Chapter 21: The Morning After

A feeling of some unnamed dread from the previous evening flooded back to Eliza before she even opened her eyes. She was somewhere unfamiliar. Where? She kept them shut, squeezing them even more tightly in some sort of absurd hope that she would wake up in her familiar bed in her familiar apartment with her familiar problems. The night cascaded back to her. She had been drunk. Not *that* drunk. She had been influenced by that woman! Ms. Veselsky, the assistant!

Her eyes snapped open and light crashed into her brain in the manner of a train derailment. Eliza was certain that she could feel it physically tap the back of her brain. She was on the couch where she had fallen asleep after… Oh god...

“Good morning!” called a cheerful voice from somewhere she could not see. It was Alessandro. *Bastard!* He continued, “You’ll want some juice probably. If you’ve never done all that in one night before, I imagine it feels quite a lot like a hangover.”