The morning after

Jason woke up with a dry throat and a pounding headache. The first sound he heard was his own painful groaning, and when he opened his eyes, the room was spinning around him. He tried to sit up in his bed, but his sense of balance was off, and he could barely lift his arms, they were so heavy. Looking at the clock, he could see that it was twelve past seven in the morning, but he couldn't remember what day it was. He could barely remember what had happened the night before.

When he finally managed to get vertical, he grabbed his phone off of the desk by his bed, intending to check the date. But when he unlocked the screen, what he saw was a series of texts filling up the screen. The letters were swimming too much in front of his eyes, so on weak feet, he wobbled his way into the bathroom and began to splash his face with water. It was a good five minutes before he could make out any of the texts on his phone.

2:39 AM can't sleep. sorry

2:53 AM i just don't know what to make out od this, Jasn

3:12 AM we need to talk in the morning

He vaguely remembered going to the bar the night before with his friend, Jennifer. Her texts scared him. He couldn't remember anything after they had arrived. He must have been drinking heavily. He had been trying to do that less lately, but clearly he hadn't done a very good job of it. If Jennifer had been there with him when he did so, he wasn't sure what he must have said to her. But clearly it wasn't something she had known how to handle.

He had loved her for years, but never knew how to tell her. It was part of the reason that he drank so hard. He felt ashamed of his inability to speak up, to tell her how he really felt, and to make something out of the friendship they had and that had stagnated unsatisfactorily in recent memory.

He rubbed his face as his phone autodialed her number and he held it up to his ear. One ring. Two rings. Three.

"Jason?" her voice on the other end was quiet, and tired. He could tell his call had waken her up.

"What did I say last night?" he asked. "Actually, first, how much did I drink? Then what did I say."

There was a pause as Jennifer tried to remember through her grogginess. "I think you had taken five shots before you started talking," she said. "And... And you started talking about me. And... The things you wanted to do to me."

Jason took a long breath. "It sounds like the whiskey was talking," he muttered apologetically.

"Jason... Do you love me? Or was that the whiskey talking?"

It took him a long moment to answer.

"Jennifer," he said. "I promise you. I am stone cold sober. And I do. I do love you."