She flicked at a cherry with her index finger and sent the red top spinning across the polished counter into an amber colored fluid – some sort of spilled liquor she had no desire to identify. Strands of Matchbox Twenty’s “Unwell” swept through the room, and she wondered about the sanity of the beat up, dusty looking punk who was singing along at what seemed like the top of his lungs.

“Come on. You gotta admit we’re better than that.”

She rolled her eyes, still watching the cherry stem. “He has some nice points.”

At the moment, said guy hit a top note and after a half belch, began singing at a whole new volume. Her head throbbed, and she hadn’t even touched the drink in front of her yet. Well...much, anyway.

A nudge. “Even my high notes aren’t that bad.”

“You can’t do high notes.”

Another prod. “Admit it.”

A slow smile curved her lips, but only slightly because she managed to seriously dampen the full grin that was threatening to bridge its way ear to ear. In another dangerous moment, she would be grinning like a dork.

“You guys are a little better,” she allowed wryly. “But I still maintain that you can’t do top notes.”

He sat back with an easy, relaxed grin and shrugged. “I’m working on it.”

She shook her glass and let the liquid slosh dangerously. Suddenly, she couldn’t remember what she had ordered. Maybe if she tasted it…but she was paranoid about tasting things she couldn’t name or pronounce.

He saw her eyeing her glass and offered, “Want to go back to the hotel and raid the mini bar? It’s on my tab.”

She grimaced as she stood. “You’re right. You guys rock. Let’s get out of here.”

So they traipsed back to the hotel, up the elevator to the penthouse suite. Maybe they played a drinking game with ice cubes, but she couldn’t be absolutely positive and she didn’t even know how to play a drinking game with ice cubes, so he must have proposed the game. She turned on the TV and they laughed deliriously at Larry King’s face and nodded gravely at the sounds coming out of Conan O’Brien’s mouth.

They collapsed on the bed and half sprawled on each other, her head on his back, his leg thrown up over one of hers in a position she thought only accomplished gymnasts were capable of executing. She didn’t really care about any consequences at the moment. Consequences were a thing of the morning after. Not now.

“So here we are,” his voice said. She thought just maybe, maybe, she could feel the sound reverberating through him. “Two people of opposite sexes and drunk. What most people would call an ideal situation.”

Now that should have given her a jolt, some kind of electric shock to awaken the brain. It didn’t.

She did turn her head.

His lips did meet hers. 

Again. 

She did feel a classic electric shock.

If he hadn’t been half as intoxicated as she was, he would have thought: fuck. And he would have stopped. Because in the morning he ran the chance of having her accuse him of taking advantage of her when she was drunk, of seducing her when she was inebriated. But that was all part of the morning after, and his mind was clouded with the night, that night, this night, tonight.
 

Part Four: Figuring
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