She woke up hung over, but that wasn't new. The dull headache. The thirst. She'd been dreaming of big glasses of soda and lemonade. She'd been tossing and turning, trying to shrink away from the headache that was a steel band pressing on her head.

School day. That added insult to injury. She hated sitting in homeroom with her mouth all dry and the Tylenol not even touching the sick throbbing of her head. Was drinking worth this? It always seemed worth it as the drinks went down nice and smooth and wore away the edges of her life. It seemed okay when she drank her martinis and manhattans and Craig and Craig's reaction to the whole Ashley thing seemed to matter less and less. The drinks gave her perspective.

She thought she'd been a bit too hard on her mother. It made more sense now. Her father had gone to Iraq where he could easily be killed, and left her mother alone with a gothic cutting nut of a teenage daughter. If she needed a little drink to see her through who was she to judge?

Ellie stood up slowly but still felt the pain of her movement shaking the headache and she moaned. Felt queasy. Maybe it hadn't been worth it.

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"Craig? You've been moping around here for days. What's wrong?" Joey said, and Craig looked at the sunlight falling in through the window, shining on the metal of the sink. He dumped sugar and cream into his coffee and stirred. Shrugged at Joey's questions/observations. Craig had noticed a change in his relationship with Joey. It was less stepfather/stepson and more roommate like. Joey went his way and he went his, and the rules had really slacked off. That was just fine with Craig.

"Nothing," he said, because Joey seemed to want a verbal answer. And he got the patented raised eyebrow.

"Okay, it's Ashley,"

"Ashley?" Joey looked surprised, "what about her?"

"She's staying in England, she met some guy, everyone knew about it including Spinner-"

"Craig?" Craig looked up and saw the roommate visage falling away, and in Joey's serious expression he saw stepfather/father, and he felt a little fear at that.

"What?" he said, seeing how Joey was worrying about his medication and worrying about him having another Ashley based "episode" and he looked down.

"You've got to let Ashley go,"

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Her dark sunglasses didn't help with the glare or the headache that persisted despite four Tylenols. She sipped from a bottle of water, trying to beat back the dehydration but her head still thumped with every footstep and she wanted to curl up in a dark room somewhere and sleep until noon.

"Ellie!" She braced herself as Marco hugged her, and he looked at her critically, taking in the dark glasses and somber demeanor.

"Ellie? Have you been drowning your sorrows?"

She cleared her throat, squinted against the sun even behind her dark glasses.

"Maybe. But they resurfaced like a corpse in Boston Harbor," Marco laughed, and then he spotted Craig.

"Don't look now, but here he comes,"