The office door closed behind Matt with an ominous "thud."
Well, that went about as well as could be expected,
he thought. This week had been...busy, and as a result, research progress slow. He'd managed to escape this time without too much of a chewing out from his advisor, but she was apparently not pleased enough with what little progress he had made to "reward" him. Not that he minded. He'd gotten more than enough "rewards" this week from Naomi, and Carmen had generously seen fit to add to that.
He also felt like shit. As Naomi had promised, he did indeed make it to his advisor meeting on time, although he was just this side of late, not having had a shower, and with yesterday's alcohol making it hard to focus on anything other than the pain currently racking his head.
It's ok,
he thought,
it only hurts when I open my eyes.
He wanted more than anything to just go home and shower, but coming home reeking of alcohol would raise questions, and without knowing what excuse Carmen had given Mei Lin yesterday as to his absence, he would have no way of answering those questions. He was waiting on an all-clear text from Carmen, or at least something explaining the excuse, but there was nothing yet, so he had to assume that his girlfriend was still hanging out at the apartment. If he recalled correctly, though, she had class soon, so even without a "go" signal, he could probably get himself a nice shower.
For now he'd have to make do with a caffeine injection. He joined the other bleary-eyed students at the coffee shop, there just trying to get through the rest of this Friday and make it to the warm embrace of sleeping in on a Saturday morning. As he waited in line, he tried to keep his eyes open the bare minimum necessary to shuffle forward with the other zombies. When the line in front of him finally vanished, after what seemed like an hour to his exhausted mind and body, but was probably, he had to guess, maybe a few minutes in non-hungover reality, he was surprised to see Carmen working the register.
"Hey, there, stud," she greeted him.
He drew in a painful breath that still tasted slightly of alcohol, then responded. "Hey, can...uh, coffee? Wait, what? Why are you here? I thought..."
"Yeah, don't worry," she said, "I'm supposed to be here. See the name tag and the really stylish apron?" He gave her what he imagined looked like a very strained smile. "Anyway, how about some coffee, and you sit over there, and when I get a break I can explain all about being a cog in the capitalist system?" He nodded, keeping his eyes just barely open.
The coffee was amazing and horrible all at once, hot, bitter, too strong, and not quite strong enough. He let it do battle with the toxins he could almost feel oozing from the inside of his mouth. When Carmen came and sat across the small table he'd camped out at, he again had to assume that he was just experiencing time slightly differently than everyone else.
"So," she said, "I'm here and you want to know how it went with your girlfriend and if you're going to find your stuff all thrown out the window when you stumble back to the apartment, yes?"
"Something like that," he said, "No, exactly that. So, what did you tell her?"
"Nothing," she said.
That struck him as odd. "Just didn't come up?"
"No, she didn't. I hung around your apartment until after noon. You're out of bread, by the way. House guests like sandwiches. Anyway, she never showed up and I had to go, so good luck, buddy."
"I'll get right on that bread thing," he said.
"Cool," she said. "So, judging from your overall appearance and smell, I guess you had a fun time with Naomi yesterday?"
"Oh my god," he said. He let his face fall to the table. "She's just...it's like...she's fucking insane. And I think she's infecting me with her madness."
"That hot, huh?" Carmen teased. "I've
got
to have details. And I think you owe me at least that much."
"I'm sure I do," he said, "but can it wait until I feel slightly less like shit?"
"It can wait," she replied. "Although I'm not sure your shower can much longer. You're lucky you didn't get pulled over driving back here, bud. You smell like a bar, and not a very good one."
"Just a lucky guy, I guess," he shrugged as he pulled himself back to an upright sitting position. "Even the Nessa situation is fixed."
"Wait, you also fucked Luis?" she said a little too loudly.
"No, no," he gestured for her to keep her voice down, knowing that it would do nothing. "I'll tell you about that, too. When do you get off?"
"Pretty much every time I'm with a girl, most times with guys, too," she smiled innocently.
"From work," he said, her jokes doing little to ease the headache.
"I'll be done at noon, but I only have a couple hours before I have to go pick up my sister from the airport."
"Sister?"
"Yeah, she's visiting for the weekend. Actually, we're having a sort of party tomorrow night; you should come by, maybe bring along a hot piece of tail or two as the price of admission," Carmen said. She looked at the clock on the wall.
"Not worried I'm going to try to hook up with her?" he tried to sound sarcastic.
"I think you probably have enough girls to deal with right now," she said. "And you forget, I live with two very horny dudes."
"I didn't forget. Also two very horny girls," he said, adding as an afterthought, "Also you. Although I guess she wouldn't be hooking up with you."
Carmen sat silent for what felt weirdly long at that, although Matt chalked it up to the time dilation he was experiencing. "Yeah," she said finally. "Anyway, maybe I'll come by later if you're not going anywhere, which I sort of suspect is the case."
"I look forward to you nursing me back to health," he said.
"Don't count on it, buddy. Anyway, I've got to get back to work." She got up and left him there. When his head felt momentarily better, he took the opportunity to start home.
***
When Matt had at last finished the seemingly endless trudge home, squinting and struggling the whole way, he found the door locked, indicating that nobody was there.
Small miracles,
he thought. He unlocked the door and pushed it open, only to find Mei Lin, one leg crossed over the other, reading a book on the couch.
Fuck.
"Hi, honey, I'm home," he said, the very words seeming to deflate his body.
"Hi, honey!" she chirped. "You look like shit."
"Nice to see you, too," he replied, letting his bag fall carelessly to the floor. "I'm going to take a shower."
If I can manage to shower and maybe fall asleep before she starts questioning me, maybe she'll just forget about it and I can get out alive.
"Long night, huh?" she smiled.
"Yeah," he sighed.
Let's try changing the subject.
"Hey, I just saw Carmen up on campus and she invited us to come over tomorrow night. I guess her sister's in town?"
"So I guess she didn't wear you out enough, then?" Mei Lin said. Her eyes were focused on him, but her expression gave away nothing other than a general happiness.
