Things start to come back to me when I rub my face dry with the thick terry-cloth towel hanging on the rack. Kristen cajoling me into one more shot even though I was already falling-down drunk; jumping up on her coffee table to dance until I fell off and landed on some freshman girl; Brendon—oh, God. Brendon. I’m pretty sure I totally threw myself at him in the most embarrassing manner possible.
“Yup, you totally did,” Kristen informs me cheerfully after I’ve managed to stumble down to the kitchen and collapse in the nearest chair. She sets a mug of water and two Advil in front of me—which for Kristen is as considerate as she gets. “You kept rubbing up on him and babbling about how hot his box of mints is. He was so weirded out. It was pretty hilarious.”
“I’m sure,” I mutter. It would’ve been nice if Kristen had intervened to spare me the humiliation, but I guess she was too busy getting a kick out of the situation.
She picks up the empty beer bottles littered on the table and takes them to the sink. “Cheer up,” she tells me. “At least you weren’t abandoned by your supposed boyfriend.”
An unsettled feeling twists in my gut. “He didn’t come back last night?”
“No,” she scoffs. “Fucking jerk. Probably went off to hotbox his truck with Joey. I swear—” She’s cut off by her phone on the counter ringing. She grabs it with a sigh. “That’s probably him. He better grovel.”
While she takes the call I swallow the Advil, downing all of the water in the mug in a few long gulps. My head is totally throbbing. I feel like death warmed over. No, scratch that. Like death left out on the counter for two days and then reheated in the microwave for thirty seconds. That’s exactly how I feel.
There’s an issue of National Geographic lying half-open on the table. I pick it up and leaf through it idly. I’m not a big recreational-reader type, other than celebrity gossip blogs and Us Weekly, but Kristen’s a talker, and I’m sure she’ll be arguing with Warren for a while before he gives in and promises to buy her something shiny in exchange for bailing. The magazine is open to a striking photo of an old Buddhist monk swathed in a yellow robe kneeling in prayer. Below the picture is a profile on the monk, who’d taken a vow of silence and hadn’t spoken a word in sixty years. I guess the idea was that by not speaking and staying in a constant state of contemplation, it made him closer to God, or enlightenment, or whatever.