"Freya, I really, really, want to kiss you," Matt said. The air was thick with alcohol. His spirit withered as he watched his words carve a faraway look in her eyes. She was a statue, beautifully motionless, and incapable of love.

Freya glanced to the spot where Ellie laid curled up in a ball beneath a blanket on the floor, facing the opposite direction, asleep in a drunken stupor. The evening had blurred into Ellie singing too many sappy love songs on her karaoke machine and drinking three too many shots of tequila. The rest of her party guests left her to pass out chilled and alone in her house. The karaoke machine remained plugged into the television set. A Vietnamese tune hummed through the speakers as the machine waited for no one to select another song.