for anything, I hadn't bathed in three or four days. But he sweet-talked me, and I felt a tingling in my crotch for the first time in weeks, so when he asked if I wanted to go back to my hotel room, I led the way.

Inside, he was all hands. Rough hands, clumsy, or maybe it was just that I was drunk and couldn't tell the difference. It didn't matter. He helped me take off my clothes, no easy task, and within moments, I was on my back with Evan fucking my vagina.

I think he wore a condom, I don't really remember. He pumped away at my puss while I laid there, a small part of me being satisfied while the rest of me burned in misery.

I let him fuck me till he came and he quickly left. I felt nothing. Not shame, not pleasure, nothing. I thought it would make me feel better to get fucked again, but it was nothing and the next day, I surely felt much worse about it. So, I did what I did every morning, I started drinking before I was out of bed.

- - -

I was about out of money, not answering calls late at night that were probably Mom. I was numb to the world, and for once in my life, there was no fight left in me. I'd destroyed all the good in the world, all by myself, and I deserved to know nothing but emptiness and the dampening effects of liquor.

I was in a dive called 'Top Shelf Retreat' which was anything but top shelf, drinking alone, eyeballing two guys and girl I thought might be worth fucking. Other than Evan and his 20-stroke wonder technique, I'd just let myself go, not thinking of anyone else, not caring how many times bartenders cut me off and kicked me out, how many people wrinkled their noses next to me, how many whispered and stared.

Cops had been called once, but I got out and disappeared before they found me. I wasn't an asshole to anyone, I just drank heavily, and smelled bad.

Top Shelf was slow on a Tuesday night, and I was starting to hit that line where the tender was likely to cut me off. I debated ordering another vodka just to push it.

“C-Carrie?”

My eyes blinked slowly as I turned to look across the bar. I squinted in the dark light, had no idea who was talking, and went back to flagging down the tender.

“C-Carrie? That is you. Oh...”

Julens, the pretty French girl from Bitterwood was a couple of feet away, wrinkling her nose, a disgusted but sympathetic look on her face. “Carrie, you ok? You... look like you've had a rough time.”

I just grunted and tried to stop people from my past from disturbing my drinking practice.

She moved away from me and I forgot about her. The tender gave me one more shot, and waved off any future service. He demanded I pay my tab and leave after my drink. I paid, and downed my shot, stumbled out the door. Julens caught my arm, said, “Carrie... what's wrong? Where's Elise?”

Elise. Oh, god, Elise. I lost it, sank onto the cement, and cried until I couldn't see straight. Julens sat with me, quietly, and I mostly ignored her. I was angry at her. She'd brought me back to what I was trying so hard, drinking so much, to not think about. Elise...

When I stopped crying freely and sat up a minute, I felt really dizzy. Being quite drunk, and for so long, it was a familiar feeling. Julens watched me quietly, concern on her face, “Carrie... come on. I'll take you to my place. Whatever's wrong, I can help, ok?”

“I wanna drink.”

“I have wine.”

That sealed it and I stopped resisting her help.

I don't recall the ride there or the first couple of hours, but by the time I started be coherent, Julens had already talked to Elise.

Her look was one of concern rather than anger, and I suppose I thanked her for that small, unconscious kindness. I'd have barreled out the door if I thought she was going to yell at me. I wasn't going to take that, not after I'd fought so hard to forget it all.

But Julens was kind, surprisingly.

“Look, Carrie... Ok, I know what's going on, ok? I think... Look, stay here tonight. If you just gotta drink there are two bottles of wine. Don't overdo it, ok? Hang in there. We'll get you back, ok?”

I grunted and found a bottle opener, didn't bother to pour the wine in a glass, just sat on the couch and took big swigs.

The phone rang and Julens shuffled off to take it in another room. I couldn't make out what she said and when she returned she sat quietly and rubbed my back. Her nose wrinkled again and I didn't really care how rank I was. She took the wine and sat it down. I started to pick it up again when she jerked me to my feet, pushed me down the hall and had me inside the bathroom before I had time to lose my balance.

Julens yanked off my shirt, my breasts swinging freely below. My pants were pulled down, and she forced me to step out of my underwear after removing my shoes and socks.

I stood in the shower stall completely naked. I just stood there, a stupid grin spreading on my face. “At least you bought me a drink first.”

Julens wasn't amused, she turned on the shower and closed me behind the stall door. I guess muscle memory kicked in and I cleaned up, stepped out of the stall to Julens waiting with a warm towel.

She pushed her face toward me, I almost thought she would kiss me. But she inhaled, sniffed near my pits, and down my body a ways, then straightened and nodded quickly. “Ok, now bed.”

“Drink first.”

“No. You're done, Carrie.”

“Come on... just one.”

“No.”

I had little strength to argue, figured I'd wait til she was asleep and sneak back into the living room to grab it.

“Khepri's at her new boyfriend's house. You can sleep in her bed.” There were two small beds in the room, and Julens pointed to the far one while standing in the door. I realized that Julens was very pretty, even angry at me. I slipped under the covers and laid back, swimming, buzzing. It was a race between exhaustion and alcohol to see whether I slept or puked, and thankfully, the alcohol lost.