Ten Below Zero

by Whitney Barbetti

  I took a leisurely sip of my own drink and then carefully placed it on the napkin, smoothing the corners, before picking up my phone. “Excuse me,” I said, turning my body away from his.

  Everett: Are you still coming?

  I felt Everett’s eyes on me, so I replied quickly, uncomfortable with such singular attention.

  Me: I’m here. Hi.

  It was all I could come up with.

  I turned back around and set my phone on the bar; picking up another lime slice just as his phone dinged and my text filled his screen.

  Everett looked at it and looked at me. “You’re not Sarah, though?”

  “Nope.” This time, I did squirm in my seat. I hadn’t exactly thought this part out.

  “Was your name ever Sarah?”

  I raised an eyebrow at that. “No.” What kind of question was that?

  “I’m…” he started, running a hand through the mop of hair on his head. “Confused. Yes, confused. I was expecting a Sarah.”

  “Well,” I said, taking a delicate sip of my drink. “You got a Parker instead.”

  “Is this a joke? Jacob told me he was giving me Sarah’s number.”

  “Who’s Jacob?” I asked, nonchalantly.

  For the first time, a flash of white stretched his lips. “You’re not Jacob’s friend, are you?”

  I took another sip of my drink and placed it on the napkin. “Probably not.” I don’t have friends, I added to myself.

  “Did I text a wrong number?” he asked, leaning back to get a better look at me.

  “If you were expecting a Sarah, who is Jacob’s friend, when you sent that text, then yes, my number was the wrong number.” It was said with a slight bite of sarcasm, but I controlled my features, maintaining the aloofness I was projecting.

  “Well, why didn’t you say something when I said, ‘This is Jacob’s friend, Everett’ in my first text?”

  I shrugged and swallowed another lime. “I figured you thought your friend Jacob was kind of a big deal and that I should be expected to know him.” It was a lie, but it sounded funny.

  Everett took a sip of his drink. The moment right after he swallowed he laughed, a short sound. “And you decided to come along? To meet me? I could have been a crazy serial killer for all you knew.”

  I visibly trembled. My hand nearly dropped the lime peel I pulled from the lips and my throat closed up, causing the fruit I was swallowing to nearly come back up. I knew my alarm was at what he said, not fear that he was what he suggested he could be. Serial killers didn’t dress all in black and drink whiskey in bluesy bars. They lurked around corners, in the dark, preying upon those unaware of their presence.

  I knew my reaction to his off-hand remark had registered with Everett because he seemed uncomfortable. I tried to break the tension.

  “I was bored,” I blurted out.

  “Come again?”

  I took a sip of my drink; let the gin cool the nerves that had flared up, before I swallowed. “I came along because I was bored.” I set the drink down and turned towards him, sizing him up. “And my status has not changed.”

  I watched as Everett let that sink in. It was a bitchy thing to say. But I was socially awkward, stilted from my self-imposed loneliness. Words could bite. When I spoke to strangers, I wanted my words to have fangs.

  He took a sip of his whiskey, his eyes guarded. I couldn’t read him as easily as some other people and that frustrated me. We sat there at the end of the bar, our eyes locked on each other as we contemplated what to say.

  He set his glass down on the bar and rubbed his thumb over his upper lip. His gaze never wavered, never slipped from mine. My mind flooded with thoughts; I couldn’t quiet a single one of them.

  “Why did you really come?” he asked, his voice just barely above a whisper. Something about the way he said it made my leg want to bounce up and down. I decided I wanted him to say it again.

  “What did you say?” I asked, leaning closer. The space between us became nonexistent a second later, when he wrapped his hand on the back of my chair and leaned in closer, close enough to brush his lips against my ear. I felt an uncontrollable need to cross my legs. My breathing became shallow, my heart rate picked up and I couldn’t help the flood of desire that overtook my body.

  “I said,” he started, his breath warm from the whiskey, “why did you really come?”

  I felt trapped. He had completely enclosed me and his voice…why was I squirming? Without a second thought, I stood up, grabbed my clutch and phone and took off out the door.

  I ran down the sidewalk, my heels catching in the impressions of the worn concrete. I fell a handful of times as I ran blindly towards my apartment, ignoring the cat calls and stepping into the street to avoid plowing into groups of smokers gathered along the sidewalk under the street lamps. Smoke wafted in my face and I remembered a piece of the memory I suppressed. Smoke was a comforting smell to me, but every time I smelled it I was brought back to my body lying on the asphalt, a voice urging me to wake up.

  They said that scent was the strongest sense related to memory and I believed it. It dredged up memories that I tried to ignore.

  As soon as I stepped into the apartment and slammed the door, I vomited into the kitchen sink.

  Around 1:00 a.m., I was lying in the center of my bed, on top of the covers, still wearing Jasmine’s dress. I had vomit in my hair and on my face and I didn’t care. My mind was still processing what had happened.

  My phone buzzed on the nightstand. Jasmine and Carly were probably ready for me to pick them up.

  Instead, I was greeted with a text from someone else. It was a photo of my Visa and a short message.

  Everett: Want this back?

  I felt something finally. It was the annoyance I was so familiar with. But why did he have my credit card?

  Me: That’s stealing.

  Everett: Nope. I paid for your drink and fourteen limes and the bartender asked if I was your boyfriend and I told him yes.

  Me: That’s lying.

  Everett: Yep.

  The annoyance within me flared to a burn. And yet, something about this amused me.

  Me: I did not have fourteen limes.

  Everett: Well, that’s how many I was charged for. And I didn’t lie about that part.

  Me: Oh, and you are not my boyfriend.

  Everett: Thanks for clarifying. You’ve still not answered my question.

  Me: No, I don’t want it back. Please, buy yourself something pretty at Tiffany’s. On me.

  Everett: Wow, ten minutes of conversation and you can read me like a book.

  Me: I don’t think it was ten minutes of conversation.

  Everett: Are you always this contrary?

  Me: I’m not contrary.

  I settled back into my bed. The side of my lip twitched again. It was the oddest sensation.

  Everett: Do you always run like a bat out of hell from bars?

  Me: I always run from strange men.

  Everett: Meet me for breakfast tomorrow. You can repay me for the fourteen limes with a greasy breakfast fit for a hangover. Wear tennis shoes, so you can run away with more grace this time.

  Me: I’ll wear heels.

  Everett: Of course you will. Schmidt’s. 9 a.m.

  Me: Fine.

  My reply was reluctant. Did I really want to have breakfast with him? I weighed the pros and cons and decided I would. More out of curiosity than anything else. He couldn’t be as scary in daylight. He’d stand out, in black. Like a cartoon character.

  Another text came through.

  Jasmine: Can you come pick us up?

  She’d included an address. My annoyance flared up again. I suddenly remembered I was wearing her dress. I wasn’t going to change.

  I showed up to the unsuspecting house fifteen minutes later. I’d thrown my puke speckled hair into a bun and had washed my face and brushed my teeth before leaving the apartment. Jasmine and Carly were sitting on the curb, in the dark. Carly was alternat
ing between barfing in the street and hiccupping. I assumed the latter was causing the former. I sighed and opened the door to the backseat, pulling a grocery bag from the floor and hastily handing it to Carly. Jasmine was more sober than usual and eyed me carefully after we’d settled Carly into the seat.

  “Is that my dress?” she asked, accusation thick in her voice.

  “It is,” I confirmed, belting Carly in. I stood back onto the curb and looked at Jasmine with challenge, willing her to say something, anything. She squinted at me in the dark, as if she couldn’t figure me out.

  In the end, she shrugged. “You can have it.”

  “Good,” I answered. “Because I’m pretty sure there’s puke on it.”

  The alarm clock blared at 8:30 a.m. but I was already awake. After returning from picking up Carly and Jasmine earlier, I’d fallen into the shower and numbly scrubbed off the puke. It was how I dealt with situations that brought up unwelcome memories. I turned my mind off. A therapist had told me it was common for those who had been through traumatic experiences to block the memories, to make themselves numb to avoid feeling.

  The problem was, I didn’t have to make myself numb. I just was. My brain swam in Novocain. I walked through life, straying from potentially dangerous situations. If I was even the slightest uncomfortable, there was no question of fight or flight. I’d always fly. I didn’t care, I didn’t let myself soak up anything. I relished the numbness.

  I was emotionally bankrupt. That’s what a therapist had told me, when I told her how little I felt. Emotions were always vague, fleeting little things. I felt them in small spurts, similar to how one might feel a drop of water hit their skin and wonder if it would start raining. Except for me, it never rained.

  So why did I agree to join Everett for breakfast? I wasn’t sure. Not even in the slightest.

  I walked into the bathroom and turned on the light, squinting a bit as the fluorescents chased away the dark. I’d slept poorly, though that wasn’t unusual. I didn’t care much for sleep. I found no solace, no rest, in sleep.

  I started brushing my teeth when I looked up. My reflection told a story of a pale-skinned girl, with circles under her eyes so dark they looked like bruises. My hair was a frizzy mess from laying on it while wet. With my free hand, I gathered up the hair and left the toothbrush in my mouth to enable my other hand to tie the mess into a bun on top of my head.

  When I departed my room, Carly was in the kitchen making scrambled eggs.

  “Hey,” she said while piling eggs on a plate.

  “You’re up early.” It was my usual greeting. Though I much preferred Carly to Jasmine, I still wouldn’t say we were close in any sense.

  Carly gulped a glass of orange juice, nodding. She was wearing an oversized tee that hung to her thighs. “I feel surprisingly good after last night.” I recalled all the puke and then was reminded that my car was likely a mess. Carly flipped her black hair over her shoulder and looked at me quizzically. “What’s that look for?”

  “My car is a mess.” The mild annoyance crept in. Annoyance and I were quite familiar with each other. Especially when it came to my feelings for puke all over my upholstery.

  Carly’s face fell. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up after breakfast.”

  “I have breakfast plans.” I wasn’t sure why I told her, but it caught her attention. She turned to me with a knowing grin.

  “A date?” she asked, seemingly hopeful.

  I nearly shuddered. “No. Someone did me a favor and I guess I owe him pancakes now.”

  Carly’s grin didn’t fade until I watched her run her eyes down. The smile slid off her face in an instant. “Are you wearing that?” she asked, gesturing with her spatula.

  I looked down at myself. I was wearing stretched out yoga pants and an oversized sweatshirt, my usual attire. I shrugged when my eyes met hers again. “Yeah.”

  Her eyes practically doubled in size. “No,” she emphasized, dropping the spatula on the counter and turning the stove off a second later. “You are not wearing that. And your hair?” she looked at the mess on my head and her face was pained. “Come here,” she insisted, dragging me down the hallway.

  Thirty minutes later, I was walking down the sidewalk towards the pancake restaurant. Carly had forced me into a summery, coral and navy colored dress and navy heels. She’d made my bun look less like a nest and had even swiped some makeup on my face, hiding my dark circles. I felt out of place, which fit the situation, as I wasn’t sure what to expect.

  My hands started tingling when I made out the sign on the side of the building, trying not to focus too hard on the people milling about on the sidewalk, the few that stopped to give me a second glance.

  I was finally feeling more than annoyance: I was feeling longing. For my stretched out yoga pants.

  I’d told myself on the walk to the restaurant that something was off the night before, the night we met. There were millions of other men in California. What was so special about him? It was the liquor or the spontaneity that messed with my brain. I didn’t feel things. Lust didn’t grip me like a vise, twisting me inside out with desire. That was irrational. That was not me.

  My eyes tracked the man in black on the sidewalk. I couldn’t explain how I knew it was him, but I did. And then he turned.

  My eyes betrayed me the moment they met his. They refused to break contact and a moment later, my equally traitorous heart stuttered in my chest. He was walking across my path, head turned in my direction while I stood, a statue on the sidewalk. I vaguely registered the jostling by other pedestrians, rushing to their destinations.

  He stopped his path and angled his body to face mine, his eyes pinning me in place. The entire world kept moving around me but I was seconds away from my heels forming roots into the concrete.

  He walked towards me, confident in his stride. My heart stirred in my chest and I knew, without hesitation, that this man would destroy me. The thought made me breathless. With fear and expectation. More prevalent than those, however, was desire. What was happening to me?

  When he reached me, my breath came back loudly, as if I’d been startled. He cocked his head to the side, looking me up and down. “Going somewhere?” he whispered.

  The foot traffic jostled us a bit, so he reached a hand out to steady me, his hand touching the bare skin of my arm. The touch sent a little shock and I glanced down, disorientated. I noticed his shoes then. My mind blanked.

  “They say the first thing you notice about someone is their shoes, but that can’t be true because I just barely noticed yours.” The thought flew from my mouth without provocation. I looked up at him, a little embarrassed. A smile curled one side of his lips and his eyes crinkled. He still looked tired.

  And why did that last thought send me into a land of inappropriate visions?

  “I didn’t notice yours either,” he admitted. He stepped back and looked down. “Hmm,” he murmured.

  I blinked rapidly. Were we really talking about our shoes? “What?”

  “You did exactly what you said you’d do.”

  It took a moment for it to click. “I couldn’t find my running shoes,” I answered.

  “Hopefully you won’t need them this time,” he said, pulling gently on my arm to lead me to the restaurant.

  “Where’s my card?” I blurted out.

  Everett looked at me as if I’d wounded him. “Breakfast first,” he insisted, his head angled to me, his hair in his eyes.

  I’m not sure what it was about my face that made him laugh at that moment, but he did, and the sound reached into my belly and teased the desire that lay there in wait, like a snake waiting to strike. How was it possible that he looked the same in the daylight, with the morning sun lighting up his features, drawing more attention to the lines around his eyes and mouth? And why couldn’t I stop looking?

  “I’m not hungry,” I said as he led us to a booth in the back. I kept my eyes averted from the other patrons as some of them looked at us. What did
they see when they looked at me? Were they admiring the dress or fixated on my scars? I hadn’t bothered hiding them this morning.

  And on that thought, I looked to Everett as he gestured with his hand for me to have a seat in the booth. Why hadn’t he mentioned anything, asked about my scars?

  He took the seat across from me and asked the waitress for a coffee before looking at me.

  “Water,” I answered.

  After the waitress walked away, Everett broke eye contact to open up his laminated menu, perusing the available options. He didn’t say anything as his eyes glided across the menu. He made little hums here and there, and nodded as if in deep thought about waffles and sausage links.

  He lifted his eyes to mine. “What are you going to have?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’ll have something.” His eyes didn’t waver. I squirmed a little and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “No.”

  His eyes narrowed, but not in anger. More like in contemplation. The waitress returned with our drinks while we were engaged in an unannounced staring contest.

  She wrote down Everett’s order before turning to me. Before I could open my mouth to answer, Everett interrupted me. “Key lime pie. And if you have extra limes, could you toss those on her plate, too?”

  “Sure thing,” the waitress cooed before sauntering away. I watched her departure with fake interest, trying to avoid looking at Everett. His gaze on my face made my skin itch.

  “I said I wasn’t hungry,” I finally said, smoothing out the skirt of my dress.

  Everett picked up his cell phone, black like his clothing, and glided his fingers across the screen with one hand while he poured creamer only into in coffee.

  “That’s very rude, you know,” I said, my eyes tracking his hands, the way he poured the creamer to the very top without overfilling.

  His eyes shot to mine in an instant, one black chunk of hair hanging over his forehead in front of his left eye. “I never claimed to be anything else.” A repeat of his line the night before.