“And?”
“And you,” Kelly said the word on a quick rush of breath, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “So I informed her she could take her business elsewhere from now on.”
“You know she’s an awful human being, right?”
She did know. She’d known it forever and should’ve said so years ago. Another regret.
“I have to ask though,” Beth said hesitantly, “was this Elliot’s fault?”
“No,” Kelly said emphatically, unless Elliot could be blamed for merely existing in the world, and even she wouldn’t go that far.
“She can be a bit …” Beth seemed to struggle for the right word.
“Defiant?” Kelly suggested. “Stubborn? Cocky? Assertive?”
Beth laughed. “So you noticed that, huh?”
“Yeah.” Kelly smiled despite her best efforts not to.
“But she’s also smart, right?”
“Yes.”
“And helpful?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re glad to have her there?” Beth asked hopefully.
Kelly rolled her eyes. “Most days.”
“Fair enough,” Beth said. Brushing her hand down Kelly’s arm, she added, “I only want what’s best for you.”
She shook off the touch. “I’m fine.”
“I know you are. I just worried after the first day when you called and asked for her address that you intended to fire her, and then when you didn’t I thought maybe things were going okay. Until today.”
“You started having second thoughts about Elliot because I told Mrs. Anthony she could have someone else do her taxes from now on?”
“It’s more than that, Kel,” Beth said softly. “I know how … private you are. Elliot’s smart and honorable, and she’s got a good heart. I know she’d never hurt you on purpose, but she doesn’t always think before she speaks. If she accidently put you in danger, I’d never forgive myself.”
“She doesn’t know,” Kelly said softly, then looked over her shoulder around the empty sterile hallway.
“She’s astute.” Beth pushed. “She’s intuitive.”
“She thinks I’m a homophobe.” Kelly almost laughed. “Or she did, until today, and maybe she still does on some level. I don’t know. I didn’t exactly raise a rainbow flag over the office.”
“But what did you tell her? I mean about Mrs. Anthony?”
“I told her that if Mrs. Anthony wanted to yell at a gay intern, she should get one of her own.”
This time Beth’s shot of laugher bounced loudly off the cold tile and echoed down the hallway. “You’ve got a way with words, Kelly. Sometimes you and Rory are more alike than either of you would care to admit in that area.”
Kelly stiffened. “I need to get back to my dad.”
Beth sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“It was an insensitive comment.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You’re never insensitive.”
“Not on purpose, but I never have been able to keep myself from saying the thing that hurts you.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” she lied, even though Beth knew the truth. The lie had never been for Beth’s sake.
“Okay.” Beth played along. “But since you’re already starting to shut me out again, could you at least answer a question I’ve been afraid to ask for a while now?”
“Beth …” she warned, to no avail.
“I worry about you being so alone right now.”
“Please don’t,” she whispered.
“Is there, has there been anyone else?”
She clenched her jaw and shook her head.
Beth’s blue eyes shimmered. “Not at all?”
“I can’t do this,” she snapped. “I have to go check on my dad.” Beth reached for her, but she stepped away. “Goodnight, Beth.” This time she didn’t wait for her to walk away. She wouldn’t watch her go again. She pushed through the door to her father’s room and quickly closed it behind her. She fastened a fake smile on her face, but the effort was in vain. Her father had already fallen asleep.
She sank into the chair beside him and blinked back her tears. Anger, frustration, helplessness, and loneliness bubbled up like bile. She couldn’t go on like this. She knew she was headed for a breakdown or a breaking point, but she couldn’t stop herself. She didn’t know how. She didn’t have the strength. She didn’t have anyone or anything left to turn to. Every part of her life had turned and twisted in the tumult. Darkness closed in around her again. She could lie down, like her father, say she couldn’t go on and submit to defeat. She eyed him, his normally strong features hollow but serene. What would he say to her now?
He’d tell her to buck up. He’d tell her not to be dramatic. He’d tell her to take care of business and let the rest of it go. The emotions, the what-ifs, the petty concerns of other people never meant anything to him. He was as steady as a rock, as unfailing as her North Star. She never saw him falter, and while she’d always taken comfort in his example before, now she found it daunting.
She didn’t have his fortitude. She never had, no matter how hard she’d tried, although she’d never lacked his drive. Surrender might feel good for a moment, but how could she ever live with his disappointment, or her own? She couldn’t give up. She couldn’t give in. She might not be calm, she might not even be capable, but she wouldn’t quit. She rose and rubbed her eyes. Frayed nerves and exhaustion be damned, she had to go on.
She had to get back to work.
Elliot glanced at her watch again. Nine o’clock was kind of early on Friday night to be at the bars. The college PRIDE students were all going to St. Louis, and the general student population didn’t venture out until closer to ten. She probably should’ve waited, but she’d promised to pick up some hours Saturday morning. She had a hard enough time waking up at the ass-crack of dawn without adding a late night and a hangover to the mix. She could’ve gotten some Fireball Whisky from the liquor store and taken it back to her apartment. At least then she wouldn’t have to brave the cold, but despite her contrary nature, she actually sort of believed the social edicts about not drinking alone. Then again, she probably should’ve given more credence to the gay community edicts about not going to local bars alone, too.
She tried not to make eye contact with anyone except the bartender as she signaled for a second glass of Coke laced with a heavy dose of Fireball. One more and then she’d go. It wasn’t like there was anything going on here anyway. Aside from a few rednecks playing pool, the place was dead. No one talked to her or even seemed to notice her existence, and as much as she’d never been a wilting wallflower, sometimes being in a place where nobody knew your name offered a little safety.
She should’ve gone over to Rory and Beth’s house. They never turned her away, which was way more than most professors would offer, but they weren’t peers. She wasn’t really close with many of the undergraduates, either. Since she came to school a year late, she’d always been older than most of her classmates to begin with, and now, in the latter half of her fifth year, even most of the other gays she’d started with had graduated and gone. She was left behind, limboing in the middle. Too old to be a college kid, too young to be a professor. Still, third-wheeling with Rory and Beth beat sadly looking over her shoulder in a dimly lit bar.
“Here you go.” The bartender slid a glass down the bar and she caught it, gently enough to keep the whisky from sloshing out.
“Thanks.” She stared at the TV overhead as college basketball flashed brightly on the screen. She didn’t care about either of the teams playing, and she would’ve rather watched a women’s matchup, but at least the game gave her a semblance of distraction while she thought more about Beth and Rory. More accurately, she wondered about their connection to Kelly— which meant she thought mostly about Kelly.
She tried not to. She acted like she didn’t care, and if anyone had actually asked her what happened at work today, she would�
�ve shrugged and said she didn’t know. She would’ve said this town was crazy and her boss was odd. All true statements. And yet none of them scratched the surface of what she really thought. She couldn’t even begin to sort through her emotions, much less verbalize them.
She swung wildly from anger and the desire for vindication to confusion. She’d been attacked for being gay. Kelly had defended her as a good worker. Then she’d gone a step further and kicked the hateful biddy out into the cold, but not quite on her account, and not quite because of the old woman’s homophobia. It didn’t add up. Maybe if you rounded out the pieces the sum total looked the same, but she didn’t round numbers. She didn’t make estimations. She suspected multiple unknown variables had come into play, but she couldn’t solve them if she didn’t know the full equation. Beth factored in. Mrs. Anthony had made the connection between Beth and Kelly, and Beth and Rory, but it’d all happened so fast she wasn’t sure she remembered exactly what the woman had said, much less understood what she’d implied.
“Hey, I paid for next game,” one of the rednecks in the corner called out.
“You paid for the game, not me,” a woman answered sharply, and Elliot’s shoulders tensed.
She looked to the bartender, who shook his head and found something to clean at the other end of the bar. She listened more closely now, but couldn’t make out any more of the conversation over the low din of the basketball game on TV and some country music party song on the jukebox.
She didn’t need to turn around. She didn’t need to get involved. There was no problem. Or at least that’s what she told herself. She’d had a bad enough day without getting sucked into some hetero townie mating ritual.
Not that her day really should’ve been that bad. She swallowed another big swig of her drink. The burn of the cinnamon and whisky warmed her face, and masked the mix of shame and anger that welled up every time she tried to replay the confrontation. Everything had happened so fast, and she had gone from being a key player to a bystander. They’d practically talked about her as if she wasn’t in the room, but then all of a sudden it didn’t feel like they were talking about her at all anymore.
If only Kelly would ever just fucking talk to her like a person. She always snapped or ran, or snapped then ran. Occasionally she ran, then came back and snapped some more. Elliot should’ve hated her. She should’ve been angry about her unrealistic standards and her unwillingness to give a freaking compliment or have a normal, civil, casual conversation. Why did everything have to feel like a cryptic inquisition or a stupid macho pissing contest?
A woman pushed up to the bar next to her. She purposefully didn’t look up, but she could tell it was a woman. Women smelled different, they took up space differently, they gave off a different vibe. She’d taken enough women’s studies classes to understand the power of socialization, but she’d also been through enough tense situations to recognize someone who wanted to be left alone. She was generally pretty good at reading people. Why the hell couldn’t she make sense of Kelly?
Why couldn’t Kelly just say, “Mrs. Anthony was out of line to judge you and Beth and Rory that way”? Why couldn’t she just say what made her mad enough to throw the woman out? She hadn’t had any trouble talking to Mrs. Anthony. And why the shitty, gay intern comment? She downed the last of the drink quickly, hoping to lie to herself about the heat spreading through her now. Liquor and shame both burned the same way in a dark bar.
Get her own gay intern. What the fuck? She didn’t even try to hide her anger from herself anymore. What she worked to conceal now was her hurt. She’d done a good enough job of that at the office, not that Kelly had stuck around long enough to notice how much her comment stung. She probably wouldn’t have cared even if she did notice. Apparently all her comments about Elliot being competent and good at her job weren’t actually personal at all. Elliot was just a thing to claim ownership of. A gay intern was akin to a good computer program, not something— someone— with feelings. She hadn’t come to the defense of her friend or her colleague or even a valued employee. She wouldn’t have cared if Mrs. Anthony had attacked someone somewhere else for being gay. She probably wouldn’t have minded if she’d attacked Elliot anywhere other than the office. She had merely defended what was hers.
“Hey,” a man’s voice close by startled her. “I asked you nicely.”
“And I told you ‘no’ nicely,” the woman next to her replied coolly.
“Why? You got a boyfriend?”
“No, I just—”
“You’re just a dyke?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Elliot asked.
“What?” the man asked, stepping closer to her now.
Uh-oh, had she made that last comment in her out-loud voice? “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“And I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Good.” Elliot nodded emphatically, and the room tilted just a little bit before everything righted itself again. Except for the little whisper that called her a coward.
Mr. Redneck pushed closer to the bar, right between her and the woman he’d returned his focus to. He smelled of chewing tobacco, a scent she’d never recognized until moving to Darlington and still couldn’t stomach even after years here.
“Why do you come into a bar alone on a Friday night if you aren’t looking to get hit on?” he asked. It took Elliot a second to remember he wasn’t talking to her.
“I’m just waiting for some friends.”
Neither Elliot nor Mr. Redneck bought that excuse, but Elliot didn’t think he deserved an explanation in the first place. He apparently disagreed.
“I offered to buy you drink,” he said, the frustration boiling behind his patronizing tone.
“And I said, ‘no thank you.’ ”
“Then you came over to the bar to prove you do want a drink, just not from me?”
“Why can’t you leave me alone?”
“Why do you have to be such a bitch?”
“All right,” Elliot said, apparently out loud, but she didn’t care this time. She’d had enough of bullies for one day. “She asked you nicely to leave.”
“I’m not talking to you,” the guy said sharply.
“Yeah, but you’re not listening to her either.”
He turned slowly so he towered over her on her stool. “This is none of your business.”
If one more person tells me something isn’t my business …
She pushed back the stool and rose. Her height wasn’t as high as his but it was enough to make him lean back and look her over for the first time. His mean little eyes were set close enough together to make her wonder how far up his family tree the first cousins had married, but he wasn’t dumb enough not to peg her dark jeans and white men’s oxford shirt under a chocolate brown sweater as out of place.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Elliot,” she extended a hand, which he sneered at until she withdrew it. “Okay, great to meet you, Captain Caveman. Now would you mind leaving us alone?”
“Us?” He turned back to the young woman he’d initially been harassing. This time he pressed hard into her personal space, and while Elliot couldn’t see his expression, she saw the woman shrink away in fear. “Now you’re here with this dyke? I knew it. You are a carpet muncher.”
“Hey,” Elliot shouted. “Back off.”
He didn’t turn around. He wouldn’t even acknowledge her. Well, fuck that. She wouldn’t be ignored. She’d had enough of being cut out and written off and talked about like she didn’t really exist. She wouldn’t give into the cowardice this time. She’d prove herself to everyone, and by everyone she mostly meant herself. She was here, and she was pissed, and she was damn well going to be heard.
“I’m talking to you, you worthless, brain-dead, cocknozzle.”
Everyone looked up at her now. The woman, the caveman, even the bartender turned around.
“I get it. I really do. You smell like horseshit. Your jeans are so tight they’re giving you a m
oose knuckle and showing off your pencil dick.” She couldn’t have stopped the tide of pent-up anger even if she’d wanted to. “You’re about as attractive as the farm animals you’re probably used to fucking, so I get how calling women ‘dykes’ makes you feel better than being faced with that insurmountable list of your shortcomings.”
His face turned so red she half expected to see fire shoot out of his ears.
“But if you want to call someone a name, you can point all your paramecium-brained reasoning over here because I’m the dyke. She’s just out of your fucking league.”
He clenched his fists and literally seethed through his tightly clenched teeth, but instead of lashing out at her, he hauled off and grabbed the other woman by her upper arm.
Oh hell no, laying hands on a woman wasn’t just a no-no. It made Elliot’s vision flash red. She was on his back before she’d thought anything through. Thankfully the bartender had finally heard enough as well, and he came over the bar in a hurry. For a second, all four people in the bar were locked together in a mass of bodies and tight fists before the bartender managed to pry the caveman off of the woman. Elliot, however, was on her own as the guy shook his shoulder violently and threw up his arm. His elbow caught Elliot right above her eye and sent her sprawling. She grasped fruitlessly first for the bar then for her stool before hitting the ground so hard all the air left her lungs in one guttural oomph.
“Get outta here,” the bartender shouted at the caveman, “before I call the cops.”
The big oaf screwed up his face and stomped his foot like a child about to throw a tantrum before he shouted, “Fuck you” and stormed out of the bar, slamming the door as he went.
“God, what’s wrong with you?” the woman asked with a heavy sigh.
“Me?” Elliot asked when she could breathe again. “You’re welcome.”
“You could’ve got us both killed,” she said, shaking her head so that her blond hair fell over her shoulders.
Elliot pushed up onto her knees and grabbed onto the stool before the throbbing over her eyes and the spinning of the room caused her to reevaluate her life choices.
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