Unavoidable.

Tina:

I felt my head throb as I tried to open my eyes, the puffiness of them preventing me to do more so then a small slit, through which I could see my surroundings...

A sharp pain entered my head at the same moment as the first stream of light hit my eyes, causing me to squeeze them shut in an instant...

But the short glance already had told me more than I’d wanted to know...

I inhaled the scent, the scent I had once associated with my home... The scent I would always associate with my home. I felt the fabric of the couch beneath me, the couch on which I had spend so many evenings with her... Stroking her hair, feeling her cheek against my thigh, stealing an occasional kiss... This was the couch on which she had rubbed my feet when I had been pregnant for the first time, it was the couch on which she had slept after a fight. It was the couch on which we had sat, facing our friends, me with my fuzzy wuzzy slippers, as they had accused us of being boring... So boring...

How much wouldn’t I give to be boring with her again...

I felt my face wrench as a wave of nausea joined the increasing ache in my head...

‘God’

I heard myself mumble, and was surprised at the hoarse and numb tone of my voice...

How long ago had it been that I drunk so much that I felt like this?

Again memories of this house overwhelmed me, the last time Id been in this compromising position I’d woken up in her arms... Was it the time that had faded the sensations or was it that, near to her, the feeling hadn’t been this bad?

I tried, slowly, to get into a sitting position, my eyes still closed to prevent the dizziness to spread... And, I knew too well, too avoid looking at the painfully familiarity of the surroundings...

I moaned as memories of the night before seemed to stream back in my head, filling it, rapidly. I felt the blanket, that had covered me, slide off, and felt the material of the shirt Shane had given me to wear scrape my hypersensitive skin.

Who had put it over me?

Bette?

My heart jumped up with a sudden flare, but, simmered again as I thought...

Or Jodi?

I moaned again, as I remembered, in a blur, my state of stoned drunkenness in which my ex-wifes new girlfriend had found me, and brought me here...

Why couldn’t I dislike her? I had tried so hard to hate her, from the first time I had heard her name being mentioned, and although seeing her reminded me, painfully, of all I had lost, I couldn’t... Oh how much easier things would be if I just could...

Finally having achieved to sit in a somewhat upright position, I inhaled quivery, trying to organize my thoughts, by doing so automaticly reassessing what had caused me to feel this way, and why I had tried to wash it away with alcohol...