to the sound of her front door slamming and a familiar female voice calling out her name.

"Sarah! Time to get up, we have a baby shower to finish planning!"

She covered her pounding head with her pillow and groaned; even from the next room, Lauren's voice seemed excessively loud this morning. She didn't bother moving when she heard her bedroom door open.

"Do you realize your apartment smells like a frat house?"

Sarah slide the pillow off her face and inhaled, then almost gagged as she smelled the stale scent of cheap vodka in the air.

"Oh, god," she said, wrinkling her nose. "It does."

Lauren made a face as she came to stand next to Sarah's bed. "Scratch that, it's you. You smell like a frat house. Partying hard last night?

"I would definitely not classify it as partying. And I didn't drink that much," Sarah lied, a wave of nausea hitting her as she sat up slowly. She clamped her mouth shut for a few seconds as she waited for it to pass. Lauren raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"Are you sure? Because you smell so strongly of alcohol right now that I'm worried just breathing the same air as you will give my kid fetal alcohol syndrome."

"That's not how that works."

"Well, if Child Protective Services shows up at my door, I'm directing them to your inebriated ass," Lauren informed her.

"It's too early for you to be dramatic," Sarah groaned. "Why are you here, anyway?"

Lauren gave her a thoroughly unimpressed look. "We need to finish planning the baby shower that's in less than two weeks, and you said that I could come over today to take a final look at what you put together. Remember?"

Sarah scrunched her face up guiltily as she searched her memory of the night before. She remembered the beginning of the night clearly. She and Matt had finished the entire bottle of vodka between them, and when he left it had still been surprisingly early in the evening. As always, it wasn't until she was done drinking that the full effect of the alcohol had hit her. She vaguely remembered receiving a text from Lauren asking if she was free to do baby shower planning the next night.

"I thought you said you were coming over sometime around...later than now? Nighttime?" Sarah asked blurrily, rubbing her eyes. Her mouth was dry and her head felt like it would explode.

"I did. Then you told me you had today off, so I asked if we could meet up in the morning. And you said, and I quote..." Lauren began, scrolling through her texts on her phone, "'Come over whenever you want.' Then you said, 'Please bring me a grilled cheese.' And finally, 'Don't ever let your baby get drunk.'"

"Well...that seems like good advice," Sarah defended, then after a pause she added hopefully, "Did you bring me a grilled cheese?"

"No."

Sarah huffed and leaned her head back against the headboard. "You show up here at the crack of dawn, being loud as hell, and you don't even bring me a sandwich."

"Crack of dawn?" Lauren laughed and leaned around Sarah's nightstand so that she could reach the curtains, which she yanked aside. Bright sunlight streamed in and Sarah cringed and brought her blanket up over her eyes. "Hate to break it to you, sunshine, but it's past noon."

"You're a monster and I'm taking your key away," Sarah grumbled into the blanket.

"Okay, how about we go to the diner on the corner to do the planning, and I'll buy you a grilled cheese there," Lauren offered. "It'll help your hangover."

Sarah nodded grudgingly before untangling herself from her covers and struggling out of bed. When she stepped foot into the living room, the smell of vodka only got stronger, which didn't help her already queasy stomach. Her eyes landed on the dining room table, where the folder of graphic photos was still laying open, with the photo of the addict she had been questioning Matt about still sitting in plain sight. She hastened over to the table and grabbed the photo, intending to stuff it into the folder. She hadn't looked at any of the photos beyond the one with the addict—the flattened body on the sidewalk had been graphic enough—so she was startled to see a familiar face in the photo that had been beneath it: James Wesley, the man who had roped her into this situation in the first place. In the photo he was slumped over in a chair with several large red spots blooming through the front of his white dress shirt. She stared at it in shock.

"What are you looking at?" Lauren asked curiously from across the room. She started walking over to the table, causing Sarah to snap out of her state. She hastily placed the photo of the addict on top of the stack, covering the photo of Wesley, and snapped the folder shut.

"Bills," she said quickly. She shoved the folder into her large purse and turned back to Lauren, determined to push the jarring photo out of her mind. She hadn't liked Wesley in the slightest, but she also hadn't been expecting to see a photo of his dead body first thing in the morning.

Her friend gave her a slightly doubtful look, which Sarah pointedly ignored as she threw her purse into her bedroom. Returning to the living room, she opened the window to let some fresh air in before shuffling into the kitchen to turn on the coffee maker. Lauren remained lingering near the table, where she cast a significant look at the two tumblers still sitting next to the empty bottle of vodka. "Well, at least you weren't drinking alone. Who was your lucky drinking buddy?"

"Hmm? Oh, um—no one. A friend," Sarah said distractedly, then shook her head and corrected herself. "Not a friend. A person. That I know."

Lauren rolled her eyes. "That clears things up. Is this friend-not-a-friend anyone that I know?"

Sarah shook her head as she messed with the buttons on the ancient coffee machine, trying to get it to work properly. It just made a weak whirring noise.

"Were you guys measuring your shots or something?"

"What?" Sarah asked confusedly, before turning around to see Lauren holding up the measuring cup—which also undoubtedly reeked of liquor—with a questioning look on her face.

"Oh. Uh...yes. Yes, we were," Sarah lied. At Lauren's dubious expression, she continued. "They're supposed to be exactly one and a half ounces, you know."

"How very meticulous of you."

"One of the lead causes of binge-drinking is not knowing how much a proper shot is," Sarah told her innocently.

Lauren scoffed, picked up the empty bottle and dangled it upside down. "Yeah, wouldn't want to drink too much."

"This coffee maker is not going to do its job," Sarah said, purposefully changing the subject. "I'll get some at the diner. Are you ready to go?"

Fifteen minutes later, after Sarah had brushed her teeth and changed out of her rumpled sleep clothes, she and Lauren entered the old diner on the corner of Sarah's block. A waitress approached them as Sarah helped Lauren slide into the booth before settling into her seat on the other side. She placed her order of grilled cheese and coffee, and the waitress turned expectantly to Lauren, who was eyeing the menu thoughtfully.

"I'll take pancakes," she decided.

"You want maple syrup or blueberry?"

"Neither," Lauren said slowly, frowning at the menu before looking up at the woman. "Do you have onions?"

The waitress stared at her blankly. "Onions?"

"Yeah. Or, like, chives?"

"With your pancakes?" the waitress asked doubtfully, looking over at Sarah for confirmation. Sarah just nodded at her seriously, and the waitress rolled her eyes and wrote down the order before walking away. Once the two of them were alone again, Sarah pulled her notebook out of her bag. She had been using her lunch breaks to make invitations and her subway commute to plan the menu and activities, and surprisingly had managed to pull together a halfway decent plan for the shower.

"Okay, this is the list of people I invited. Take a look at it and make sure I didn't miss anyone, or invite anyone you actually hate," Sarah said, handing the list to Lauren. "Why do you know so many people whose names begin with Mary? Mary-Kate, Mary-Louise, Mary-Margaret, Mary-Jo..."

Lauren shrugged and sipped her water. "Lot of Irish girls in my old sorority. Speaking of both sororities and the Irish—there will be booze there, right? I mean, not for me, obviously. But for everyone else."

"I cannot talk about alcohol right now," Sarah complained as her stomach turned in protest of the subject.

"You have to talk about alcohol right now. The party is in like ten days and a good two thirds of that guest list will not show up unless there are mimosas involved."

"Of course there will be mimosas, do you think I'm going to sit through a whole party with your mother there and no alcohol to numb the experience?"

"Fair enough. I was thinking we could make a drinking game out of how many times she manages to bring up things that she dislikes about Greg. Like, take a drink every time she..." Lauren's words trailed off as she looked down at the table and raised her eyebrows. "Who is that?"

Sarah gave her a confused look before following her gaze to her phone, which she had accidentally set to silent. The only indication that it was ringing was the tiny devil emoticon in the center of the screen. Remembering the last time Matt had called her while Lauren was present, Sarah snatched the phone before her friend could.

"Hello?" she said.

"Who is it?" Lauren whispered, and Sarah ignored her.

"Did I wake you up?" Matt asked over the line, presumably picking up on the sleepy rasp that still hadn't been chased away by coffee. Sarah frowned at the faint amusement in his voice.

"No," she indignantly. "It's one in the afternoon, I was already awake."

"You've only been awake for forty-five minutes," Lauren pointed out helpfully.

Sarah batted her hand at her friend in annoyance, idly wondering how well Matt's senses worked over the phone. Could he pick up on background noises as easily as he could in person, or was he limited by how powerful the cell's microphone was?

"Are you with someone right now?"

"Um, yeah," she said, narrowing her eyes at Lauren, who was trying to lean across the table to hear more of the conversation, but was prevented from doing so by her oversized stomach. "But I can step outside."

Lauren shot her an offended look. "What? You came here to help me with planning and now you're abandoning me?"

Sarah covered the mouthpiece of the cell phone, and pushed the notebook towards Lauren. "I'm literally going to be right outside for like, five minutes. Here, look at this list of foods and cross off everything that makes you throw up nowadays. I can't keep track."

With that she slid out of the booth and towards the exit, looking behind her to see Lauren examining the list and already shaking her head while crossing several items off. Sarah stepped outside and whined slightly at how bright it was; she'd left her sunglasses on the booth inside.

"Hungover?" Matt asked at her pained noise.

"I feel like I got hit by a bus," she told him, leaning back against the front window of the diner. "You?"

"About the same. I was just...returning your call," he said.

Sarah stomach dropped slightly. She had called Matt? When? She scrunched her eyes closed, both to block out the sun and in an effort to remember the night before. Sure enough, a fuzzy memory of calling him after he left floated to her mind, though for the life of her she couldn't recall what she had intended to say. Thankfully it sounded like he hadn't answered.

"Sarah?" Matt's voice brought her out of her mental self-reprimand.

"Yeah?"

"I asked if I could come over later to talk about what the plan is for you going back to Orion tomorrow."

"Oh. Yeah, that's fine," she said absently, then changed her mind. "Actually, my apartment still kind of smells like cheap vodka. What about your place?"

Matt didn't mind the relocation, and they agreed upon a time to meet before hanging up the phone. Sarah's headache was in full force by the time she stepped out of the bright sunshine and back into the diner.

"Casual afternoon call from Satan?" Lauren inquired as Sarah slid into the booth. Sarah winced, dismayed by how perceptive her best friend constantly proved herself to be.

"It's—it's just an inside joke," she lied weakly. And the punchline is that I'm working with—and occasionally getting very drunk with—a dangerous and unpredictable vigilante. Isn't that funny?

Lauren eyed her with a mixture of concern and skepticism, but apparently the phone call hadn't been alarming enough to warrant a lecture, because she merely slid the food list back across the table to Sarah. "I crossed out all of the stuff that will make me vomit all over whatever dumbass slogan onesies and Pinterest crafts people will show up with."

"Why are you having a baby shower if you already think you'll hate all of the gifts?" Sarah asked in exasperation.

"It's free stuff, Sarah," Lauren said insistently. "I don't have to like the stuff, I just have to obtain it. It's tradition. Besides, I know I'll like whatever you get me, which is all that matters. You're an excellent gift-giver."

"So I should return the onesie that says 'My Mom Is A MILF?'"

"Don't joke. You remember Amelia Wendell? She posted an Instagram the other day of her baby wearing a shirt that said 'Free Hugs.'" Lauren threw up her hands in disapproval. "Free hugs? Why would you encourage random strangers to touch your baby? It's bad enough when people I don't know want to touch my stomach, much less my actual child."

The waitress came back with Sarah's grilled cheese and black coffee, along with Lauren's confusing order of pancakes and sliced onions. Sarah wrinkled her nose in disgust as her friend happily began eating the combination, but the nausea and headache from her hangover slowly receded as the two of them continued their shower planning over their food.

Later that evening, after returning to her apartment to shower and do all of the chores she had neglected over the weekend, Sarah began walking over to Matt's apartment. On the way there, she contemplated whether it would be awkward to see him without the haze of alcohol to dull the tension. They'd been getting along surprisingly well until the cops had messed everything up, and now after their night of drinking she found that she wasn't quite sure where they stood.

She was standing at an intersection and fiddling with the music selection on her phone when she felt a strange prickling sensation go down the back of her neck, as though she was being watched. Her head snapped up and she looked around her, searching the crowd for—who? There were so many possibilities these days. Jason? Ronan? The cops? Or maybe someone whose face she didn't know yet. She didn't see anyone acting out of the ordinary, save for the elderly couple behind her who huffed in annoyance that she didn't immediately cross the street when the walk sign came on.

Sarah shook her head, reminding herself to watch her coffee intake better—it always made her jumpy. A small part of her brain hesitated as she approached Matt's building, wondering if it wasn't such a good idea to go inside. But as far as anyone knew, Matt was just her lawyer. It wasn't that unusual for her to be meeting with him a few days after being brought into the police station, she reassured herself. But the feeling of being watched stuck with her right up until she stepped into the lobby of his building.

She knocked on Matt's door, but there was no answer. She frowned, not bothering to knock again; it's not like he wouldn't have heard her the first time if he was home. She waited for a few more minutes, and was just about to fish her phone out of her pocket to call him when she heard a voice from behind her.

"You're a little early."

Sarah, still slightly on edge from earlier, stifled a surprised yelp as she whipped around. She hadn't even heard Matt come up the stairs.

"Oh. I, uh...guess I was walking faster than I thought," she muttered as her heart rate returned to normal.

Matt's face flickered slightly at her tense reaction, but he didn't say anything about it. He stepped around her to unlock the door, holding it open so she could go inside. She crossed her arms and looked around his living room while he slipped his jacket off in the hallway behind her. The giant billboard outside his window flashed, and she watched it idly as he brushed past her to enter the kitchen.

"You want something to drink? Maybe something...non-alcoholic," he suggested as he turned on the faucet and poured some water into a glass.

"Non-alcoholic sounds good for the next ten years or so," Sarah agreed, coming over to lean against the opposite side of the counter. "Which should be around the time my hangover finally fades completely."

He grinned as he handed her the glass of water. "I figured from the voicemail you left that you might not feel excellent this morning. It's why I waited til later to call you back."

Sarah blinked, thrown by this information. Voicemail? Shit. No more using my phone while drunk.

"Yes," she said falteringly. "The voicemail...from when I called you. On the telephone."

"My burner was charging in my apartment, so I didn't check it until this morning."

"Mhm," Sarah murmured, drinking from the glass of water as she tried to remember leaving any sort of message on Matt's phone.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about."

She winced guiltily. "I'm sorry. I told you I shouldn't use electronics when I've been drinking. Was it embarrassing?"

"No. It wasn't that bad," he assured her, but the way his lips twitched up made her think otherwise.

Sarah just hummed disbelievingly.

Matt shook his head, but he looked amused as he pulled his burner phone out of the inner pocket of his suit jacket, flipping it open and pressing a succession of memorized buttons. Then he handed the phone to her to listen to the message. Sarah held it up to her ear hesitantly. After a few seconds, she heard her own voice come through the phone, tired and clearly intoxicated but still comprehensible.

"Hi," Phone Sarah began, and there was such a long pause afterwards that Sarah began to wonder if she had drunkenly left him a one-word voicemail. "So, I think that I meant to say this before you left, but um...I hope you aren't going out tonight. I mean, I just—I'll feel bad if I made you get completely sloshed and then you went out and got—like—scaffold-ed again. It's a Monday. People don't commit crimes on Mondays. You could probably take the night off—shit." Phone Sarah's voice became slightly farther away. "I just spilled my water everywhere. Dammit. What was I saying? I don't know. Anyway, the other reason I called was just to say...I'm glad you came over tonight. I, um, I like it better...when we're on the same side. Okay. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye." Matt held up a finger as the message apparently ended, so Sarah waited. Sure enough, there was a clattering sound as Drunk Phone Sarah dropped her cell phone, then she heard her very muffled voice—"Goddamn everything"—before the line finally clicked off.

Sarah closed her eyes as the message ended, shutting out the view of Matt and the vaguely amused smirk on his face.

"That's embarrassing," she muttered.