Disclaimer: I don't owm 'em…

I had agreed to one drink—just one. It was, after all, as Greg had pointed out, Nick's birthday and we had always gone for drinks. Grissom even managed to always show up for birthday drinks.

It had started out as one drink, but I quickly added another and then another and then another…

I suspected she was doing it on purpose. If it had two legs and it was on the dance floor, she was shimmying and shaking and gyrating against it.

I watched her the entire time. I wasn't oblivious to the guys watching me or the comments they made that they probably thought I couldn't hear. No, I was fully aware that I was 'staring' and that I needed to 'get a grip.' My favorite was that I just needed to 'get over her.' If only they knew…

When my beers turned into shots, Grissom had decided he'd had enough socializing to last him until the next birthday celebration. I saw his blurry figure stand just as he mumbled that someone needed to get me home safely.

I think I was smiling as I tried my darnedest to sound serious, "Don't worry, Bugman. S'all taken care of. I'm going with one of them."

I'm pretty sure that's where the bump on my head came from because as I tried to point to several attractive women standing near the bar, I remember gracefully falling out of the chair I was sitting in.

And that's pretty much where my memory of the bar ends.

There are, however, snippets of events that happened next—like small flashbacks.

I remember sitting in a car—the strip moving by the window I was leaning against in a dazzling and blurring array of colors. A hand on my thigh. A voice somewhere through the fog. "What the hell were you thinking drinking like that? You shouldn't be drinking at all."

I remember the lights of the strip fading into clay roofs and manicured lawns and realizing that I wasn't so drunk that I didn't know I wasn't going home. And that voice again. "Probably hadn't eaten all day…typical…"

The car slowed to a stop. So did the voice —until the door opened. The soft body that the annoying voice belonged to pressed against mine, reaching across me to unfasten my seat belt.

"You'd think at your age you'd know how to drink responsibly. But noooooo. All I wanted was to go out with the guys, have a couple of drinks, and dance my ass off. I didn't have to worry about Lindsey or rushing home. And instead, I'm stuck babysitting your ass."

She grabbed my knees and turned me in the seat, pulling my legs out of the car.

"You're worse than a child sometimes. You know that? And of course you're too drunk to even answer. You won't even remember any of this in the morning."

I remember thinking that she smelled nice and closing my eyes to lock the memory away. I was enjoying the closeness of her body against mine and leaned more heavily against her as she half-drug me into the foyer of her house.

I remember being tossed back onto a bed. My shoes being pulled off. My shirt and pants coming off. My eyes were closed and she probably thought I had passed out because the voice had stopped.

The covers were pulled over me and her body slid in next to mine. Almost reverently, fingers moved over my face—touching my cheek and then my lips. As her fingers brushed along my lips, she barely whispered, "Why can't things just be like they were?"

Even through my drunken stupor I heard it—it echoed the one sentiment I had been feeling since that morning one hundred and eighty-six days ago.

I fell asleep with her head on my shoulder and her hand over my heart.

When I woke up later that morning, I was alone.