NYK: Beating A Dead Horse

This is my legitimate attempt at performing the assignment given to me. Sorry to continue posting NYK paraphernalia.

" I’m beginning to realize that pattern recognition is a thing that doesn’t stop being useful after sixth-grade math. I’m also realizing that it’s a skill I still haven’t mastered. Maybe if I had a proper concept of pattern recognition I wouldn’t be laying face-down in my best friend Jordan’s bed. I could be making toast and watching the New Year’s parade, but thanks to my failings in mathematics I find myself struggling to get comfortable in the groove her body’s left in the mattress. Maybe it could have been someone other than her husband Nathan on the other side of the bed, maybe it even could have been my bed that I woke up in Today. Really, my mind boggles at how differently my life could have turned out if school had taught me pattern recognition, rather than how to covertly kiss boys and steal cigarettes from the teacher’s lounge.
It isn’t like this situation snuck up on me. I was fully aware that if me and Nathan were alone, drunk on New Years champagne, I wouldn’t end up back at my apartment that night. I was aware of it from the moment he called me up, the alcohol already making his voice heavy as he painstakingly labored over every word, making each as unthreatening as possible until the moment when he was whispering, “Jordan won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon and you’re getting flour all over your shirt.” After that it had only been a stones-throw between champagne kisses in the pantry, our sweaty, drunk grinding on the living-room couch and finally the exhausted collapse into his bed. Nathan insisted that we couldn’t have sex under the stare of his wedding photo; the reason for our use of the living room couch, but he didn’t want to move it incase we forgot to put it back. That probably should have been a good sign that I was making a mistake, but as I said, my pattern recognition has failed me before. No matter wether it was preventable or not, on New Years Day I woke up in my best friend’s bed with no pants, a half-removed bra and crossed fingers.
I can only vaguely remember the promise I’d made the night before that resulted in this morning’s crossed-fingers. It had been after we’d collapsed into the bed, only a few minutes before we’d both fallen asleep. Nathan had crawled up close to me and whispered, “Who do you think Joe will kill first when she finds out?” The vodka we’d drank after we finished the champagne was still hanging on his breath and I’m sure it was still on mine when I replied, “Me, but she’s not going to find out.” He put on this dopey smile after I said it and we both giggled in the way that people too drunk to be self-conscious do. “We’re like fucking spies.” Nathan began as a whisper but as the words came out they got louder and hoarser until we were both laughing too hard and too loud to control ourselves. We settled down after a good minute and a half of laughter and Nathan suddenly gave me a severe look and stated plainly, “We have to promise not to tell her, okay?” I nodded in agreement and I felt my own face shifting into something more stern. “Shake on it, and cross your fingers.” He said with a tone of severity I’d never heard used to command someone to perform an act normally reserved for play-ground wishes. In a drunken blur we’d apparently forgotten that crossed-fingers are meant to nullify promises. "