ELIAS
I woke up the morning after with the specific kind of headache that came from drinking more than I had in years, and the even more specific kind of humiliation that came from remembering exactly what I'd said and done while doing it.
I lay there for longer than I should have, staring at the ceiling, reconstructing the previous night in the order it had actually happened rather than the order I wished it had. The walk to her door; the things I'd said about the lab, about the promise, about all of it.
I was watching her face, and I saw the crack in it, the thing she hadn't wanted me to see. And then she'd asked me to leave, and I had, and somewhere between her doorstep and my own bed I'd apparently convinced myself that the night had gone reasonably well given the circumstances.
I
