My So-Called Perfect Life

by K. A. Berg

  She exhales and her shoulders soften as though the weight she’s been carrying has been lifted. “That’s a relief. On the walk over here, my imagination was getting the better of me. I started to panic that I might have gotten you fired.”

  “Don’t worry. My job security is pretty sound.”

  Roxy pops her head in. “Stella’s out and we just got a rush. Can you change the Miller keg?”

  I pop out of my seat. “You need help out there?”

  “Nah, I’ve got it covered. Just change the keg.”

  Danielle stands. “I should let you get back to work.”

  I should let her go. She cleared the air, said what she had to say. I should let her walk out of here and close the chapter on this woman. She’s been nothing but drama. I’m about to tell her, “Sayonara, thanks for the memories and antibiotics,” but instead, “Why don’t you stay for a bit. We can grab a bite once I help with this rush,” comes out of my mouth.

  Her face lights up for the first time since she arrived. “You want me to stay?”

  “Sure. Just let me go change the keg and I’ll be right back.”

  As I switch out the empty keg, I try to figure out what the hell just happened back there. I just invited the woman who gave me chlamydia to stay for a meal. Have I lost my damn mind? She was ready to leave . . . and I asked her to stay.

  When I return to my office, she stands looking at some of the pictures I have hanging on the wall near my desk. “Is this you?” she asks pointing to a photo of me coming down a zipline in Panama back in college.

  “Sure is.”

  She points to a photo of me in my snowboarding gear two years back in Vail. “And this too?”

  “Yep.”

  As she turns back to me, there’s a smile on her lips, the first one I’ve seen on her face in a while. “You have some interesting hobbies.”

  “I like adventure.”

  Our eyes meet, I feel something—a spark. Maybe a zap. Definitely a jolt. Something draws me into her. I take a few steps inside the office, closing the door behind me. The desire to be closer to her seems to be growing in the pit of my stomach.

  Her pretty brown eyes glitter as I cross the office toward her.

  A moment later, Roxy comes back, breaking our . . . I don’t know what that was.

  “A decent size bachelor party just walked in,” she pants as she’s running crazy out there. “With Stella not back for another thirty, I’m going to need a little help for the next half hour.”

  I turn back and nod. “I’ll be right out.”

  “I’ll let you go,” Danielle says stepping around me toward the door. “I just wanted to come here and apologize. I know that you didn’t give me chlamydia. I mean, I know that now,” she quickly adds. “I didn’t the other night. I got a letter in the mail from my fiancé’s—well, ex-fiancé’s—side piece, and apparently, he was doing more than the two of us.”

  My heart goes out to her. I have a sister. I know guys can be real assholes. I’ve listened to Teresa cry over heartbreak more times than I wanted to growing up.

  “So …” She hesitates. “I don’t know if you’ve gone to get checked since my lunacy on Saturday, but if not, you should. I just wanted to come down here and tell you in person that I’m sorry for Saturday and for possibly giving you an STD. I swear, I had no idea that night.”

  I let out a laugh, thankful that for the most part I find the whole thing funny in retrospect. I can’t change it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t laugh about it. “I think your visit on Saturday made that very clear.”

  “Yeah … well …” She pauses as if she’s trying to think of something to say. “Yeah. So, I’m sorry.”

  She digs in her bag, pulls out a small green tuft of fur, and holds it out.

  It has spikes on the top of it that look like they’re supposed to be hair, two eyes, and a mouth. “What’s this?”

  “Chlamydia.”

  I laugh. I don’t know why. I can’t help it. “I should feel honored, huh?” I say. “No other woman has ever given me chlamydia, let alone twice.”

  Her face falls. Her almond-shaped eyes go wide. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

  I shake my head. “It’s fine, Danielle.”

  Well, it isn’t really fine. I mean, she did give me chlamydia, but she looks so crestfallen that my immediate reaction is to make her feel better.

  She goes back to wringing her hands together and starts rambling with a sense of horror in her, “I came here to apologize and warn you, but I don’t think I actually thought I had passed it to you. You were so certain the other night that you didn’t have it. I mean, I knew instantly that I had it—or at least that something was wrong—so I was sure you’d have known too. I mean, the feeling of peeing fire is hard to igno—”

  She stops talking as soon as she realizes exactly what she was saying, and her eyes grow even wider. I didn’t think it was possible for eyes to widen that much. Any further, and they might fall from her head.

  Her cheeks brighten to a nice shade of pink just before she covers her face with her hands. “Ugh, can my life get worse?” she mumbles into her hands.

  Stepping closer, I take one of her hands in mine and pull it from her face. “Listen, it’s a good thing you came in. I didn’t know anything was wrong, so who knows how long I could’ve walked around, not knowing?”

  “Can you see the embarrassing irony for me here?” she asks, looking at me with one eye since she still has the other covered. “I came in here, drunk, guns blazing, and yelled at you for infecting me when, in reality, I infected you.”

  I chuckle. “Of course, I can see it. It’s like a giant neon sign. But as much as it sucks, it is what it is. It’ll all be cleared up in a few days, and that’s that.”

  “Why aren’t you being a dick about this?” she asks, finally dropping her other hand from her face. “Especially after how I acted the other night.”

  “I could be, but what would that add to the situation? It’s done, and all we can do is move forward.”

  She nods and steps toward the door. “I appreciate you not laying into me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  A smile dons my lips as I exit my office and make my way back to the bar. Stella is back early from her break, I’m assuming. She’s corralling a group of guys at the end who from the looks of it, just ordered a lot of shots. Roxy grins at me as Evan sits across from her.

  Roxy pops the top off a beer and hands it to my best buddy. “Any vomit to clean up?”

  Clapping Evan on the back, I glare at Roxy. “Don’t you have a rush of customers that need tending?”

  She smirks, leaning against the bar. “Nope. Stella is back and taking care of the group. It’s all covered now.”

  “I swear, if you weren’t the best mixologist I’ve ever met—”

  She rolls her eyes. “You’d do nothing. Spare us the idle threat and fill me in on the newest drama development in your life.”

  “I’m positive you must have some form of work to do?”

  She shakes her head. “Nope. Stella is handling those bachelors just fine. Evan is the only one who was waiting for a drink down this end, and as you can see, I’ve taken care of him.”

  “Roxy girl”—Evan smirks at her—“there are so many more ways you can take care of me.”

  “Like kill you and then take care of your body?”

  “That’s not the kind of taking care of my body I had in mind.”

  “Well, it’s the only kind you’re going to get. Now, can it! I want to know all about what other diseases our boy here passed along to that poor woman.”

  Evan’s favorite thing to do is hit on Roxy, but she’s loyal to the bar before anything else. She’s told Evan countless times she doesn’t shit where she eats. Doing the boss’s best friend is off limits in her book. Honestly, I wouldn’t care. Roxy would be good for him. But their hook-up would inevitably end in drama, and I don’t have the patience for drama.

  I groan. �
�How many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t give that woman chlamydia.”

  That turns Evan’s attention from Roxy’s rack to me. “That was the chlamydia girl?” he asks and then takes a sip of his Heineken. “I was expecting something like porn star Barbie, not little sister Kelly.”

  Roxy snorts. “Big fan of Barbie and her friends?”

  “I just spent the last three hours with my nieces. Give me a break, okay?”

  Evan watches his nieces twice a week for his sister. She’s recently divorced, and she needed someone to cover the girls a few days a week for the summer. Being a real estate agent with a flexible schedule, Evan is able to help her out.

  Thanks to the amount of time he spends with those little girls, he knows more about little-girl pop culture than anyone I know.

  “So?” she redirects her attention to me.

  “So what?”

  “Come on, Ryan,” she coaxes, batting her long eyelashes at me. “I’m already invested in this soap opera. This is like season three at this point. Don’t leave me hanging now.”

  Glancing around the bar, I try to collect my thoughts for a moment. Part of me feels like it’s wrong to talk about her with Roxy and Evan. I mean, Evan knows all about the incident and my trip to the clinic this weekend, but now, with her apology, my anger has lessened. Then, the other part of my brain reminds me that she made this all public knowledge.

  “She came to apologize.”

  “For giving you an STD?” Evan asks. “How sweet of her.” The sarcasm drips from his voice.

  “No, she didn’t know she had given it to me until just now. She just found out from the ex’s mistress that he was the one who gave it to her. She came to apologize for her stunt on Saturday.”

  He scoffs, “I hope you told that sack of crazy to never come back.”

  Evan’s right. I should’ve told her to have a nice life and left it at that. So, why does the thought of not seeing her again make me feel a tinge of sadness in my gut? Everything about our night together was seriously screwed up. But at the same time, it was also the best night I’d had in a long while. Despite the need for antibiotics after.

  “Ryan?” Evan says. “You did tell her not to come back, right?”

  Roxy just laughs.

  “She’s not crazy,” I tell him, feeling the need to defend her. “She was down on her luck and blindsided by her ex. Cut the girl some slack.”

  “Dude, she told your whole bar you gave her an STD. That’s a telltale sign of batshit crazy. Tell him, Rox.”

  “I like her,” Roxy says, not siding with him. “She’s not crazy. She might have been a bit irrational the other night, but tequila can do that to a person. She’s not ready for a padded room though. A woman scorned is a force to be reckoned with.”

  “But he didn’t do the scorning.”

  “So?” She shrugs. “He did the screwing. She was content to find someone else to spend the night with, but your boy over here wasn’t having it. He’s just as much to blame. The girl didn’t know she had anything. She had literally just found out her ex was cheating on her.”

  The thought of Danielle heading out to find some other douche to screw her brains out that night still irks me. “Yeah, because she’s fucking crazy!” Evan continues. “Isn’t there some other way for you to get your rocks off? Base jumping? Cliff diving? A cage surrounded by sharks?”

  I completely understand Evan’s point of view: Get out now. Let it all be and move on. But the idea of that seems like I’d be missing out on something different . . . a new kind of adventure. You only live once and for whatever reason I keep thinking this is something I need to try.

  But at the end of the day, it’ll all be up to fate or Danielle. One or the other since I don’t have a number for her or even know anything else about her to attempt to find her. I know her last name, but I’m sure as hell not going to stalk her on social media. That would make me batshit crazy.

  “I asked her to stay for dinner but then we got a rush. We didn’t make plans before she left so who knows if I’ll ever even see her again.” I narrow my eyes at Roxy. “If she comes back in, don’t give her any shots, Roxy. Whenever you do, it doesn’t end up well for me.”

  “I say, serve her a bunch of shots.” Evan leans back on his barstool. His brown eyes glare at me as he runs a hand through his short blond hair. “If you’re going to hang with crazy, might as well dive all the way in.”

  “We don’t even know if I’ll ever see her again,” I point out, finally taking the seat next to him. I grab all the paperwork I was working on before and stick it back into my folder. “Don’t get your panties in a twist just yet.”

  He salutes with his beer. “It’s your dick’s funeral. I think you’d have better luck with the sharks.”

  I huff and shake my head. “Just drop it, and let’s watch the game, please. I’ve had enough drama and talking for one week. I just want to enjoy my baseball in peace.”

  “Sure, sure,” he says, turning toward the TV in the corner. “If you continue chasing crazy, it’ll probably be the last bit of peace you ever get before she drags you down the rabbit hole with her.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Danielle

  “You gave him the keychain?” Mercy asks between her bouts of laughter. “Why?”

  When I finally made the decision to go to Cohen’s last night and apologize, I didn’t tell Mercy or Amelia my plans. I have no doubt they would’ve loved to tag along for the event. To them, my life has become a circus for their enjoyment.

  I shrug thinking back on how stupid it really was. “I don’t know. In the moment it seemed like a good idea. Now, not so much. I feel really childish actually.”

  “What did he say?” she asks as her eyes scan the room to make sure everything is okay on her side.

  “Well, at first he laughed.”

  “Then?”

  “Then it got really embarrassing.”

  “How?” she asks just before calling out, “Jessica, give Katie back her juice box.”

  Looking over, I see that Jessica has Katie’s juice box in her hand, and Katie is trying to snatch it back.

  “I was just opening it for her, and she won’t say thank you,” Jessica says.

  I swear, sometimes, my job makes me feel like I’m a zookeeper.

  “Katie, say thank you, and, Jessica, give it back.” Mercy turns her attention back to me. “Why was it embarrassing?”

  “He asked if he should feel honored since he’s never gotten”—I glance around to see who can hear us. Last thing I want to explain to an eight-year-old is what chlamydia is or explain to their parents why they’re hearing it from me—“it before, especially from the same person twice.”

  She gasps. “Oh my God. Was he a total you know what about it?”

  This is the part I still haven’t been able to wrap my head around.

  After the way I treated him Saturday, he had every right to tear me a new one. I had been expecting it, to be honest. When I walked into the bar last night, tail between my legs, I was sure he was going to throw me out the minute he saw me. I wasn’t even sure he was going to be there, but my conscience got the best of me as I lay in bed the night I got Mandy’s letter. I tossed and turned all night, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sleep again until I did what I knew was right. I’d wrongfully and very publicly accused the man of something he didn’t do, and I needed to try to make it right.

  “No, he was calm about it, honestly,” I tell her as I pick through the small bit of my remaining chicken and cranberry salad. “He even asked me to stay and have dinner but then it got busy, so I skedaddled before I did something else to humiliate myself further in front of him.”

  “You should go to dinner with him.”

  “No way.” I shake my head just as the bell rings, letting us know lunch is over. “I don’t even have a way to contact him without showing up at the bar . . . and I’m not doing that again. Besides, he didn’t ask to make plans before I left so I
think he was just being polite and humoring me.”

  Saved by the bell. Literally because I know Mercy would’ve continued to push the issue, given more time. For now, I’m saved for the rest of the afternoon since we have a field day of sorts set up for the kids for the remainder of the day.

  As predicted, Mercy doesn’t let it go.

  She picks up right where she left off as soon as the day ends, and the last child is signed out. “You really should go to dinner with him. So what if you didn’t make plans, just go to the bar and see.”

  “Why would I do that?” I huff, tired and annoyed. I’m ready to stop thinking about Scott’s betrayal and my continued mishaps with Ryan. I’m over it and ready to move on. “Yesterday was the best way to end things. It was a positive note, and there’s nothing else left to say.”

  “But what if there could be something there?” she asks. “You’ll never know if you don’t try.”

  Stuffing the rest of my things in my bag, I sling it over my shoulder and turn to her. “What’s with all this? And don’t think I’ve forgotten all about your sudden need to settle down. Is that why you’re pushing me on this? What’s going on with you, Mercy? We’ve spent so much time dissecting my love life lately, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about yours.”

  She crosses her arms over her chest—classic move of Mercy in defense mode—and shrugs her shoulders. “You had a great night with him. Your chemistry is off the charts. Shit, he looked like he wanted to eat you alive before you called him an asshole. He was able to take your mind off Scott—and still is, if we’re being honest. He wasn’t a dick when you threw up on him. He didn’t call you a bitch when you yelled at him in front of the bar. He didn’t throw you out when you showed up yesterday, and he was decent about the STD. He even invited you to stay. He seems like a good guy. Those are pretty hard to come by. I’d hate to see you pass one up.”

  I’ve known Mercy long enough to read between those lines. While she does mean exactly what she said, there was more behind it.