I’ve been trying to quit drinking.

The problem is I’m really good at it. That's what I've been doing ever since I joined the Army and what I've been doing ever since I got blown up downrange. I’ve been trying to cut back on it. To be more healthy and aware and not as dependent on chemical mixtures to put me to sleep.

But when the insomnia hits, the meditation doesn’t always cut it.

It's what I'm good at.

So now, it’s a challenge to quit drinking and share so much space and time with Deacon. Being sober is hard enough. Being around Deacon sober?

I can handle working with him. I'm even getting used to the idea of sharing intellectual space with him. I can handle teasing and being around him and seeing him go home with a hundred other women.

I can't handle him pushing me for something I'm not capable of. Something inside me broke a long time ago and he knows that, goddamn it.

I'm afraid.

Afraid of what happens when I touch him.

To both of us.

I'm edgy and annoyed after a night of not sleeping. It doesn't help that I'm aching to touch him. To break my own rule and drag my fingers over his skin and draw his dark and brooding self toward my body.

I get dressed and get my ass out of my apartment as fast as I can. When I moved, I was hoping a change of venue would help me sleep better.

I was wrong. The new place is worse than the old one. It's too quiet. The silence. The emptiness.

Oddly enough, the cheapest place I’ve lived in since I moved to North Carolina was the place where I slept the best. The paint had been peeling off the walls and the ceiling had what I hope were water stains leaking through. The walls in that old building had been paper thin. I'd been able to hear everything. The baby from two floors below me. The fights between the old couple on the bottom floor. The creak of the stairs as my neighbors went up and down.

But it was the noise that let me sleep.

I thought I'd wanted away. Something cleaner. Quieter.

Turns out, a nicer apartment wasn't good for my mental health. I've moved twice since that dive burned to the ground due to faulty wiring. Each time, I hope it will be different.

It's not. And now I'm stuck in a six-month lease for an apartment that I really hate. Guess that's what I get for trying to move up in the world.

It's mornings like this that make me wish my shift from the night before never ended. I need the work to keep me busy. That's part of why I’m glad that Professor Blake has me working with the cadets. I don’t know what I would fill the space with if I wasn’t teaching and working and in class. I don’t like to think of the alternatives. I need something to keep my brain going. Something to keep me away from the silent spaces that let the memories creep in.

I head to the library on campus. I need more coffee and to figure out how to get my GI Bill paperwork fixed again so I actually have a little money to…oh, I don't know…pay down some student loans and eat something other than canned tuna?

Waiting in line for coffee, I glance down at my phone, checking for emails.

A chill runs across my skin. Like someone’s walked across my grave, as my grandmother used to say. I stare at my phone. At an email from Deacon from several days ago:

We need to talk.

And at a response I apparently typed out last night but never sent:

I don't want to be alone.

I must have been really out of it. I don't remember drinking so much that I blacked out, but everything’s kind of fuzzy after I left Deacon and went back to my apartment.

My brain is fucking with me. It has to be. I stare at the message, searching my neural synapses for a trace of the memory of typing this. It's there, dancing at the edge of consciousness. Teasing me with hints of a memory.

Has it really come to this? Me begging him to give me what I need?

Am I that fucked up that I have to keep playing games with him? It’s not right, tempting him, tormenting him. Teasing us both while holding him completely at bay.

But the idea of his body against mine. Of him holding me in the dark.

I don't want to be alone. I just want someone in my bed at night. A warm body to press against in the dark. To remind me as I sleep that I am not alone, walking through the darkness of my nightmares. The cold dark space on the other side of my bed needs a person in it. Then I’ll be able to sleep.

I imagine placing a personal ad on Craigslist, with the accompanying dick pics that would likely be sent in response: Woman seeking man to share a bed. Literally, I just want you to hold me while I sleep. No weirdos.

The line moves another step closer to my personal lord and savior Caffeine Jesus.

I almost smile to myself, imagining what my old first sarn't would say about placing an ad like that. First Sarn't Sorren would look at me like I had a dick growing out of my forehead and tell me this was how horror movies started.

I’d kind of have to agree with him.

I place my order, praying for the world to move a little faster so I can get some coffee asap. Maybe my brain will tell me what the fuck I was thinking when I wrote that sad little missive.

The latte is pure heaven. Dark and rich, it slides over my tongue and the caffeine wraps itself around my brain with a smooth jolt.

I read my email again, then hit delete.

I need a little excitement in my life but not where Deacon is concerned, no matter how much my subconscious might be trying to tell me otherwise.

I tuck my phone into my bag and head to my class, wondering what Nalini would say if I told her what I'd done.

She'd laugh. This is the woman who couch-surfed her way across Europe. She'd probably print it out and hand-deliver the email to him, doing her part to help my sex life.

I smile at the thought. My life is so damn weird.