Once upon a time, I wrote fiction. Exclusively fiction. Then I started writing this blog and writing satire and I sort of drifted away from the whole thing in the name of broadening writing horizons and all that. I recently started writing fiction again and figured that, if there's already an audience, I might as well share.
“Let’s get
drunk,” her text said.
“Let’s. Where?” had been his reply and that was how
he came to be sitting in the corner booth of Foley’s Pub. She was late, as usual, but he did not
bother to wait for her before ordering, as he knew she would neither notice nor
care.
She usually
preferred to sit at the bar, and he knew that this was because it was easier
for her to avoid looking directly at him.
“You have a way of looking at me sometimes,” she had said in the dark
one night when he asked her about it.
“Like you’re looking through me. “
She was still for a moment before shifting her body and moving to lie on
top of him. Her hair spilled forward
into his face and he pushed it back gently, out of her eyes, as she looked down
at him.
“It’s very
intense,” she said. He felt as though
that had been the moment to say something big, something important, but before
he had the chance she had rolled off and was getting out of the bed, searching
for her clothes.
The advantage to
arriving at Foley’s first was that he could then sit wherever he chose. He liked the corner booth, the way it was
darker than the rest of the bar, the way it curved from one wall to the next
like a bent elbow. It gave him the
feeling of being separate from the rest of the place with the comfort and buzz
of conversation still in the background.
She would not be as close to him as she would be if they sat at the bar,
but this way, she’d have to look at him.
He was nearing
the end of his Jameson’s, listening to the ice cubes tumble in the bottom of
the glass, when she came in, pausing
just inside the door to scan the bar looking for him. He liked watching her look for him; it was a
moment where he could see her but she could not see him. And he liked knowing it was him she was
searching for.
In a bar as small
as Foley’s, it did not take her long to spot him. There was a brightening of recognition upon
her face, but it fell short of being a smile.
“Hey,” she said,
placing her purse upon the table and sliding into the booth, a bundle of energy
and hair and perfume. If she was bothered by the deviation from
their normal placement at the bar, she didn’t say so. He had considered offering her an explanation
but could see now that it wouldn’t be necessary.
“You need
another,” she said, pointing to his glass.
“I do,” he
agreed. “And you need to catch up.”
“Yes,” she said
and as quickly as she had sat down, she was back on her feet.
“Jameson?” she
asked. He nodded. She turned and strode to the bar.
He needed a
cigarette and while this was probably the moment when most people would step
outside to have one, in these first chaotic, unorganized minutes of ordering
drinks and complaining about traffic or weather, he decided to wait until she
returned with the drinks. He watched
her leaning slightly over the bar as she yelled her order over the music. The side of her shirt rode up ever so
slightly when she leaned, just enough that the smallest triangle of skin on her
hip was exposed. No sooner had it
appeared than she straightened up and it was gone. His mind, however, lingered at that spot for
another moment as he wondered if this would be one of those nights where he
would later be kissing that very same patch of pale skin, or if he would end
the night watching her get into a cab, waving from the window as he stood on
the sidewalk in front of the bar and finished a cigarette. It was too early in the night to tell.
“Alright,” she
said as she came back to the table and put the drinks down. This was the moment to excuse himself, he
realized. If he waited until she sat
down, it would appear calculated. He
wanted her to sit, settle herself in, and then wait, wondering when he would
return. He slid out of the booth.
“Perfect,” he
said. “I’m just going to go have a
cigarette. You want one?”
He always asked,
but only twice had she ever accepted.
The first time was the night they met, at Dave and Krissy’s wedding,
where she had stood outside in the October night air wearing a sequined black
sleeveless dress with heels, shivering as she puckered her mouth around the
cigarette. He wished he had thought to
bring out his suit jacket so that he might offer it to her and warm her up, but
he had left it draped upon the back of a chair, where most suit jackets find
themselves at weddings. The city street
behind them was busy, and when she would move, her dress would suddenly catch
the red tail lights of cars passing by or the yellow glow of the street light. He was intoxicated.
The second was
just a few months prior, in March, and was also the only time she spent the
full night with him. Her brother had
died two weeks prior and she was locked in that sticky place that is after
everyone goes home and life settles back in to the daily routine, but before
you’ve actually adjusted. He remembered
the feeling from when his mother died three years ago. He preferred to smoke outside, even at his
own apartment, and so they had sat on the steps under a clear, starry sky, her
hair billowed up around her face as she hunched deeper into her winter
coat. She said nothing as she smoked,
and he said nothing, as he felt that sometimes what a person needs is silence
in the presence of another. She let him
make her eggs the next morning, over-easy.
He made sure to remember so that, if she were to ever agree to stay
overnight and let him make her eggs again, he would not have to ask, “How do
you like your eggs?” He could simply
say, “Over-easy, right?” and she would think it sweet that he remembered.
“No, I’m good,”
she said, sitting down and smiling up at him.
She held up her beer. “Race you,”
she offered.
“Challenge
accepted,” he said, turning to walk away.
He hoped she was watching, but knew she was not.
The day had been
warm and the night air carried a sweet smell to it that made him momentarily
regret that he was about to fill his nose and mouth with the taste of a
cigarette. It was a clear night and he
decided that, if she agreed to go home with him, they should walk to
his apartment.
He had never been
to her place. He suggested it once, but
she simply shook her head, said, “No, your place is better,” and then stared
him down, as if challenging him to ask why.
He did not. She changed the
subject and he never brought it up again.
As he finished
the cigarette and turned to go inside, he wondered whether to ask if there was
a reason she had wanted to meet for drinks or if she had simply been
bored. He knew asking carried a risk, as
she was far more likely to shrug and say something like, “Who the hell needs a
reason to get drunk?” than she would be to say, “I missed you,” or “I hadn’t
seen you in so long,” or even, “I just needed a friend.”
As he stepped back into the bar, he made the decision to ask her anyway. Looking over at their table, he noticed she
was not there.
He found her at
the bar just as she was putting money down for a tip. There were two empty shot glasses before her.
“Guess you
weren’t kidding about getting drunk,” he said, placing a hand on her back. She turned, causing his hand to slip to his
own side.
“No,” she
answered, her eyes bright. “No fucking
around tonight. Tonight,” she announced,
leaning in closer to him, “-tonight, we drink with purpose.”
His stomach
flip-flopped for reasons he couldn’t name.
Perhaps it was that, when she leaned in and spoke, he could smell the
whiskey on her breath. Perhaps it was
the conspiratory way she used the word ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ to refer to the
evening. Or perhaps it was simply the
knowledge that the more she had to drink, the greater the likelihood she would
sleep with him later. It didn’t matter,
really. He was excited now by the notion
that, together, they were on a mission.
“Well,” he
pointed out, “my drink is waiting over at the table.”
“Yes, that’s a
problem,” she agreed, taking his hand in hers and leading him back to the
table. She sat down before her
beer.
He felt confident
as he slid in, nearing the bend of the booth but not quite going deep enough in
so as to invade her space. He knew how
this needed to go and it was too early in the night to move too close. He’d know when the time was right.
“So,” he asked,
“for what great purpose are we drinking tonight?”
“We’re drinking
to get good and drunk,” she answered.
This wasn’t an answer and it didn’t surprise him. He decided to push for one.
“And why are we
getting drunk?”
She sighed. “We’re getting drunk for all of the reasons
people get drunk. To avoid all of the thinking and the feeling and the thinking some more. Why else
do people get drunk?” She was annoyed,
but he was curious now.
“And what exactly
are we avoiding thinking about and feeling and thinking about some more?”
“Jesus, Ryan,”
was all she said before shaking her head and taking a swig from her beer. “Let it fucking go.”
He shrugged, but
his feelings were hurt. He picked up his
glass, gave it a quick swish to hear the ice clink, and then took a sip. It couldn’t work fast enough.
“Shit,” she
mumbled, leaning forward. “I’m sorry.”
He was torn now,
trying to quickly decide which would be the better move, to be a little cold so she would feel bad or shake it off and restore a lighter mood. She sat back against the booth and pulled
out her phone.
“Here,” she said
a moment later, handing the phone to him.
“This is why we’re drinking tonight.”
She had pulled up
the Facebook page of someone named Adam Greene, a man with a big smile and a
shaved head wearing a shirt and tie and staring back at him from her
screen.
“Scroll down,” she
said, the beer bottle poised at her mouth.
She gulped as she drank and slammed it against the table as he scrolled.
He came upon it
quickly, as it was posted that day, underneath a string of congratulatory
posts. It stretched the width of the
screen and read, “June 12th: Adam Greene is now engaged to Jenna
Burke. “
“Who’s Adam
Greene,” he asked, suddenly wishing he’d never pressed the issue of why they
were there. His stomach was once again
flip-flopping, but it was not in the same excited way it had earlier. This was a feeling of regret; he was certain he was not going
to want to know about Adam Greene.
“My ex,” she
said.
“Husband?”
“Fuck no,” she
replied with a harsh laugh, “boyfriend. Jesus, you thought
I had an ex HUSBAND?”
“You’re 29 years
old, it’s possible,” he pointed out defensively.
She said nothing,
only shrugged.
“So we’re getting
drunk because your ex-boyfriend is getting married,” Ryan surmised.
She finished her
beer, then looked straight at him.
“No,” she said,
standing up. “Click through to her profile and check out the status she posted today. THAT is the reason we’re getting drunk. I want another shot, you in?”
He felt as though
the bar was spinning, but knew it was not the alcohol. He looked up at her, standing there waiting
for his response. He fixated on her
upper lip, a spot he liked to either tease with the tip of his tongue or brush
a finger over, depending on his mood, but it did
nothing to make him feel grounded.
Suddenly, she was a different Kyla.
She was one with a past. Kyla,
with an ex-boyfriend. Someone who had
touched her, someone who had kissed her, someone who had been on the inside of her life.
Had she loved him? Had she
whispered his name? Had she been small
and soft with him?
She was still,
standing there looking at him as the bar spun behind her. She was waiting for him to speak, he knew,
but he could not seem to.
“You’re doing a
shot too,” she decided and turned for the bar.
He watched her
walk away, full of visions he had never had to face before. He knew that she would have had exes, of
course, but now one had a name. He had a
face. He looked down at Adam Greene’s
frozen face smiling up at him and felt a flash of anger. Suddenly, she was naked in his mind, her
back arched from atop Adam Greene, his hands grabbing her ass the way his own
had, her head back, eyes closed, calling out his name.
He hated Adam
Greene. He hated that she had once
loved him, that she had once fucked him, that she had once told him things she
would not tell him.
She was leaning
over at the bar, trying to get the bartender’s attention as the crowd
grew. He was overcome by a feeling of
desire; he HAD to have her that night, he had to be sure she came home with
him. He had to reclaim her, even if only
in his mind, from this Adam Greene.
