The energy it took to lift and turn it drained everything out of me, and as I flopped down, I opened my mouth wide, breathing heavily as the room spun around me. I needed more air, and keeping my mouth open seemed like the most logical way to make that happen. I would drool again, there was no doubt about it, but that was something I was going to have to live with.

I didn’t bother to look at the clock; the sun that snuck through the closed shades was the afternoon kind, not the morning. I’d slept a very long time, and still, I needed more. A lot more. I closed my eyes and thought the words I’d thought before and would think again:

I will never drink again.

I will never drink again.

As I lay there, the fuzzy memories from the night before came flooding back, and I reached up slowly and pressed a palm into my left eye. The embarrassment during dinner. I’d made a fool of myself because that’s what happens when you’re sad and angry and you drink more than you should.

And then there was Hooks.

Wait, Hooks?

Why could I see his face so clearly?

He hadn’t been there—had he?

I started to sit up again, but the room spun quickly, and I let my body drop back down once again.

Vertical, bad.

Horizontal, better.

Not good by any means, but better.

I rolled onto my side and breathed out of my mouth again, since that seemed to help just a little. I tried to push the splotchy images together, and suddenly, I remembered lying, in much the same position as I was in right now, on Emma’s floor, my cheek on the carpet, my eyelids heavy and tacky as I peered at the couple in the kitchen.

It all dissolved, and then I could only see Hooks’s face, his jawline and his eyes. One moment, he was sitting in the back seat of my car, and then he was on the jumbo screen at the stadium. Next, he was in Emma’s apartment, yelling at someone.

Was he yelling at me?

The images were a blurry, fuzzy mess, and trying to make any sense of them made my head hurt.

I saw two figures in Emma’s kitchen, heard them whispering, saying words I couldn’t make out, and then they turned—

Suddenly, I was right back in my own bed, and I heard a noise at the door. It was Keith coming into the bedroom, and he wheeled himself up alongside the bed. Through the slits in my eyes, I could see the concern on his face as he watched me, waiting for me to say something. After a moment, I let my eyelids flutter back down, the mere thought of keeping them open for much longer exhausting.