Unexpected Love

Drinks For The Thirsty

   I sit in a booth at the bar with Finnick. He offered to buy me a drink, so here I am. It was only after he bought the first round when I remembered cops drink free. It keeps bar fights out if there's a cop drinking there, so we get free drinks.
   I sit there drinking away my sorrows. Finnick decides to drag me over to the bar for shots. I just sit at the bar while he orders. My head wasn't really in the game. When I look down, there was around twenty full shot glasses in front of me. Finnick takes one and raises it. "To Judy!" I lift one of the shots. "Judy..." Then we drink. The whiskey burned my throat. Fireball whiskey, I recognize as I pick up another shot. We raise again, Finnick was calling the toasts. "To Nick!" We drink. "To love!" We drink. "To Mr. and Mrs. Hopps!" We drink. I start to feel fuzzy. My eyes droop and all my pain is washed away by the liquor. Finnick seems to be drunk by now. No surprise, seeing as he's nearly half my size.
   "To the bartender!" We drink. "To the ZPD for giving us free drinks!" We drink. "To hustling!" We drink "To pawpsicles!"
   I feel my head start to grow and shrink. Finnick had reached his limit and was eating hot wings. I continue to drink until the bartender has to force the drink out of my hand. "I think you've had enough sir."
   I hiccup and reply weakly, "awe man! Come on! I-I gots no reasons to...stop drink!" I realize I spoke wrong and break into a drunken giggle. Turning to Finnick, I speak again. "Hey! Your ears are so soft..." I start stroking his ears. I doubt he notices, he's practically about to black out in the plate of hot wings in front of him. "Fluffy!" He giggles and gets off the stool. I watch as he stumbles around, trying to reach our booth. Slowly, I get off and stumble my own way to the booth. "Come back fluffy!" He lays on the bench and stares at the table.
   When I sit down, the bartender places two large mugs of some weird looking red drink in front of us. "Here fellas. This should clear your minds enough to call a cab at least." I don't listen. I just chug the concoction quickly and gag when I resurface. "Oh man...that is nasty...you gotta try this!" Finnick groans and sits up. He take a big gulp of the red drink and hacks like a cat. "Dude that is so gross." He keeps drinking even though he's complaining. I stare out the window, watching the sun set and clouds grow in the sky.
   "Judy never liked rainy days...she'd always come to my place because she was scared of thunder." I look over at Finnick, who's expression seemed a bit more sober. "We'd talk all night and watch movies...she would fall asleep on the couch."
   As I think of Judy, I fall back into the deep hole of darkness I was in before whiskey showed me the light. My head goes to Judy, remembering every detail of her beautiful face. I loved her so much. I felt so alone without her.
   I blindly start eating hot wings that the bartender brought us. I realize how hungry I was.
*******
   About an hour passes. Finnick had called a cab and now I'm laying on the couch at Finnick's apartment. He was in the shower. I decide to finally turn on my phone. Sixty two missed calls from Finnick, ten from Judy's parents, a few from Bogo, and about twenty others from friends.
   I yawn as I put the phone down. I wonder to the fridge and start drinking beer from it. When Finnick finally comes out, fully dressed, I'm sitting on the kitchen floor, crying, with several empty beer cans around me. I try to drown my pain, but it only makes things worse. Finnick sighs sadly and leads me off to the bathroom. Before I realize it, he somehow managed to get my clothes of and put me in the bathtub. I close my eyes and he starts to wash my matted fur. The warm shower feels amazing. The water drips off the tip of my nose and runs down my filthy red fur. After about twenty minutes, I'm good as new. He has me dry myself and went to find me clean clothes.
   I stare at myself in the mirror. "Don't stop living" I promised Judy I wouldn't give up. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to work through this. For Judy. Maybe, I'll even find another girl. Judy would like that.
   I lay on the couch in some clean clothes. Throughout the years, I've ended up leaving many clothes at Finnick's place, so he was able to get me things to wear without a problem.
   I end up falling asleep on the couch. I'm not sure when Finnick went to bed, but he was wide awake when I dosed off. My sleep was, for the first time in days, pleasant and dreamless.