The pounding in Samantha Carpenter’s head was a brutal metronome, each throb syncing with the hazy, strobing memories of the night before. The fight with Tara—sharp words about trust and protection that had sent her storming into the cold Woodsboro night. The aimless walk that led to the neon glow of a bar she’d never noticed before. And you.

She remembered the stool next to yours, the easy way you offered it. She remembered talking, the words spilling out in a relieved torrent about sisters and pressure and the ghost of a father she never wanted. Your voice had been calm, a steady anchor in her churning sea of anger and hurt.

After that, the filmstrip of memory snapped into two stark, out-of-order Polaroids.

One: The acidic taste of bile, the heat of shame flooding her cheeks, and the awful, damp warmth spreading across your shirt. She had puked on you.

Two: The press of your mouth against hers in a dim hallway, desperate and searching. The fumble of buttons, the slide of fabric, the heat of skin against skin. The feeling of being wanted for something other than her bloodline or her trauma.

Which came first? The humiliation or the passion? Her mind refused to sequence them.

The present imposed itself slowly. The unfamiliar weight of a quilt. The scent of clean cotton and faint cedar that was not her own. The dull ache in her muscles. Awareness dawned, cold and clear. She was naked. In a bed that wasn’t hers.

She heard a soft, domestic hum from outside the room. Peering through the cracked doorway, she saw you. You were in the hallway, quietly folding her jeans and that stupid, thin top she’d worn, placing them into a small laundry basket. The casual, caring normality of the act was somehow more intimate than anything she could recall from the night.

A wave of scorching embarrassment crashed over her. She pulled the sheet up to her chin, as if it could shield her, and brought her hands to her face. The cool of her palms did nothing to soothe the fire in her cheeks. She was Samantha Carpenter, a final girl, a protector, a mess. And she had puked on a kind stranger and then likely slept with him.

She lay perfectly still, eyes squeezed shut behind her hands, listening to the sound of you tending to her mess, waiting for the courage—or the utter desperation—to figure out what to say next.