Brie Sheridan has had her heart broken way too many times. Rhett Price is usually the culprit, but, this time, he might be the solution.
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Brooke 'Brie' Sheridan wouldn't necessa...
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BRIE
Waking up is a strange concept in itself.
To be fair, the act of sleeping is also really weird in theory. You're telling me you lie there, close your eyes, pretend to be unconscious until you actually fall unconscious, and let your brain take you on an all expenses paid trip to the unconscious side of your mind? And there's no catch? Sounds fake and way too good to be true, but okay. Sometimes, I lie awake in bed and try to think about what the first human being to ever fall asleep was thinking before and after. Did it freak them out?
This one time, when my insomnia was at its worst during freshman year of college, I started studying the history of sleep in hopes it would tire my brain, as it doesn't strike me as too interesting of a topic and the power of suggestion can be quite influential—just like yawning, but in text form. It didn't work, not according to its intended goal, but I'm now the proud detainer of encyclopedic yet useless knowledge regarding the full history of sleep, complete with Greek theories on Philosophy.
This is relevant to my present situation because my nights of sleep following hours on end of drinking are either hell on earth, waking me up at the crack of dawn with a debilitating migraine, or I sleep like a baby and it's the best sleep I've gotten in weeks—or since the last time I got spectacularly drunk.
Today, I wake up feeling particularly well-rested. When compared to the last time, the morning following that charity gala, I feel refreshed and ready to face a new day, but it takes me a while to piece all the memory fragments together. They come to me broken like that, slowly, and I know I have to be patient with myself; after all, I've never been one to hold my liquor and, when it comes to tequila, I know I tend to be a disgrace.
Therefore, I'm suspicious about why I'm waking up in a relatively good mood.
Though the hangover is still here and my nose is clogged—I was once convinced I was allergic to alcohol because of how many times I was waking up with a runny nose and a sore throat the morning after drinking my weight in colorful cocktails—not to mention the dull ache right behind my eyes making it hard to keep them open, I feel okay. I feel okay, I feel warm, I feel safe.
I'm not in my dorm room.
I know my mattress like I know the back of my hand, as it has molded perfectly to match the shape of my body, and my shoulder is still sore from hitting a wall last night. Having it pressed against this mattress, stuck under the full weight of my body, is doing it no wonders, and I whimper as I attempt—and fail—to find a more comfortable sleeping position.
Then, something—or someone—stirs beside me. My heartbeat jumps like it's been kickstarted back to life with a defibrillator, jolts of electricity sparking across my nerves, and my eyes don't flutter away in the soft, delicate way it happens in the movies.
