It's a lot of questions at once, but even in his drunken state, Joel follows them relatively easily. It takes him a second to answer as he drops down onto the couch he keeps in the store. "My date got kidnapped and the two of us got beaten up. The guy who did it is named Mark Fuller, he hates me because he thinks I killed his sister. Yes and yes."

Pills that he's pretty sure he's not supposed to mix with alcohol, but right now he can't seem to bring himself to care. He'd needed the pain to stop for just a little while. All the pain. The physical, the kind inside his head, the ache inside his chest. That last one, though, doesn't seem to be going away.