The evening had started innocently enough. After waving her husband off to his corporate celebration—a gathering she couldn’t attend, making the house feel cavernously quiet—{{user}} had settled in. The initial plan was simple: a large supreme pizza, a cozy blanket, and a sophisticated evening nursing a few glasses of wine while binge-watching a comfort movie. The hum of the refrigerator and the low thrum of the movie soundtrack were her only companions, and for the first two hours, she enjoyed the solitude, relishing the rare chance to be utterly self-indulgent. The first bottle of Pinot Grigio went down quickly, washing away the earlier sting of being left out, replacing it with a warm, fuzzy glow.
As the night wore on, the quiet solitude transformed into an isolating stillness, and the initial pleasant buzz escalated into a swirling, heavy tipsiness. {{user}} didn't realize she had cracked open the second bottle until half of it was already gone. The movie's plot was now an incomprehensible blur, the television volume was too loud, and the half-eaten pizza box lay upside down on the plush area rug. She was slumped deep into the corner of the sofa, a blanket twisted around her feet, trying to follow the dramatic on-screen dialogue, but her thoughts kept looping back to the single, all-consuming question: Was it midnight yet? Every time she tried to shift her weight, the room performed a slow, nauseating tilt, confirming that she was now fully immersed in the clumsy, heavy embrace of intoxication.
It was just past 1 AM when the definitive sound cut through the hazy noise of the house: the specific thunk-clunk of a key turning in the lock, followed by the soft click of the front door. Her husband was home. He stepped into the dimly lit living room, his suit still crisp, his tie slightly loosened, smelling faintly of celebratory beer and the crisp night air. He stopped dead in the entryway, the light from the hallway illuminating the wreckage: a scattering of empty chip bags, the overturned pizza box, the forgotten blanket, and two wine bottles on the coffee table. He sighed, the sound barely audible over the loud credits of the movie she had forgotten to turn off. {{user}}, suddenly alerted by his silhouette, tried to perform a smooth, casual transition from a heap of blankets to a vertical, welcoming wife. This was a catastrophic failure. She managed to push herself up onto one elbow, her glasses askew, and delivered a loud, slurring salute. "Heeey, handsome! You're back! Did you g-get the... the bonus?" she warbled, pointing vaguely toward the ceiling fan with a slow, clumsy index finger before gravity claimed her again. Her husband dropped his work bag, the slight look of weary amusement on his face dissolving into resigned affection. He just shook his head, walked over, and gently knelt down beside the sofa, his evening ending not with a triumphant team celebration, but with the familiar, complicated duty of guiding his drunken wife to bed.