Ice clinked inside my glass as the cubes melted and rearranged themselves, catching my vodka-soaked attention. Gravity and physics, two things you could always count on. Gravity would never disappear, physics would never change. The ruthless serpent in the corner of my brain threw out images of string theory and quantum physics and would that thing NEVER shut up?

Fine. So physics changed, gravity was eternal and if I could still be thinking this hard I was not nearly drunk enough.

I took my damp, ice-cube-clinking glass over to the bar, weaving just a little. My hand was steady as I poured the Ketel though and I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

Hm. That was more like it. I didn't want to think at all, was tired of plotting and analyzing and hoping and wondering. Everyone had bad days once in awhile, I thought as I padded back across the thick grey carpet, I guess mine was due. Overdue. Something like that.

The Collins glass made a startling thunk as I set it beside the small pile of objects on the coffee table. Misjudged the height there and I knew my reflexes deteriorated before my goddamned cursed mind even considered slowing down. Narrow-eyed, I regarded the pile of things as if it were an adversary.

A green note. A small chip of hematite. A deep blue glass ornament. A painfully thin pile of letters, held together with a Yamaha money clip.

I retrieved the glass and drank while I studied them, my other hand toying with the titanium pendants on the chain around my neck. By the time I'd reached the bottom of the tall glass I was ready to pull them slowly over my head. The glass I tossed behind me to the floor where it rolled a bit, shedding its icy burden; it was irrelevant and gone from my mind the second it left my hand.

I stared at the two pieces of metal for a long time - lying in my palm they seemed exponentially heavier than they did lying against my chest. With a sudden movement I tossed them into the carefully arranged pile, the chain making an angry hiss against the glass. I was furious right back at it.

There, that was everything, that and a room in the basement, this pathetically small collection the only proof I had here that Tristan Taylor even existed, much less had ever loved me. I was crazy, delusional, making up the perfect man to populate my desperate, lonely existence. I had the odd impulse to phone Joey and demand he reassure me, tell me he did have a best friend he grew up with and went to school with and kept close to all their adult lives... but I was seized by a sudden fear that the name and number would be gone from my cell, another confirmation that the whole thing was a sick, twisted fantasy.

The serpent raised its head in my mind and regarded me with cold, neutral eyes. Dispassionate guard, that was its purpose, what I'd created it for as a child, to keep safe and under control those emotional quagmires I dared not acknowledge. It was a survival tool that I never outgrew and wasn't sure I wanted to. I acknowledged it was simply a part of me, that I was probably in some way fractured because it was still there, but that's the way things were and I had no interest in changing.

It looked at me now and under the weight of that cool, heavy regard the impact of what I had done and was doing came crashing in on me. I scrabbled on the table for the tags, breathing hard, whispering a panicked litany against the dark as my numb, drunken fingers swept things to the floor and finally closed around the chain.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh God I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it, please I'm sorry." Then finally the chain dropped over my head and the tags settled to rest in their familiar place against my chest. Curling into a ball around them, I lay on the couch, shaking, until I finally passed out.

I dreamt of him then, so strong and real. He was surrounded by sunshine, skin dark and gleaming with sweat as he worked outdoors in some sort of field, doing God knew what to some unknown plants. He seemed to know I was there because he turned and smiled at me, warm and perfect as always. He loved me, I knew he loved me and I felt so shamed and small and weak for doubting.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, dropping my eyes. I felt his hand on my jaw, gently turning my gaze back to meet his soft hazel one. He leaned in and kissed me then, no more than a feather touch of his lips but I was absolved... not forgiven because he wouldn't understand there was anything to forgive, would have dismissed my despair as natural and unimportant, because to him it would have been.

But he gave me what I needed all the same, just as always.

I woke the next morning without the expected hangover, though my body was stiff and sore from lying in one position on the couch all night. Slowly I gathered up the things from the night before, replacing them in the rosewood box I had made for them.

It was time to call the detective, time to make some other calls as well, time and past time to start moving again. Everyone had a time of weakness now and then, the real test of character was what you did afterward.

For a moment, just a single moment, I closed my eyes and drew strength from a wealth of memories, of kisses and passion and gentleness and desire and love so deep and true it needed no words but the touch of a hand or the flash of a smile.

It was real and it was mine and I'd be damned if I let it go. Striding confidently out of the room, box firmly held in both hands, I went to start the hunt again.

---

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