Story of Kim 4: Edward Sings the Drunk Song

He didn't show up at all that weekend, but as you can imagine I wasn't exactly upset by this; I wanted to do some hard thinking about a) whether I should feel bad about what I'd done, and b) whether I should tell Edward about the encounter in the first place.

During the course of the week, which was thankfully Kim free, I concluded that I didn't feel bad, except inasmuch as I felt like I'd betrayed myself. I also concluded that it really wasn't any of Edward's business who I was sleeping with, so I didn't feel obligated to go out of my way to tell him. This is, come to think of it, just the sort of construct I build to avoid thinking I'm a liar, but I think I can be forgiven for just wanting to forget the whole sorry incident. Kim, however, had other plans.

It was on a Thursday night, I think, when Edward finally showed up. I still had some cash left, so we went out and grabbed a case of beer, then sat around and regaled a couple of his out-of-town friends with tales of excess and depravity. This culminated in a midnight walk across the street to the park, where he and I scaled the (now dry) fountain and sang a rousing chorus of "She Caught the Katy," probably most familiar to you as the opening song in the movie "The Blues Brothers." It's what we do when we're drunk and happy--that and wrestle, and it was too cold for wrestling.

All in all, it was a good Thursday night, and it was winding down just as I had hoped, that is, before midnight and with me NOT broke or shitfaced. However, upon turning the corner to go back to the house, I saw what was probably the last car I wanted to see right then: Kim's. Worse, it was parked behind Edward's truck, that is, in my driveway. Not good.

I had a few seconds to think about what to do, and I chose what I'd like to think was the honorable way out. I stopped in the field across from my house, said "Edward, I need to tell you something. I apparently had sex with Kim last weekend."

I must say, he handled it pretty well. As I've mentioned previously, he really didn't have that much room to be angry, but logic wasn't one of his strong points when it came to sex--which is no great failing, I think, or at least not a rare one. Anyway, he kind of stopped in the middle of the vacant lot, stroked his chin for a sec, and said "huh. OK." Then turned and walked to the house. I followed, and as the crew assembled in the cold, cold living room, I searched the house for any sign of Kim. It wasn't that large of a house, actually, and parts of it were even blocked off, so it didn't take long to find her (although the time seemed to pass slowly as I envisioned her curled up naked in my bed, with Edward close behind me--basically blowing my "drunken mistake" argument out of the water). She was in the bathroom, and she was shitfaced.

She basically fell into my arms, slurring about how much she liked me and how drunk she was and how I was really the best she'd ever been with, and how she was too drunk to drive home and needed to stay somewhere and I was close. Which, given the bar she claimed to have been in, was a flat out lie. This annoyed me, so I took a little guilty pleasure in the look on her face when I told her that "Edward" was in the next room.

"Oh my gosh," she muttered, a horrified look in her suddenly focused eyes. "You're not going to tell him...about us, are you?"

Jesus Christ, I thought, what's it take to get through these girls' heads? "THERE IS no 'us,' Kim!" She put a hand on the wall and sort of stumbled out, without acknowledging what I'd said. And it never occurred to me that I hadn't said "yes, I've already told him we slept together." Which might (or might not) have saved me some trouble later on.

I was pretty embarrassed by the whole situation, and it's human nature (I think) to get a little hacked off at the thing that humiliates you. In this case, I stayed back in the back for a bit, taking off my boots and picking up beer cans, trying to get calm so I wouldn't be rude to Kim when I had to see her again.

Soon enough, everyone left but Kim, who still claimed to be too drunk to drive.

As an aside, that's one of the few things I won't think twice about. You could be Josef Stain, and I'd still not begrudge you a few hours on my couch if you pleaded drunk. Sending someone out in the cold, to attempt a drive home when they already KNOW they shouldn't be driving, is not only unsafe, it's bad karma. So as much as I felt like she was probably faking it, I let it go.

Unfortunately, I'd been drinking too, so I didn't think about the heating situation.

See, back when I'd first moved into the place, I'd had to live in the front room, partly because it was conveniently heated, and partly because the bedroom was Where The Ex Used To Sleep. After a winter of $300 heating bills, and a new bed, I felt it would behoove me to sleep in the bedroom again, so I moved back there. I still wasn't making shit for money, though, so I still only heated one room--the back one.

The upshot of all this is that I couldn't bring myself to make Kim sleep out in the cold. She's a girl, and delicate. But I was still mad at her, and not about to change that, so I said "yes, you can sleep in here, but don't even THINK about touching me." Which got me a hurt look and a trembly lip, but no argument.

Just to make sure, I went to bed dressed for work the next morning, down to the workboots. She made one attempt, was rebuffed, got up and left. Guess she wasn't that drunk after all.

Now, this could very well be the end of this story, if there wasn't some weird shit going around that I didn't know about at this point. But there is, so you have at least two and probably three more installments of this to go. Hopefully I'll have time tomorrow to get it out. Definitely before the weekend.