wake me when it's over

While out doing some food shopping last week I bumped into my neighbor Jenny at the supermarket. I was genuinely surprised to hear her say that our mutual friend, former neighbor and long-standing object of my affection, Christina, had been in town for a few days.
I was bummed that she’d come out to Brooklyn and not gotten in touch, but my last reunion with Christina was bittersweet, to say the least.

OK, here’s the back story:

Years ago, Christina had been a bartender in our neighborhood. I'd been checking her out for a bit but we finally met when I helped her get rid of an obnoxious drunk who was being a nuisance at her bar one night. From there on in we became fast friends and eventually discovered a nice chemistry between us. Unfortunately, our timing was always off: we were never single at the same time and it remained that way until she left NY a short time afterwards.

One night, out of the blue, she calls to say she’s gonna be in town for the next couple of days and makes it perfectly clear I’m one of the main reasons for her trip. I was clearly excited at the prospect of seeing Christina after a couple of years, and the fact that we were both single at the time was just a big plus.

Aside from being a bartender, Christina had played drums in a very popular rock and roll trio before leaving New York, so I knew that someone with as many friends as she did, and who had not been in town for 2 years, would understandably be spread out pretty thin. So, I was prepared to hang out with her Thursday night and not think much of it. But early on that evening we made plans to come back to my place after the hang in Manhattan was done with—and for me to call in sick the following day for part 2—pretty much establishing I was gonna get to sleep with a woman I'd lusted after for 3 long years at that point.

By the time the consorting-with-the-numerous-friends part of the evening came to its conclusion, however, she was a bit drunk,
very emotional (she cried profusely at the sight of Gary, her former roommate/bandmate who had been in a coma when she left and was now to all appearances fine) and obviously erratic. I resigned myself to a fruitless evening.

I got a ride back to Brooklyn with her former roommates and was just gonna go home when she dragged me back to their place.
She had some food and was a little less drunk, but I still decided to go home anyway. I was putting her to bed when she got naked and pleaded me to do the same and join her in bed. I can be a strong-willed man, but...I just couldn't fight it this time...yeah, we had sex.

Unfortunately, in the midst of it, she freaked out and asked who I was (we had turned off the lights) and as you can imagine it was all down hill from there. I then waited til she fell asleep, got dressed, and left. But her ex-roomies had to let me out which made me feel even worse. (Wham! Bam! Thank you, ma'am! Um, not quite.) But it gets better: I decided to go to work the next day and, of course, Christina calls after I'd left to say she was hoping I'd stayed home and that SHE DOESN'T REMEMBER THE PREVIOUS NIGHT.
(Which might be only partially true: women ABSOLUTELY KNOW if they’ve had sex. But anyway…)

We got together Friday night. She said she remembered bits and pieces of the night before. We talked about having sex that night,
but I couldn't bring myself to ask whether she recalled our previous carnal encounter. (There were too many things that went on for her to completely have blacked out on, but still...) I ended up leaving at about 3 AM. There were friends of hers still there hanging.
She left for Florida the next day. And I haven’t seen or heard from her since.

The sad thing is, I’d been thinking about her these last few days and then I hear she was in town and didn’t even call me.
Jenny mentioned that Christina was quite saddened due to a recent breakup and how that may have contributed to making her trip even more low key. But I would’ve loved seeing her, regardless.