Chapter 1: The Wrong People at the Table

The first thing I knew was that I had to pee.

Not the polite, I-should-get-up-soon version. The kind that sits behind your navel like a fist and announces that if you do not move in the next thirty seconds, the rest of the morning is going to be a different kind of humiliation. I rolled, sat up too fast, and the hangover announced itself all at once, a bright, punishing pulse behind my eyes that made the room tilt.

I made it to the bathroom on legs that did not feel fully there. I more collapsed onto the toilet than sat, and the relief of finally peeing came first. The memory of the previous night came second, and it did not knock.

I remembered Murphy’s, and the margaritas, and the tequila shots. I remembered Steve’s hand on my thigh, and Jen pulling me off that bench like a fire alarm with better timing. I remembered my thumbs on a phone that couldn’t spell, Tyler taking the drink from my hand, Tyler carrying me, the wet streets, and the tests I had thrown at him because I couldn’t put together a real sentence and still wanted a clean reason to leave. Then I remembered the bed.

There had been lube everywhere; I had used three fingers, and then the dildo. I remembered the pain and the stretch, and the way I had looked at him and begged him to take it so I would have a villain in the morning.

The way he had sat on the corner of the mattress and refused. The way I had cum from it anyway, hard enough that the room went white, and then I had cleaned the toy with my mouth because that was the ritual now, even when the cock was silicone, and the mess was my own

I wiped myself and sat there another second with my forehead in my hands, running an inventory because I am a nurse and because panic likes a checklist.

I was wearing a pair of soft pajamas I didn’t remember putting on. My memory had been passing out with one leg of my scrubs still hanging off my ankle and a work top bunched up by my neck that I had never finished removing. Someone else had dressed me.

My ass was a different problem. Sore in a specific, occupied way that made sitting on the toilet a new experience. I had done that to myself on purpose, drunk and furious and trying to make Tyler slip, and my body had kept the receipt in muscle I had spent years pretending was decorative.

I did not have time to decide how I felt about any of it. I had to be at work at 7:00 am. I stood too fast, grabbed the vanity, and walked back to the bedroom like the floor was the deck of a ship in a storm. The clock on the nightstand said 8:05 am.

The sound I made was not a word.

The words no-call, no-show flashed into my mind. That is the phrase they use when they are being polite about firing you. I had twelve-hour shifts and a charge nurse who already thought I had been doing too much this week. I slapped at the covers over the bed, searching for my phone. I threw the comforter on the floor and shook the pillow; nothing. I dropped to my knees and looked under the bed like a woman who had misplaced her entire adult life and expected to find it next to a dust bunny.