Introduction to Fiction, Part 1

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the drain in the floor.

The sound of running water was the first thing I heard.

Which made me realize that I was under attack. By a fierce amount of cold water, which was hitting my back, and really annoying the fuck out of me.

“Wake up, princess. Don’t want you to drown while I wash the bourbon stink off you.”

Gee, thanks, dad. What would I do without you?

Maybe sleep off the my-head-is-in-a-vise hangover you woke me up to?

“Gaaahh” was all that came out of my mouth, though.

That, and a more than sneaking suspicion that what would follow that syllable would be whatever was left of the aforementioned bourbon if I didn’t close my mouth.

Why the hell had I gotten so far into the bottle last night?

Oh, right. The new client. Who was also my old lover. Who had tracked me all the way to Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Florida (it exists, and it’s hard to find) to beg me to help him stay alive.

“C’mon, princess. Kyle’s gonna be here in an hour, and you have to be a sentient being when he does,” said Mike, my father and now my partner in business – and sometimes crime. Fishing Expedition Investigations, LLC.

After 20 hard years in the NYPD, winning my gold shield and losing at every attempt at a personal life, I’d retired to MOFN, FL to team up with my dad, a retired Navy intelligence officer.

Dad had originally planned his retirement around a marina and fishing-guide business – that was before the market crashed, taking a good chunk of his retirement fund with it. Now he had his Navy pension, the marina, and a fishing business that had drowned in the BP rig disaster.

And me.

I climbed up the wall of the marina shower room – crap, I was naked. Double crap, I was in the men’s shower, too. How the hell had that happened?

Last night was a black hole, with flashes floating up to the top in what seemed like random order.

Kyle and me, in the marina bar, the band playing the usual buffet of Buffett and Marley.

Walking on the docks after I’d had way more bourbon than is recommended before walking on things you could fall off of.

Oh. My. GOD. Kyle and me…making out? Or is that bourbon-induced psychosis? Because I would have to be psychotic to even consider revisiting the disaster that was Kyle-and-me ten years ago.

“I need a drink,” I said to Mike.

“A double.”