Conflict of Interest

Chapter Seventeen

Kim

It didn't take me long in the morning to realize where I was. I wasn't in my own apartment because there were no moving boxes stacked haphazardly in the corner, and furthermore, I could hear the sound of someone moving around. And someone moving around in my apartment was something I hadn't heard in several days.

True, I hadn't been in Carrie's bedroom in quite some time, but the crisp white palette was a surefire clue. It was just that this time when I woke up in Carrie's bed, I remembered the last time I'd woken up in Carrie's bed, and that was when I had to embark on the all too familiar putting together last night journey.

That's just how it goes; there's a protocol to waking up in a bed that's not your own. You start with the who, and I had it. So then you go to the what, which stands for what you actually do remember, and I was cool enough to remember that we'd gone out the previous night to check out the bartenders at Alias. So then the where, and well, that was rendered obvious by my present inability to find a corner of the room that wasn't perfectly in order. There was only one place I could have been. So the when?

I looked at the clock on the wall, to see that it was six in the morning. I was proud of myself for being able to just wake up so early on my own, after all my time as a detective, and I thought about that briefly, but it wasn't really the time to go patting myself on the back for something I didn't even do voluntarily.

So then there was the why, as in, why, in God's name, did I wake up on a Thursday morning in Carrie Everett's apartment? My mind went to the worst case scenario first, which was that I'd done something I'd seriously regret and not even remember. But then I just started rationalizing, like, maybe I just came upstairs and fell asleep. No, that was stupid. Maybe I was too drunk to get myself home, so she offered. That was best case scenario, I figured. But there was only one way to find out, so after the who-what-when-where-why, I went into phase two of waking up in someone else's bed, which is the walk of shame where you go attempt to find your clandestine bedmate, who always seems to wake up earlier than you, if she doesn't wake up on top of, tangled in, and around you.

But, call me crazy, Carrie just didn't strike me as the cuddling type.

Besides, I knew Carrie well, better than I knew most people, and I happened to know that if she'd woken up next to me, it was a drunken mistake. She didn't like to show it, but I knew how into Carver she was, because it was painfully obvious. She was into her girlfriend in a way that she wasn't into me, if she was into me at all, and I knew that if she had hooked up with me - or thought she had - she would be a wreck in the morning. And when Carrie was a wreck, she cleaned. In fact, when Carrie wasn't a wreck, she cleaned, but when she was, she did her hardcore cleaning. That was when she bleached the bathtub, or scrubbed the counters, or repainted entire walls with fresh coats of Calla Lily.

So I walked into her kitchen finding what I'd been expecting to find - that was, eleven cups of coffee brewed and disinfectant on the counter. I hadn't planned what I was going to say, but eventually it just fell out.

"I'm so sorry."

"What?" she asked, looking up from her neurotic cleaning in favor of being a hostess and getting me a coffee mug. "Why?"

"I don't know," I said honestly. "Because I don't remember last night, which is definitely not a good sign."

"Oh, God, no," she assured me, suddenly comprehending my thoughts. "We didn't sleep together."

I let out a huge sigh of relief, comprised of all the breath I'd been holding in since I woke up. "Oh, thank God. I mean, no offense, you're very attractive, but..."