She heard the words to the new Justin Timberlake song pouring out from her clock radio. And no matter how much she wished it away, it spitefully rang out, flowing transiently through the room and into her eardrums through some sort of musical osmosis. If she were in a more coherent state, she’d probably have scowled at the irony of waking up to the song, "What Goes Around Comes Around" the morning after her girlfriend broke up with her because she was still in love with the ex she left in the first place. But for Dana, the music blaring into the airwaves was just the first in what was to be a long line of headache inducing noises to come for the morning.

While she expected her first conscious thought to be of Alice and what had happened between them the night before, it was actually that she was acutely aware of the relentless pounding in her head. A pounding so brutally intense that it made all other headaches before it seem like a day at the beach. She knew consuming half a bottle of tequila and numerous beers to chase said shots would leave to an inevitably fitting hell she’d have to pay in the morning. But when all was said and done, she was honestly more worried about what happened with Alice than how her liquid diet would catch up with her later. Still, in the light of day, Alice was no where near, and yet the unsympathetic hangover was banging down her metaphoric door like nobody’s business.

She groggily wiped the remaining sleep from her eyes and glanced over at the clock before pummeling the snooze button to stop the incessant crooning of one Mr. Timberlake. She closed her eyes again, hoping against all hope that if she concentrated hard enough on pretending her head didn’t weigh a ton, she’d eventually be able to fall back asleep. But a few seconds passed and she realized this was a futile task, especially when bits and pieces of last nights events slowly emerged through her memory.

It was Saturday, luckily. And that meant that any training Dana did today was purely optional. It was true that the Open was only a week away, which meant that she should be using the morning to work out the little kinks in her game, but it also meant she could take today easy if she chose. And at this point, there wasn’t much of a choice at all. There was no way she’d be able to even swing a racquet today, let alone get any sort of comprehensive workout in. Besides, if her limited memory about last night served her correctly, she begrudgingly knew that she should concentrate her energy on performing some sort of damage control…or at least figure out what to do next.