Page 8 of While You Were Trending

Even when she doesn’t try to be.

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AS HUNGOVER AS IT GETS

Ginny Rhodes, aka a woman who survived her sister’s wedding…barely

The answerto my mother putting a disastrous end to my sister’s wedding shouldn’t have been drowning myself in alcohol, but that’s exactly what I did last night after the firefighters left.

I hit the wine.

And the whiskey.

And the tequila.

And now I don’t know what time it is, but I know the sunlight streaking through my curtains is trying to murder me through my eyeballs.

Water.

I need water.

And bread.

And to shave my head, because even my hair hurts.

My fingernails itch beneath my nail polish.

And did I do something to my thigh? It feels bruised.

I slap around on my bedstand for my sunglasses, which I know are in the pile of essentials here somewhere, squeezing myeyes shut until I’ve found them and put them on, the lingering scent of burned polyester still stuck in my nose.

And then I very, very slowly, so slowly that I’m not sure that I’m moving, crawl out of my bed and slide to the floor.

Have to pee.

Have to drink water.

Want coffee.

Want bread.

Want industrial-strength painkillers.

And a new mother.

And maybe a complete alternate history to my life.

I inch across my rug on my hands and knees, crawling around piles of clothes and shoes and empty chip bags and discarded professional magazines and art supplies I’ll never use and water glasses that I need to return to the kitchen, eventually making my way to the jack-and-jill bathroom that I share with Mabel, my bestie here at Makepeace Cellars, the shuttered vineyard and family homestead of Mabel’s great-aunt Pip’s long-departed husband whose ashes she kept threatening to scatter at the wedding yesterday.

No sounds from Mabel’s bedroom, which is good, since I think I forgot to close both doors to our bedrooms.

Not that it would be the first time.

She and I have been through things since I arrived here several years ago.

After a lot of deep breaths, I flush, wash my hands, and tackle the stairs.

One at a time, Ginny. One at a time.