EXTRACT FOR
The Center of Attention
(Cornelia Quick)

Every muscle in my body aches, there's a searing hot spotlight flooding through the windows, and someone is blaring a fucking fire alarm directly into my ears. I pull a pillow over my head as tight as I can, but I would need lead walls a foot thick to block out this light and noise - scratchy linen and musty foam will not be up to the job.

Also my head hurts. Like someone used it as the Liberty Bell's clapper for a big old Fourth of July extravaganza. I would scream, except I'm pretty sure my head would shatter, and then where would we be?

Good question, because I'm not exactly certain where we are ?

I pull the pillow off my head and struggle to sit and look around. The spotlight, it turns out, is the sun streaming through some faded yellow curtains, and the fire alarm is an exuberant little blackbird perched on a bush just visible through the window. Its song is pretty, but I'd like to wring the little fucker's neck.

When I swing my feet over the side of the bed, which is not my bed, I make contact with the likely source of the pounding in my head - an empty bottle of Sauza Reposado Gold. That stuff is dangerously smooth. I look down at my feet - one is bare, the electric green polish on my nails a little chipped, and the other is still wearing one of my black ankle high cowboy boots with the embroidered flowers.

I hear what sounds like the starting burp of a chain saw beside me, and I look over to see that I'm not alone in the bed. While I'm relieved to learn that I probably didn't polish off that bottle of tequila alone, I'm also a little concerned that I don't immediately recognize the naked man stretched out face down in a tangle of sheets, snoring into a pillow. His broad back rises and falls with his snores, and his naked ass - a firm, muscular ass - is bared to the ceiling.

I run my fingers tentatively along his ass, careful not to wake him, and a memory makes me smile. There was dancing last night, I suddenly recall, at the Lucky Cowboy Saloon, and I was holding handfuls of this ass while slow dancing to a cheesy Alan Jackson song. At least I think it was this ass - it was covered in denim at the time, and that broad back was covered by a black shirt with embroidered red roses on the yoke.

The exact shirt, I suddenly realize, that I'm wearing. The sleeves are a little long, and there's a blotchy stain on the left side that smells a whole lot like tequila, but I'm quite sure it's the same shirt. A memory of me unbuttoning this shirt tickles at my tequila-addled brain, feeling the smooth pearl buttons between my fingers and his rough stubble on my cheek. I remember I undid those buttons slowly, letting my fingers slide along his chest and belly as I worked my way down, tongue following; he was smooth and salty, like the rim of a margarita glass. When I got to his belly button I was on my knees, and he laughed when my tongue flicked inside - a manly chortle, not a giggle - and he pulled my head closer, fingers tangling my hair.