Hollow

It was the middle of the night when my phone rang noisily from my bedside table. Moaning at my stupidity for not turning it off, I slapped around the wood surface blindly, before picking it up and sleepily answering. "Hello?" I mumbled, half my face buried in my pillow.

The line crackled loudly, and somewhere a bass thumped in the background and music blared. "Sophia?" someone shouted.

I had half a mind to check caller ID, but came to the conclusion that it required too much effort. "Who is this?"

"It's Jamie. Jamie McGinn. I'm calling from a club..."

I paused, sleep slowing the process of comprehending the situation. When I put things in order, realizing I'd been woken in the middle of the night by my job, I practically growled at Jamie. "And? What's your point? It's almost one AM on a Wednesday and unlike you, most of the world has to work tomorrow."

"I know, and I'm sorry. But it's Ryane. He's here, and he'd drunk off his ass. And he keeps mentioning you, saying you're going to kill his social life. None of us want to leave him at home alone, so..." he trailed off.

"You want me to come to the club and pick him up right? And then proceed to spend the rest of the night making sure he doesn't choke on his own vomit?" I spat angrily; it was the middle of the night, I was allowed to be a pissy bitch.

"Um, yes?" Jamie finished hopefully.

I groaned out loud, mumbling, "They do not pay me enough for this job," into my pillow. "Where?" I asked simply, and carefully listened to Jamie's directions.

---

I'd made it nearly a week without further incidents, trying my best to follow through with Sophia's orders. And I'd done alright, but tonight, the guys had decided to go out to one of the local clubs. I'd started with just a beer, and then a shot, and one shot turned into two, and two into three. With each passing shot my self-control withered further and further. Before I knew it, I was sprawled across a low couch in the VIP area, with no recollection of how I'd gotten there, and horribly fuzzy vision and thoughts.

"Yo, Clowe. I called up Sophia. She's on her way."

Some distant, non-hammered part of me understood that this was bad. Very bad. I must've mumbled something along the lines of that, because one of my teammates, I'm not positive which, just chuckled and shucked me in the arm. "You're hammered, man. You definitely need help. And the fact that she's hot doesn't hurt."

A span of time later, long or short I wasn't aware, a head swam into my field of vision. A head of long, dark hair, with a disappointed face attached. "Oh, Ryane," it voiced sadly, and I recognized Sophia. I tried to reply with something semi-coherent, but she hushed me, saying, "Stay quiet. I'm going to get you out of here. I don't know why you guys don't take better care of each other. Jamie, will you help him up, and I'll get his other side?"

I was suddenly pushed into an upward position, and gravity did what it does best to drunks: makes us puke. It came up before I could even warn them, a small stream of nasty tasting liquid spilled from my lips and onto the floor. My ears registered noises of disgust, and two sets of arms gingerly lift me into a standing position. "Easy there, big guy," some muttered as I stumbled a little into the much smaller body on my right.

"Jesus," Sophia swore, just as the other person, Jamie, hauled my center of gravity more in his direction. "Don't crush her," he grunted, supporting the majority of my weight. The three of us tripped and stumbled through the hoards of people, until a bouncer spotted us and lumbered over the help us through. When the door to the outside was thrown open, my head throbbed severely and the edges of my vision started going black.

The last thing I heard was Jamie saying, "He's fading. He's about to bla-"

---

The trek up to my apartment was treacherous and horrendous, even with the help of Jamie. Ryane was out cold, and was one-hundred percent dead weight between us. My doorman shot me a strange look, but hurried to get the elevator for our little entourage.

Once inside my apartment, I instructed Jamie to put Ryane on the couch.

"I'm really sorry about this," Jamie said, glancing at me. "But I don't trust any of the other guys with him, and the ones I do trust have families or wives. And I know the franchise has put him under your watch."

"Unfortunately." I stared at Ryane for awhile, letting the silence grow between Jamie and me. It took me a second to realize we'd driven in my car, and therefore Jamie didn't have a mode of transportation. "The doorman can call a cab, or a limo, or whatever the hell you want. You can put it under my name, and I'll just charge it to the franchise. They owe me after tonight."

"Are you sure you're okay alone with... him?" he nodded once at Ryane, like the man on the couch wasn't his teammate, but instead a potentially dangerous criminal.

"Yeah, I can handle it. Not my first passed out hockey player, sadly. Now, go home and get some rest so I'm not in trouble for the destruction of two different players' careers."

He stared at me a moment, as if contemplating if he should really leave me with Ryane, but eventually walked out, shutting the door softly behind him.

Ryane was still out cold when I moved to where his feet were, and I began the process of undressing him. Shoes... Socks...Suit coat... Dress shirt... Watch. I left his pants and under shirt on, because no doubt he'd be utterly confused when he woke up, and it's a pretty terrifying feeling being both disoriented and mostly undressed. I'd been there once myself, and planned on never letting it happen again.

He looked surprisingly peaceful and innocent in his passed-out state, and I couldn't help the instinct to gently push his hair from his forehead. I pulled a blanket it over his giant body, before turning off the lights and heading to bed for the second time in one night.

---

Hangovers always have four phases for me. Phase One would be Confusion and-slash-or Denial. Either confusion of my current situation, which was never pleasant after a night of heavy drinking, or denial of the fact that I am about to get a massive hangover. Or, more often than not, a little bit of both.

Phase One started the way it usually did: I had absolutely no fucking clue where I was, or whose apartment I was currently inhabiting. The couch I was lying on was well-worn, and the apartment bright, painted in warm colors. My clothes were still on, for the most part. My pants were still buckled securely, and my undershirt was twisted around my torso. Possibly a good sign, considering if I was too drunk to unbuckle my pants myself, and they weren't off now, I didn't sleep with some STD-infested puck slut I didn't know. At some point that I couldn't recall, my suit coat, dress shirt, shoes, and socks had all disappeared. Enter Act Two of Phase One: Denial.

Maybe this was my apartment, and I was just a little bit woozy from a dream or something. A dream you didn't have... my responsible half muttered.

Phase Two came in the sudden rush it always did. A massive headache that would make Kris Letang's migraines seem tame took over, and, like usual, I moaned aloud in agony.

"Ryane?" a unknown factor in my Phases suddenly appeared, throwing my body off course. My head throbbed more painfully than normal, and I clutched at my skull, shying away from the light and the sound.

A cool hand pressed softly to the back of my neck, which I realized was feverish. Not uncommon, but not exactly a typical part of my Phases. "Jesus, you're burning up. Is that normal?"

I turned towards the source of my current pain, and two things happened at once. My brain registered Sophia, in all of her pajama-glory. My stomach registered that it was not very happy with what I had consumed last night, and decided it was about damn time I got rid of it.

"Bathroom," I groaned, and rushed in the direction of the only hallway in the small apartment. Sophia's bare feet pattered against the wood floors, and her hands were suddenly steering me into a doorway, and my body rushed itself to the toilet on its own. Everything that I'd taken in the previous night came back out again, officially announcing the arrival of Phase Three: Puke Your Guts Out.

Sophia spent the whole time sitting on the edge of a very nice looking bath tub, soothingly rubbing my back. I upchucked until my stomach was empty, and then dry-heaved for another good five minutes, until my stomach had positively committed mutiny against my inner-party animal. When the dry heaves slowed, and the time in between them lengthened, Sophia rose and got a damp cloth to lay over the back of my neck. At this point, Phase Four wanders in, also known as Exhaustion and Body Aches.

I allowed myself to fall over, coming to rest on the plush bath mat. That was a plus, in the scheme of things. Normally, I wasn't lucky enough to have a toilet to puke in, let alone a bath mat to rest on. My eyes shut on their own, begging for sleep to come and heal my battered insides. I felt Sophia gently remove the wash cloth, and heard her run it under water again. I made a soft noise of surprise when she began wiping away the evidence of my wild night from my face.

She hushed me, finishing her work. I left my eyes shut, and knew she had walked out of the room, no doubt to let me wallow in shame. But I was aware of her return a minute later, as a blanket was laid over my crumbled form, and she lifted my head before letting it fall back onto a pillow.

"Thanks," I mumbled. It was the best I could do in my present situation.

"Just sleep. We can talk later." Despite the ominous sound of her words, I couldn't resist the temptation to let sleep take away the aching pain in my body.