The emerging sunlight stung my corneas as I glanced at the window. 6:24am and I was in the same spot I had been in. My laptop was asleep on the coffee table in front of me, and I was curled up under a blanket watching Criminal Minds in the same spot I had been in. A nearly empty vodka bottle hung precariously in my fingers, threatening to fall onto the others and awake my company. I felt Danielle snoring down near my legs, and Rick was passed out on the couch next to me. I yawned and pulled the blanket higher over me, careful to not wake Danielle.

I heard my phone ding in the other room. It was definitely either a relative who remembered our relationship when I got famous asking to see if I, and more importantly, my bank about, was okay or one of the twenty-three men I was currently leading on. Matthew Gray Gubler and Paget Brewster gently questioning Morgan's worried family pulled me away from my mind racing into oblivious. It was too late, for as soon as the sound filled the otherwise empty room, I instantly wondered if it was him. I summoned the courage to pull the bottle up to my lips and empty the rest of it into my mouth.

When I had first met him, I thought he was insane to drink so much, since he always outdid me when we got wasted. Now, I understood. I was drinking for fun then, and now I was drinking to drown the thoughts that were trying to drown me. It was amazing how loss brings you so much closer to someone. I heard a key scratching against the lock of the door. I glanced around the room and shrugged. I could take another berating. Finally, the key was harshly shoved into the lock. The key turning and the door opening were separated by mere milliseconds before I heard Britt fling open the door.

"Ugh," she muttered, walking in.

I heard her unforgiving heels clicking as she walked in, and heard the disappointment grow as she came closer and closer to me. She finally emerged and the disappointed sigh slipped out.

"The two people I don't want to be asleep are asleep. Great," she said, setting her purse down. "How are you feeling, Ayanna?"

"Nauseous and cold," I admitted.

"Well, you would probably feel better after a nice, hot shower," she said. It was her managerial way of telling me that she thought I stunk. "How long did they last?"

"Rick was out by midnight, but Danni made it to four am. I think she'll reach a record by the end of the week."

"Sounds like Rick's the one getting woken up," Britt said, seconds before she slapped Rick in the face with a pillow.

He awoke so violently that he fell off the couch, effectively waking Danielle, who pulled out a Glock from nowhere. She looked around, sighed with both tiredness and disappointment that she couldn't pump someone with lead, and reholstered her piece. Britt looked unamused by my bodyguards' demeanors.

"Danni, Rick, we need a Pantry Meeting."

Rick, with an inaudible grumble, got up and followed Britt into the kitchen. Danielle stood, pressed her lips onto my forehead in some odd gesture of love, and followed. I heard them open the door of the pantry and convene in there. Despite my desires, I stood with my blanket wrapped around myself and slowly wandered into the kitchen and sat next to the floor next to the pantry door.

"--I know she's depressed, but we will run into big problems if she continues on like this."

"What do you mean?"

"Roger called me this morning. He had asked how she was and casually hinted that the deadline they set for June can't be pushed back any further."

"I guess it takes time to film something," Rick added with a yawn. "Should we tell her?"

"I don't know what sent her on her spiral, but if it's this job, I don't want to push it onto her harder."

"No, it's not the job," Danielle chimed in. "But, writing is probably not the best idea right now."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, when I tried to get her to take a nap, I glanced at the latest thing she's been working on, and it's not good."

"Like, Lifetime movie not good?"

"Like three pages of her writing sentences of only the word 'ow' bad."

"Well, I don't know what we have to do but we have to get her off of her couch and doing something productive again."

"To be fair, I'm off the couch already," I chimed in

Britt opened the door and looked down at me. "Sorry, Ayanna. Just didn't think--"

"It's whatever," I murmured.

Britt started to talk again, but the vodka was starting to kick in. I stood and walked into my bedroom. The heaviness and warmth of the vodka were already weighing on me. I stood at the foot of my bed, slightly swaying, trying to figure out how to get in without falling. After a few seconds, I laid down on the ground, wrapping my blanket snugly around me, and soon fell asleep.

"Fuck that, I'm not a runner," I proclaimed loudly, as a I shoved a supreme pizza in the over.

Lana rolled her eyes. "Bold coming from someone who works at Pizza Hut. You're already in the rat race."

"The fuck I am. I'm just here to get a little closer to where I want to go."

"Aren't we all," Dwayne had chuckled.

It was a year before my life changed forever, and I was working another graveyard shift at the worst job in America. Sweat poured down our backs from the ovens and lack of A/C. A fly was incessantly buzzing around the cash register, and Dwayne was trying to swat it and make out an order at the same time. I put pepperoni onto a bed of cheese while Lana kept talking.

"Just face it, we're all still going to be working here in three years. It'll be you, me, and Dwayne. The three amigos."

"More like the Three Stooges. I don't care for either of you," I assured her. "Plus, if I'm guaranteed this shit job for three years, why does it matter what I'm wearing or how I look?"

"Because we make food. You can't make pizza looking like Oscar the Grouch."

I glared at her. Fatass Lana had some nerve to talk. We were only a couple years apart at that point, but you would think she was a decade older than she was. Her shirts were ripped from her trying to squeeze herself into them, and her pants weren't fairing any better. Years of marinara stains covered her shoes. Her hair had turned a hideous greyish brown once she stopped dyeing it, and she looked like an exhausted female Benjamin Button. Nothing about her screamed appetizing.

Yet, I bit my tongue since one more write-up and I would be fired. I still argued that there was no one to replace me so firing me was a waste of time, space, and effort on everyone's part but Dwayne had warned me that I should just keep my head down and work hard. He should've known that I was the "fuck that" type of girl. I slid the pepperoni and anchovy pizza in and started some wings. I looked out of the corner of my eye to see Lana and Dwayne whispering to themselves. It was nothing new. I had always thought it was a conspiracy against me until Dwayne had admitted that he had drunkenly told Lana he liked me, and she was trying to get him to muster up the courage to try it.

Before I fell down another mosaic rabbit hole of feeling nonchalant, nostalgia, and pain, I was pulled away by the beeping of a vegan veggie pizza. I put it into a box, sliced it, and closed it. A few seconds after I slid it onto the rack, I heard the doorbell ring and saw Lana happily moseying back to her post. She took over cooking the wings, though I watched with dismay as she tossed them into some sauce and then the box without even checking to make sure the chicken was done. I had sworn the day Lana trained me that I would never eat here again, and had kept my word until my sobriety abruptly ended.

Lana made her way back over to me and began to fold boxes. "Are you doing anything this Saturday?"

"Yeah," I lied without hesitation. "I've gotta groom my cat."

"When did you get a cat?"

"A couple days ago. His name is Buttons. He's black with white paws and he's so adorable."

"That's nice. Well, I was going to ask if you wanted to come to this party with me. Dwayne's going too."

"Oh," I mumbled.

I'd first gotten an inkling that Dwayne liked me three days prior to this when he had accidentally brushed up against me and spent the next hour avoiding me. It was a little weird, not because we had a significant age difference (though twenty-two-year-old me was not interested in a twenty-eight-year-old) nor because I didn't like him back since we were pretty cordial friends. I had noticed briefly that he had had a massive boner, though I shrugged it off since Dwayne wasn't much of a looker so I'd assumed what he found attractive wasn't either. I wasn't exactly wrong, but I still had had no interest in Dwayne. He was the reason that pretty people shouldn't have kids together. Dwayne had beautiful eyes, an adorable little nose, soft lips, and a nice skin tone, but God left him in the blender too long because he was so disproportionate. His left eye was too far up, and his nose was a bit too low and his mouth was crooked. It wasn't that he was ugly; it was just that looking at him was difficult.

Lana clearing her throat (one of my pet peeves) brought me back to the depressing reality that I faced. She looked at the clock and a satisfied smile came across her face.

"Almost quitting time."

"Thank the lord," I mumbled.

This was around the time I was writing my first screenplay for a contest, and Pizza Hut was stifling my ideas. I kept reminding myself there was only an hour left, and for an hour, tried to keep the energy high. At five minutes until closing, I was nearly out of morale. Everything that could've gone wrong while cleaning did, and I was covered in stains and ready for a shower and to snuggle with Buttons (who was real; I just wasn't cleaning him) and dream of shit that was never going to happen.

Lana left first, as she always did since she had the excuse of her offspring. I hung behind, clinging to the last time for the next fifteen minutes that I would sit down. Dwayne, who was doing the books, looked up at the clock then at me.

"Is your phone not working?"

"Huh?"

"It's closing time. You should head out."

"No worries, I will. Just trying to gather my thoughts."

"What are you thinking about?"

"Writing."

"Writing what?"

Shit. "This screenplay. It's about a family that takes in a stranger while there's a tornado, and he gets trapped inside with them."

"Oh, like No Good Deed?"

"Nah, more like The Wizard of Oz meets Arsenic and Old Lace."

"Hmm, that's interesting. Well, would you like a lift? So, you don't have to walk home?"

No. "Yeah, that would be nice."

Dwayne smiled, murmured something, then walked in the back. The smell of him stayed in the room, and I took a deep breath and smiled. At least he showered. His cologne made me feel prickly and tingly inside, though it didn't compare to you. I'd figured that was as close as I'd ever get. I would get the synapses firing, This is your chance! Take your chance! but I wasn't going to get the warm, invisible forever hug or the internal glow on my cheeks ever again. I shrugged it off when Dwayne came back and hopped up to get in his car. That drive home was the first of many that eventually led to a six-month relationship where I lost my virginity, my patience, and my interest in long-term relationships. At least I can say it wasn't all you.