by Sarina Bowen
“Hey, Alec!” she says, waving.
I snap out of it in a hurry. “Wow, May! Haven’t seen you since the summer.”
She gives me a friendly smile, but then starts scanning the room.
“May,” I say sharply. I don’t even have a plan, except to stop her from experiencing the train wreck in the corner. Nobody deserves that.
But there’s no time. It’s almost like I can hear the brakes squealing as her eyes lock on the far corner of the room. Her frame stiffens as she spots Daniela. And then her hands ball into fists. She leans forward a little, as if the view might change if she were three inches closer.
“May,” I try one more time, as if anything I could say would make this moment less awful.
She doesn’t even hear me. Instead, she stomps toward the back, weaving between bodies as she makes her way toward that booth.
And now I’m in motion, too, ducking under the bar, following her, wondering what will happen. I always thought of May as the quiet Shipley, but now she looks like a heat-seeking missile locked onto a target.
“You cheating bitch!” she yells before she’s even reached the table.
Holy god. I’m both impressed and on my guard. Bar fights are rare at the Gin Mill, but anything could happen right now.
Daniela freezes, her eyes popping wide. But the other woman has her practically in a headlock, and is still trying to eat Daniela’s face. Daniela tries to pull back. She doesn’t get very far, though, as her hookup keeps her head caged in a possessive maneuver.
“Let me go, Trace,” Daniela says as May seethes in front of them.
“No,” the stranger grunts. “That’s the whole fuckin’ point, right? I don’t wanna let you go. You were mine first. You’ll always be mine.”
Oh, hell. This train wreck cannot be stopped.
“That is so touching,” May spits. “Except. As Daniela’s live-in girlfriend, someone should have warned me.” May reaches down and tugs Daniela’s chin, so at least the soon-to-be-ex girlfriend will look at her. “Pro bono work, huh? Every Thursday? You’re pathetic!”
“Hey! Watch your tone!” the stranger bellows. She has a voice like our ancient margarita blender—loud and grating. “Get your mitts off my girl.” Then she actually grabs May’s wrist in her paw and twists it sharply.
“Ow!” May shrieks. “You…cuntmuffin!”
My mouth drops open just as May yanks her hand back and cradles it in obvious pain. I see tears in her eyes. But she blinks them away quickly. And then…
Somehow I anticipate May’s lunge. As she starts forward, I start, too. My arms are longer than hers, and before she can grab Daniela’s lover, I fold May into a protective hug. Or a human straightjacket. Take your pick. I tug her backward before she can do something she’ll later regret.
May stiffens in my embrace, looking over her shoulder with startled eyes. As soon as she identifies her captor, she lets out a frustrated breath. “Let go,” she croaks.
“This whole thing is so shitty,” I say quietly into her ear. “But fighting can get you arrested if somebody calls the cops. And that’s bad for lawyers, right?” Not only did May go to BU for undergrad, she’s an attorney, too.
And, fine, I really don’t want anyone to summon the cops to my place of business. That’s never good.
She blinks once, then seems to relax in my arms. “Okay,” she says softly.
I let her go, and she takes a deep, angry breath. Then she turns toward her girlfriend. (Or former girlfriend?) “Don’t come home tonight,” she barks in the general direction of Daniela.
“She won’t,” the bitch in the booth says. “Daniela says you’re a shitty lay, anyway.”
Apparently my ninja skills aren’t as good as I thought, because this time May lunges before I’m ready. The slap she delivers to the stranger rings out loud and clear. And if any of my bar patrons missed the sound of it, they definitely didn’t miss the stranger’s roar of anger or string of obscenities and threats that immediately follows.
She leaps up onto the booth’s seat to try to get to May, but Daniela is blocking her way, so I have two or three precious seconds to prevent World War III.
I do this by scooping May up—all six feet of her, or near that, anyway—and bodily carrying her toward the door.
The Shipleys are a tall family. Luckily, so are the Rossis. She struggles, but only for a second. And I have her outdoors so fast that a moment later we’re standing in the cool November air, staring each other down.
“Holy crap! That was…” May lets the sentence die.
“Shitty?” I supply.
“Y-yeah,” she breathes. “Jesus. I am a huge idiot. I should have figured this out ages ago.”
“Um…” She’s definitely not an idiot. This girl is fierce. But now I’m not sure how to help her. “Can I walk you upstairs and get you drunk? Owning a bar comes in handy sometimes.”
“Jesus.” May swallows. “That sounds way too appealing right now. But I’m afraid my AA sponsor wouldn’t approve.”
AA? “Fuckity-fuck,” I stammer. I’ve just offered to get a recovering alcoholic drunk? “I’m sorry. Shit. I…”
She holds up a hand. “No need to panic. People offer me drinks all the time. But these days I say no.”
“I’m sorry,” I stammer again anyway. Jesus. I’m such an asshole.
“For most people, it wouldn’t be such a life-changing suggestion.” She meets my eyes with her light brown ones. “But for me, it’s bad news.”
“Okay.” I’m trying to regroup. “Can I drive you somewhere, then?”
May closes her eyes and leans her head against the brick wall of my building. “I never want to see her again.”
“I’ll bet. That woman was a bitch on wheels.”
“I mean Daniela,” May says, opening her eyes.
I’d meant Daniela, too. But I’m smart enough not to say that right now. “You two live together, right? You need somewhere to go?”
May sighs. “I have somewhere to go. My family will throw a parade if I leave Daniela and move back home. They’re going to be giddy.” Then her eyes get shiny with tears. “Shit.”
“Aw.” Mayday! Crying women are my weakness. So I pull May into a hug. “Tell me how I can help.”
She takes a deep breath. “You have a pickup truck, right? I need to move out. Can I borrow your wheels?”
“Sure,” I say immediately. But I can’t let a teary woman move out of her place alone. Even if she is a Shipley. “I’ll go with you. It’ll be faster that way. Is there much furniture?”
“No.” She steps back. “All the furniture is hers. I just have clothes and books.”
“Okay. So this will be a snap.” She smells like lemons. I mentally slap myself for noticing. Now is not the moment to mack on May Shipley. “Let’s go. I’ll drive.”
“Alec, you really don’t have to. I’m sure you’re supposed to be behind that bar. And I could call my brothers.” She looks, if possible, even more glum saying that. “They won’t be able to hold back their glee.”
“Don’t bother them,” I say quickly. “Come on.” Taking her hand, I tug her away from the wall. “You’re not in any shape to drive.”
She’s right, of course. I’m supposed to be tending bar with Smitty. He’s probably getting crushed in there. I pull out my phone as May follows me toward the truck, and sure enough there’s a text from Smitty already. WTF? Where’d you go?
I bleep the locks and try to think. “Hop in. I just have to make one quick phone call.”
As May buckles her seatbelt, I look up at the lit windows of my brother Benito’s apartment. Since he’s home, I pull up his phone number and tap it. “Hey,” I say when he answers. “I’m supposed to be tending bar tonight, but now I have to help out a friend with some urgent business.” I’d explain, but it would take too long. Besides, I don’t even know why I’m bailing out May Shipley. “Could you check on Smitty in a few minutes? See if he’s slammed?”
“Sure?” B
enito says. “After I finish my dinner.”
“Thanks. I owe you.”
We hang up and I shoot off a text to another of my bartenders, asking if he’d like to pick up an extra shift tonight. Then I start the truck and turn out onto the two-lane highway, heading south. “Your place is in Randolph, right?”
May snaps out of the daze she’s in. “It is. No… It was. I can’t believe it’s going to end like this.” Fresh tears spring into her eyes.
“I sure am sorry. Cheaters are the worst.” My father was the king of cheaters. I watched him slowly destroy my mother’s self-esteem until he disappeared for good when I was fifteen.
“Alec, I don’t know why you’re helping me like this.” She wipes her eyes.
I just shrug, because I don’t really, either. “That’s what friends are for, right?” Although May and I aren’t really friends. She’s four or five years younger than I am. We didn’t overlap at the high school, although I saw more than enough of her brother.
May reaches over and puts a hand on my forearm. “Well…I really appreciate it. When I straighten my head out a little bit, I’ll make you an apple pie as a thank-you note.”
“See? I knew I was helping the right person.”
She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
Chapter Two
May
Sitting here on the passenger seat of Alec Rossi’s truck, I’m struggling to make sense of what just happened. Watching Daniela kiss someone else? That hurt so much.
I feel like someone took a bucket of very cold mud and threw it over my whole life. It’s both sobering and messy. And there’s no chance that tonight was some kind of strange aberration. Daniela has been distant for weeks. I suspected she was keeping something from me but I just didn’t know what.
Also, my fight-or-flight reaction had startled me almost as much as catching Daniela cheating. Red-hot anger had sluiced through my veins as I stormed toward their table. And when my hand met Tracy’s face, it had made a sharp, bright sound.
I’m embarrassed by how good it had felt, and how not sorry I feel now. I’m embarrassed about a lot of things, actually. How naively I gave myself to Daniela, in spite of her bad behavior. How vulnerable I made myself to this kind of pain.
And it happened in front of Alec Rossi of all people. When I was thirteen, I’d had the biggest crush on him. I used to sit at the top of the bleachers at my brother’s football games and watch Alec making time with the girls his age. They’d tossed their hair and preened and laughed, doing anything for a little scrap of his attention.
I can’t believe that Alec Rossi just witnessed my life exploding. It’s like the frosting on a cake made of awfulness. When I think of how it must have looked to him, a little groan escapes me.
“You okay over there?” he asks from behind the wheel.
“Sure. Just trying to get over my shock.”
“I’ll bet. I spotted them about a half hour before you came in. Wasn’t sure what to think about it.”
“Really? You recognized Daniela?” I’m a little stunned that he knows who my girlfriend is.
Was. Damn it.
“Yeah. A good bartender never forgets a face. I’m sorry to say that they were in the bar last week, too. And I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that you guys were still together. But tonight I took this photo because I was going to try to figure it out and maybe tell you.” He steers to the side of the road, pulls his phone out of the cupholder, and unlocks it. Then he passes it to me.
And there they are. It’s a very good picture of Daniela kissing Tracy, her ex. And now I spot another ugly detail. Daniela is wearing a very beautiful black V-neck angora sweater. And now I hurt even worse.
“Ugh.” I hand it back. “She was wearing the sweater. Fuck.”
“What’s that?” Alec asks. He pulls onto the highway and we continue on our way.
“I knitted that sweater she’s wearing tonight.”
“You made it yourself?” he asks. “Whoa. There’s some gratitude for you.”
I just sigh.
“Are you going to be okay?”
That is a good question. “I will be.” As soon as my thundercloud of rage passes overhead.
“Must have been hard to see,” he says in a low voice. “A shock, right? The heartbreak will set in later.”
“That’s the thing…” I clear my throat. “I don’t even know if it will.” Once I hear myself admit that, I realize it might even be true.
Alec waits quietly for me to go on. I watch his big hands grip the steering wheel, while I attempt to sort out my emotions. “We weren’t working out. As a couple.” There. I said it out loud. “But I hoped we would. I wanted us to. And in the beginning, Daniela was fun.”
“Then what happened?” he asks
“Well…” This part is hard to talk about. “When we got together, both of us were trying to get over other people. You just met Daniela’s ex, Tracy. I’d never seen her in person before tonight. But Daniela told me straight up that Tracy broke her heart.”
Alec makes an impatient noise in the back of his throat. “I can’t really see anyone falling hard for that rude b—” He bites off the end of the sentence. “She’s someone I never needed to meet.”
“Me neither,” I grumble. Although, maybe meeting her like that had been necessary. “The thing is, I really wanted to move on. But I don’t think Daniela really wanted to get over Tracy. That’s why we didn’t work out. I was ready to try to love someone else, and she couldn’t get there. Not that she handled it very well. She was hard on me, when I wasn’t really the problem.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.” There had been way too many times when she’d been shitty to me, and I had just ignored it. The first time it got really out of hand was last summer, when Daniela got drunk at my brother’s wedding. She’d told my friends and family that I wasn’t any fun.
Come to think of it, Alec had asked me to dance that night. It had only been for a few minutes, but I’d still been flattered.
Now I wonder if he’d been feeling sorry for me.
“I put up with her for way too long,” I say. “But I thought I could wait her out—that she’d remember the fun we had at the beginning, and realize we could have a future.”
“Dude,” he says. “Lots of people make that mistake—hoping things will just get better.”
“Maybe.”
“My mom spent fifteen years hoping.” He turns off the highway.
“Turn right at the second stop sign.”
And it hits me. This is probably the last time I’ll ever step inside the house we shared. How is that even possible? This morning, on my way to work, I’d thought my biggest concerns were my boring job and wondering if Daniela would remember to run the dishwasher after putting her cereal bowl in it.
“I don’t know how to get my head around this,” I mumble. “I was going to make dinner tonight.”
“Sorry, babydoll,” Alec whispers.
As he turns onto our block, I can’t stop the dark thoughts from coming. My relationship with Daniela had been doomed, but I’d chosen not to see it. I think she was taking the passive-aggressive route—trying to drive me away with her bullshit, so she wouldn’t have to take responsibility for the breakup.
It’s cowardly behavior, and I’m not excusing it. But I wish I’d taken the hint a whole lot faster.
“This is the place?” Alec asks as he kills the engine.
“Yeah.” God, I don’t want to get out of the truck. I just want to crawl under a quilt in my family’s TV den and hide. Preferably with a jug of wine.
But we can’t always get what we want. And Alec is waiting, his big brown eyes worried.
So I get out, putting one foot in front of the other until I’m standing on our little wooden porch. I let myself in with my key, and then jam a thumbnail into the keyring so I can work off the key and leave it behind.
“You sure you won’t need to come back?” Alec asks me. “For mail? Forgotten
items?”
I hesitate. He’s right. So I keep the key.
“Are you on the lease?” he asks. “Any utilities in your name?”
I shake my head. This place was Daniela’s house before it was mine.
“Good. So that part is easy.” He pushes a lock of hair out of my face and smiles at me. “Come on then, let’s see how quickly we can change your life. Got a duffel bag? And if you run out of space, there’s always the time-honored luggage of high-class relationship fleeing.”
“What’s that?”
“Garbage bags.”
“Oh, Alec.” I snort, and then I laugh.
I’m twenty-seven years old, barely employed, and just a few minutes from hauling all my possessions out of my ex’s house. In garbage bags. Because I only have one suitcase, and it will quickly fill up with law school textbooks.
Alec gives my shoulder a firm squeeze. “Let’s go. Thinking too hard won’t be helpful right now. Show me your books. You’ll do the clothes.”
We get to work.
If you’d have asked me to name a dozen people who might someday move me out of Daniela’s house, Alec Rossi would never had made the list. But I let myself forget that this is the weirdest night of my life and I do exactly as he says. I pack up my clothes and shoes, while he stacks my books in empty boxes I scare up from the garage.
It takes less time than I’d thought to sever my life from Daniela’s.
Alec carts my books outside, and then my clothes. We’ve quickly filled my laundry basket, several shopping bags and—naturally—trash bags for my clothes and a quilt my mother made me.
The bed looks naked now. I had some happy times in that bed, getting in touch with my bisexuality. But apparently Daniela was having happy times in some other bed, too. No wonder she hadn’t made love to me in a while.
For a minute I just stand there and stare at the rumpled sheets, letting the hurt sink in. Last night I’d curled up close to her when she came to bed. But Daniela had rolled away from me, her skinny shoulder jutting up like a wall between us.