She frowned again. Had Martin invited her over for a drink? Had she accepted?

Why?

As much as she tried to force the memory, nothing came to her. It was a black hole.

Had he…?

Did they…?

She wasn’t sure. She didn’t think so. It didn’t feel the same as… Maybe she’d passed out last night? Maybe she’d fallen asleep, and Martin had covered her up with a blanket and gone to bed? How had she gotten here?

Why couldn’t she remember?

She pushed off the couch and stumbled to the washroom. There was enough ambient light penetrating the windows now for her to find her way. Her stomach gurgled, but she didn’t feel as if she was going to throw up. She cupped some water from the tap into her mouth. Relished the freshness as the cold liquid ran down her throat.

She avoided her reflection in the mirror. Didn’t want to see the outer skin of the freak who resided inside.

Not a freak, Darby. A survivor.

She rolled her eyes at her inner pep talk as she dried her hands on a hand towel. It was always Eban’s voice she heard in her head. No wonder he’d kept her so firmly in the friend zone. No wonder he’d told her to move on.

She knew she had to get over him. It was taking a lot longer than she’d hoped. And now she was thinking about Eban again. About missing him. About wanting him.

She forced him out of her mind as she headed back into the living room. She tied up her unruly hair using the ponytail holder she habitually wore on her wrist. She stood there uncertainly in the empty room, listening hard.

It was quiet. Too quiet. Not even the hum of the furnace to break the silence. Dawn was finally beginning to brighten the world behind the closed drapes, which meant she was already later than she wanted to be for work.

“Martin?” she called softly.

No reply.

She gnawed her lip. She knew his housemate was away doing field work. Was Martin upstairs asleep? Had he passed out drunk? Or had he already gone into the lab?

She glanced at her watch. Almost ten. Ugh. She needed to head in soon but felt bad leaving without talking to him. She didn’t want things to become awkward. When had she blacked out? At the dance? The idea was mortifying. The grad student community was small and tight knit, and she was already the object of speculation and pity; she didn’t need another black mark of weirdness held against her.

She grabbed the drinking glasses off the table and took them into the kitchen, dumped them along with the other dirty dishes in the sink.

No dishwasher and clearly Martin was not as good at housekeeping as he was at writing modelling software. She reached for the dish soap, filled up the sink with clean hot water and started to wash the crockery, stacking it neatly on the drainer. Cleaning helped calm her anxiety, and she deliberately made enough noise to wake the dead, hoping to rouse Martin if he was still home.