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The sun had barely come up by the time she returned home, her apartment still hidden from daylight, so she struggled to navigate between all the organized mess spread on the living room rug. After carefully laying Spencer's cardigan on the empty couch, she moved to her bedroom, clustered by several piles of folded clothes, some files, the customary stack of books that needed to be read, some reread, collected by the nightstand, crowded by a few bottles, some empty, some in use, and various shapes and forms of used glasses. Searching through the various whiskey bottles, she'd found herself one that was almost empty, chugging the rest of the remaining liquid before heading to the bathroom. Leaning on the sides of her squared sink, her stare remained frozen onto her reflection, her smeared lipstick and stained cheeks from mascara leftovers merely being a distraction from her bloodshot eyes. She felt hardly drunk, not even dizzy, the generous amount of alcohol that had been consumed felt antithetical to the lack of signs she presented. She had become used to it. She had become used to being drunk.
Waking up had always been a problem, especially being functional at such early hours, except this time it was little before noon and it wasn't her usual alarm going off. Her phone had rung and buzzed on the nightstand for some time before she fully acknowledged her own being, slowly becoming more and more conscious of her surroundings. Checking the time before stretching her arm to answer the phone had brought her mind into spiraling, cursing under her breath before pressing the green button. "Hi, Spencer," she answered in a predictable hoarse voice, her eyes shrinking shut once the pain of motioning her body to get off the bed had hit her. A small break followed, him clearly taken aback by the rough sound, words hardly making their way out of his mouth.
"Uhm, hey," he managed to let out, nerves gathering around in a tight knot, wondering if he'd predicted his fate the night before. It was little past their time agreement and he was already standing in front of the coffee shop, whereas, clearly, she was far from there. "I've just arrived," he uttered shyly, his voice taken over by regret and all kinds of other fears. And her silence fed those fears even more.
Here and there, a few muffled cries and sounds of objects being thrown away perturbed that quietness, concluded with the same raspy voice. "Oh, great," she exclaimed, slightly rhetorically, her balance hanging by a thread while pulling up her jeans. She turned on the speakerphone, tossing it on the bed as she ran around the room to find a decent blouse that didn't look wrinkled. "I'll be there in ten," she estimated. The coffee shop was not far away from her place and she was used to being late for work, so driving really fast had always been the only viable option.
She could feel Spencer's distant being from the other side of the phone, probably thinking that she didn't want to go out with him or that she'd forgotten, neither of those portraying the reality of being a hardly-normal-functioning human being. There wasn't an ounce of feeling in her body that didn't want to be there, with him, a sensation that she had to work to push away from him as well, therefore, prolonging that phone call did nothing good anyways. Instead, she concentrated on pulling herself together, grabbing her bag and his cardigan and rushing out the door.
