“And then you see him,” Krista joined in. “That tall, good-looking, quenching man, who’s smart, grew up in New York and knows exactly how to work her mysteries. And you beg, and plead, and finally he takes you on—out of pity—and sits you down and seduces the cute, innocent rosebud until all your petals are bruised.” The girl smiled with the scales of a snake glittering across her cheeks. “And you even try kissing him, don’t you? Thinking this Prince Charming in the fairy tale of your big city life is yours.” She took a long sip of her drink. The bar had ceased in its noise, taken over by a tunneling rush in my ears, bringing a heat with it that curdled through the holes. “And yet here you are, still bartending.”
“That’s…” I breathed in, refusing to allow the poison of their words to sink in, even if they were mostly right, save for Kansas. “You think poor chicks are rude? How about rich, entitled bitches who think slumming in dive bars for five dollar drinks equals a fantastic Thursday night.”
“He’ll use you up until you’re nothing but a snot-filled tissue,” another—Steph—said. “Daya’s the only one he treats as pristine.”
“We’re done here.” Daya finally spoke, although she didn’t look as content as the others. “Just turn around, Emily. Get back to your employment.”
“For the record,” I said to her, my voice shaking with rage, “It isn’t me you should be throwing insults at and slut-shaming, but Spencer, your alleged boyfriend, who did you wrong. What happened to girl code?” I retorted. I scanned each face, and one by one the gazes avoided me like dominos falling. “Huh?”
“You knew he was dating me!” Daya said, rising out of her seat. “Quit acting like a dumb, innocent twat when you went after him knowing full well he was taken!”
A sticky, sick feeling—shame—entered my gut. “I did not—”
“Hey!”
A red-jacketed arm came between us, separating Daya and I, which was probably a good thing because we were dangerously close and I’d actually raised the plastic drink tray as a shield. Or weapon?
“Why are you messing with her? All she’s trying to do is give you your f-f-frickin’ drinks and keep you drunk and happy. Why be jerks?”
The strange guy. He stood in the middle of us, a full head taller, his eyes and voice ablaze with fury despite his stutter, and he directed it all at Daya, whose clear eyes went wide at his reaction.
“Hey…” I said, and rested a hand on his arm, trying to pull him closer to me and away from her.
“You’re a bad, n-nasty person!” he yelled at Daya, spittle flying into her face. “Be ashamed of yourself.”
“Cool it, freak,” the redhead said, and stepped in front of Daya. “Emily was just leaving, anyway.”
“And maybe so should you!” Krista called from her safe distance in a corner.
“It’s fine. Really,” I assured, and pulled him away, through the crowds and closer to the bar.
“They’re terrible,” he said, still shouting as he twisted to face me. “They shouldn’t treat you that way.”
“I kind of asked for it,” I admitted, but tried to placate him by rubbing his arm. “It’s just words, right? Sticks and stones and all that. I’ll be okay.”
“But you didn’t deserve it. You never do, Emme. You’re too kind to have those things said to you.” He took a minute to catch his breath. “I grew up in tough times, too. I know what it’s like to be teased.”
“And we become stronger for it,” I said, though my chest protested. It felt heavy. Clogged with cloying phlegm. “Thank you, though. Very much. For doing what you did.”
His shoulders, tight with anger, finally lowered. “Of course, Emme. I’d do anything.”
I smiled. “Rest of the night, you’ll get drinks on the house on me. All right? Hey, what’s your name?”
He brightened, his teeth growing huge as his lips stretched across them. The excitement in his answering smile was almost blinding. “Ed. Ed Carver. B-b-but…” He frowned, as if frustrated he couldn’t get his sentence out.
“It’s okay. Take your time.”
“I-I want to do something…better.” He reached for my hand and clasped on. I didn’t resist, shocked at the sudden, gripping contact. “Can I take you out? On-on a date?”
“Oh…Ed…”
My crestfallen expression gave him the answer he needed. He dropped my hand like a rock. “So it’s true then. You do like him.”
“It’s not that,” I defended lamely. “I mean, it’s not…it’s complicated. And I really appreciate what you did for me, but I can’t…”
Oh god, Krista and the Blonde were coming up right behind Ed, to the bar, and were well within hearing range. Their Cheshire smiles said it all. Damn our $5 drinks filled with mostly ice.
“I can’t go out with you, Ed. I’m sorry,” I finished.
The crushing blow was further emphasized by a cawing behind Ed, a raucous laughter that came from the two women who would be entertained by a tall, gentle, vulnerable man asking a pretty girl on a date.
Ed’s devastation twisted, his brows morphing into total hurt and anger and his mouth following suit. He reared around and roared, “FUCK. OFF,” at them, and it was so startling and loud that not only me, but many others around him, skipped back a few steps.
Like the startled hamsters they were, those two scampered back to their table.
“Ed—” I tried, but he threw off my hold and stormed out of the bar.
#
Ed departed, but my adrenaline didn’t.
Throughout the rest of my shift I had the shakes, my fingers trembling every time I balanced a glass on the bar or tipped a bottle. It could’ve been because of Daya and her crew, or Ed, or both, but in either scenario, only one person was to blame.
Spence.
It became easier to accept shots from patrons, both those flirting or deciding to tip in tequila rather than cash. And when Daya left, along with Joey, Krista draped in his arms, it was better. My trembles stopped at the third tequila shot, and by the fifth, I was near to Coyote Ugly’ing across the bartop.
“Okay missy, I think you’re set.”
Laurie pulled my arm down after I lifted it—and a bottle of tequila—and roared along with the crowd as I tipped it into my mouth.
“Go away,” I said, putting on the best air of bitchiness I could. And ignored the trail of tequila down my chin.
“I don’t like this any more than you do,” she said while extricating the bottle from my hands. I made baby-grabbing motions toward it. “But even I can’t ignore the extreme drunken state you’re in.”
“I had a day.”
“I’m aware,” she said breezily, and cupped my elbow. “Let the boys run last call.” She bent down to the lockers and grabbed our purses with one hand as she pulled me along.
“Where’re we going?”
“To a house party.”
“Really?”
“No, you twit. I’m taking you home.” She pushed the front door open into frigid air.
I barely had time to register the crisp outside compared to the hot beer-heat of the bar before she was yanking me into the back of a strange black car.
“Hey!” I cried as she heaved me in, using my hands and elbows as barriers against the doorframe. “You don’t have permission! Kidnapping! I need to report a kidnapping!”
The driver gave a three-quarter turn, raised a brow, then stared forward again.
Damn these New Yorkers.
“No one thinks I’m abducting you. You’re about five times my height and have enough alcohol in your system to get me drunk on contact,” Laurie said, and folded herself around me to get in the car.
“You slept with my boyfriend,” I spat.
I got the driver’s attention again.
Laurie sighed before she sat on the far side, arms crossed over her chest. “That doesn’t make me some evil queen out to sabotage the fair princess. You want to stay out there and freeze, be my guest. But I’m going home. I can either drop you
off on the way or you can go inside and beg Connor or Enrique for a ride.”
The thought of wobbling back inside and attempting to communicate with my co-workers without looking like a fool had me pausing. After kicking the last of the stragglers out, they would be rinsing the mats out back, wiping down the bar and stacking the stools on the high-tops. I’d have to wait over an hour for that to be finished because I’d be in no condition to stack or handle a hose, and they probably wouldn’t even get me pizza while I waited. My other option would be calling a car myself, but despite car apps being all the rage and for the most part, perfectly safe, an irrational part of me still shied away from being drunk and alone in a car with a male stranger.
“All right,” I said, weaving a little. “Fine.”
“Then get your ass in here. You’re bringing in a ton of cold, and not just through your death glare.”
I complied, and after a few attempts with the seat belt, buckled in. The driver pulled away from the curb without a word.
We spent the initial minutes of our trip in silence, without even a radio to buffer the air. I focused on the outside, at the shadowed pedestrians backlit by the everlasting beam of storefronts and street lights fusing together in fluorescent streaks as we sped by.
“Where am I dropping you off? I’ll put it in,” Laurie finally said while holding out her phone. Its white light spread a ghostly cast along the ridges of her face.
“Oh. Norfolk and Stanton. On the corner is fine.”
She tapped it in, and we were doused in silence again.
We were stopped at an intersection, with a cluster of people crossing in front of us with warbling “whoops!” and laughter, when I said, “Why?”
Laurie was enraptured by the group, especially when one fell on the hood of our car, gave a muffled “sorry, man!” and kept going.
I tried again. “Why’d you do it?”
There was no need to elaborate. I expected Laurie to go on immediate defense, say something snarky to shut me up, and have that be the end of it. Instead, she pulled her phone back out, twisting it in her hands. “You’re drunk, Emme.”
“Not sauced enough that I can’t ask you why you fucked my boyfriend.”
Right when she opened her mouth, I added, “Actually—it’s not even that. ‘Cause I can’t sit here and yell at you for stealing him. I knew I was losing Trev, or more like I was slowly walking away from him. We were torn—cracking apart, but you didn’t know that. I thought we were friendly, you and I. Not friends, exactly, because friends wouldn’t screw other friends’ partners, but guess what came to my attention today? Girl Code.”
“Is that what was going on in the back corner with you and that group of women?”
“Don’t divert.” I pointed at her. “I’m tipsy, not stupid.”
“I’m sorry.”
The driver took a sharp left turn, and my body went as slack as my mouth as I banged into the car door. “What?”
“I said I’m sorry.” Head lowered, she stared at me through her blonde waves. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you by hooking up with him. He came up to the bar one day looking for you, but you’d already left for class. The place was pretty empty, so he sat down and we struck up a conversation. It was nothing, really. Just small talk and jokes, but then a…a happiness came over me. I don’t know. Next thing I realized, an hour had gone by and we were still talking. Without one break in conversation. That never happened to me before.”
Trev had an amazing ability to engage. I couldn’t fault Laurie for that part. He was like that hypnotizing snake in Jungle Book, the one where you’re so deep in dreams and pleasure that there was no realizing the slow suffocation. It took breaking up and looking back to figure that out, but as someone who didn’t know him, a fresh girl subject to his wiles wouldn’t understand that this was a game Trev enjoyed winning. It wasn’t about feelings for him, but conquest. He liked knowing he had an irresistible lure, one he enjoyed employing when my back was turned.
“He was still someone’s,” I said. “You knew that.”
“I did. Which is why I backed off. Told him my shift was over and booked it out of there. But he pursued, Emme. He got my number from one of my friends who didn’t know anything about his history—just assumed he was a cute guy trying to get me on a date—and it was relentless. I’m not gonna say I didn’t enjoy it. It’s only…the next thing I knew, we were in bed together.”
Despite the separation, the knowledge that he was an ass, that revelation still stung. “Okay.”
“I like him, Emme. I mean, I really like him. I didn’t do this just to have a great fuck and a good story. I wouldn’t’ve—I would never have done this if I didn’t have true feelings for him. I wasn’t strong enough to say no, despite being fully aware of you in the background, and for that I apologize. And also for…being such a bitch to you when you confronted me on it. I’m the one at fault. Not you.”
I wasn’t clear on how honest she was being, or how suspicious I should be, because this was not how I envisioned this conversation going. Laurie wasn’t saying anything I could sink my teeth into and tear away at, no lashing words or biting comments that could have me rearing forward and knifing into everything she said. She was admitting everything. Worse, she felt guilty about her secret relationship with Trev, and sorry, and these weren’t things I could happily decapitate her for.
“He’s ignoring me now, anyway.” Laurie’s phone fell to her lap and she stared out the window. “You found out and all he wants is to get you back. I told him I loved—” She stopped, swallowed, then continued. “I asked him to stay because it was clear you were done with him, but he has other ideas. Without me. He doesn’t want to be with me anymore.”
“He told you that?”
She whipped toward me, and the black-and-white nightscape behind her highlighted her eyes with a sinister gleam. “You won, Emme. I was no match for you, even despite your confession that you were falling out of love with him. Happy now? You won a guy you don’t even like anymore, while the girl that does love him, the one that actually wants to be with him every night, is left with nothing but a reputation of a home wrecker.”
The evil glitter I thought I’d seen before was actually the beginnings of tears, pooling within the shadows of the darkened interior. “Laurie, I—”
“You think the whole bar isn’t talking? The people that know me, my friends? They’re all on your side. I’m the asshole, the one that shouldn’t have crossed the line. And now I have to live with that. All my life I’ve been nothing but trustworthy, and now my best friend can’t even look at me the same way.”
The beginnings of I’m sorry reached my lips, but I caught them in time.
“You signed up for this,” I said, and barreled forward despite the startled jerk of her chin. “Trev didn’t hide the fact he had a girlfriend, didn’t bamboozle you into thinking you were the only one in his life. You jumped under his sheets with the intention of breaking up a relationship, and whether or not it was on solid ground shouldn’t matter. We were still together.”
Laurie started to say something, but I cut in. “So you are going to suck it up, first by admitting what you did—which you have—and then by getting over a guy who had you tossing away your morals like they were dirty laundry. A guy who had your friends looking at you like you couldn’t be trusted. One who cast you aside the instant his girlfriend wised up. That is not a man you should love. That isn’t a guy you should even like. I made the mistake of committing to him for six years and you better not be stupid enough to do the same. So go to your friends, admit you’re an idiot, then cry on their shoulder. ‘Cause if they’re friends like mine, they’ll forgive you for whatever sins you’ve committed. And any other fuck-ups in the future.” I thought for a moment as the car slowed to a stop at the corner of Norfolk. “Save for sleeping with one of their boyfriends.”
Laurie remained silent as I thanked the driver and propped the door open.
I had one foot out of the car whe
n Laurie asked, “Are you sure you’re drunk?”
“Well,” I said as I heaved out of the vehicle, then bent down so I could see her. “This was one hell of a sobering ride.”
I shut the door on her bewildered expression and hobbled off the curb and onto the sidewalk. Leaning against a brownstone, I took a few long, shaky breaths. It had taken all of my superpowers to say those sentences to her with the level calm of a sober nun.
Now, with the car motoring away behind me and Laurie a blind distance away, I pulled my hair out of my face, purse dangling at my back, and threw up.
Long before my fated car ride with Laurie, I’d been aware of my hypocrisy.
It started around the time I’d walked up to Daya and had to defend myself and my actions with Spence. I’d been innocent with him, believing it when he said they weren’t dating and succumbing to the stomach loops and whirls of a crush. But when Daya sat there in front of me professing her claim over Spence and the gall I had in trying to swipe him away, I thought of Trev. And Laurie. And how deeply betrayed I felt by them despite the fading love. I couldn’t very well sit primly in that car with Laurie, spouting off my be strong, not stupid speech and not think of my current situation and how if I expected Laurie to follow the rules, I better put my ass in gear, too.
After a few minutes with my back against a brick wall by a stack of garbage canisters on one side and a homeless man covered in tarps, quilts and a sleeping bag on the other, I called forth my gumption and strode forward. I rolled my ankle in a sidewalk crack and toppled, a garble of “Godfuckindammit!” leaving my mouth before I found my balance again. The man cackled behind me.
From This Day Forward Page 9