A girl can dream, right?
“So, Elizabeth . . . what are you doing sitting here by yourself?” he asks with a devilish smile. “Boyfriend dump you?”
My cheeks go immediately red, words of protest spilling from my lips. “Yes,” I sputter, “but not tonight. He had the courtesy to dump me two whole weeks ago just to make sure I’d be appropriately miserable on the biggest holiday of the year. He’s super considerate like that.”
“Yeah,” he laughs, uncapping the flask and raising it to his lips again, “he sounds like a real charmer.”
He holds the flask out to me and I take it. When our fingers brush, I feel a shock of heat that shoots straight between my thighs.
Damn, this is good whiskey.
“What about you?” I ask, running the pads of my fingers over a series of engraved letters on the side of the flask that I can’t quite make out in the darkness of the bar. “Slumming it?” I ask. “Was the eighteen-year-old model-slash-DJ you’re probably fucking busy tonight? Or did she dump you too?”
“Isabel,” he says, the smile fading from his face as he looks away from me and in profile his face is so classically handsome that it should be minted on a fucking coin. “And she wasn’t eighteen—she was twenty-two. Otherwise, you’re not far off.”
I would laugh, if he didn’t look so downcast. What the hell: solidarity in rejection. “What’d she do to you?” I ask, handing him back the flask.
“Well, let’s see,” he says, turning it over in his hands so that the silver flashes in the light. “She left me for some Terry Richardson wannabe photographer she met on a shoot in Paris. Is that cliché enough?”
“Pretty much,” I smile.
“Look at these poor assholes,” he says bitterly, pointing out a couple canoodling in a corner, wrapped up in each other so tightly that they’re probably sharing DNA as we speak. I watch as the bottle-blond puts her tongue so far down her boyfriend’s throat that she can probably taste what he had for dinner. “They actually think they’re in love.”
“Let me guess.” I pat him gently on the shoulder. “You think love is just an illusion invented by Hallmark cards and romance novels. Gee, original.”
“And let me guess, you think soulmates are real, and true love is fate, like in all those Meg Ryan movies you love.”
“I hate Meg Ryan,” I lie, not wanting him to be right, and hating that he was all at the same time. “I guess we’ll just agree to disagree.”
I turn away from his cocky grin and look over at the strings of colored lights hanging behind the bar, feeling sorry for myself again.
“Why do they just get to walk all over us?” I ask. “Todd dumps me after I help him achieve his dreams, all the while ignoring my own, and where am I now?”
“Talking to a handsome stranger in a bar?”
“And your Isabel just walks out like it doesn’t even matter,” I continue. Suddenly I’m pissed, the anger bubbling up in my chest. “They don’t see any consequences. Her, and him, and freaking Harmony. They just get to waltz off and be happy without us! I bet they’re all off at some party somewhere. Dancing and drinking and laughing about how much better they are than us. Someone needs to PAY.”
Suddenly, through my drunken haze, I know exactly what I have to do. I stumble down off the stool. “Happy New Year,” I tell Jacob, and head determinedly for the door. The room only spins a teeny-tiny bit, and by the time I make it outside, I’m totally stable again.
Almost. Kind of.
Now where’s a cab when you need one?
I start down the block, ready to flag one down, when somebody grabs my arm. Whoever they are, they’re shit out of luck, courtesy of the best self-defense classes the local YWCA had to offer. I spin around in a fighting stance, my hands already up to block. “I know kung fu!” I yell.
My accoster lurches back. “Whoa there, Bruce Lee.”
“Oh.” I relax. “It’s you.” Jacob is standing there with an amused smirk on his face. “What do you want? I’m going somewhere.”
“Good luck getting anywhere without this.” He holds up my purse, dangling the strap from one finger.
“Shit.” I stop. “I guess I am drunk.”
“Only a little, but hell, it’s New Year’s Eve, right?”
“Right.” I nod. “And that’s why I have to end the year right. Balance the scales of justice.” I turn away again and start looking for a cab. I hear Jacob sigh behind me.
“Do I really want to know?”
“Nope. If the police ask, you never saw a thing.” I spot a flash of yellow and whistle for it. The sound pierces through the street.
“Nice pipes.” Jacob looks amused. “Where’d you learn to do that?”
I shrug. “It’s like Marilyn said, you just put your lips together and blow, baby.”
He arches an eyebrow, and I realize too late how dirty that sounded. “Nice meeting you, Jacob,” I tell him briskly. “Thanks for the drink.”
I open the cab door and tumble inside. “Three sixteen Broad Street,” I tell him, naming Todd’s new address. The address he told me to ship all his stuff to, because god forbid he lift a damn finger for himself. But before the cab can drive away, Jacob gets in too.
“Wait, are you following me?” I look at him, puzzled, as the city lights glide by outside the window.
“I’m asking myself the same question,” Jacob sighs. “But it sounds to me like you’re about to do something really stupid.”
“Hey!” I protest.
“Illegal?” he checks.
I pause. “Maybe. A teeny-tiny little bit? It depends on your definition of legality.”
He nods. “OK, you’re definitely going to need bail money.”
“I’ll have you know, I don’t plan on getting caught,” I inform him, annoyed. “My revenge plan is foolproof.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” I insist. “Well, it will be when I think of one. But I have . . . fifteen whole blocks to do it.”
“By all means.” He sits back. “Be my guest. I’ll be over here, trying to find that lawyer’s number . . .”
I hit him lightly. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Look,” he sighs. “I’m all for your rar-rar-female empowerment hear me roar thing, but revenge? Really? This isn’t the fifth grade.”
I glare at him. “Since when did you become such a pussy?”
“What?” Jacob gapes at me.
“OK, OK, gendered insults are oppressive, or whatever Della keeps telling me,” I correct myself. “When did you get to be such a weak-ass wimp?”
“I’m not,” he growls, clearly pissed.
“So?” I stare. “Aren’t you mad at whatshername, Isabel, for being a two-timing cheating bitch?”
“Yup.”
“And don’t you want to do something about it?”
Jacob grins. “Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘living well is the best revenge’?”
I snort. “Sorry, but you’re drinking alone on New Year’s, it doesn’t seem like you’re living too great to me.”
Jacob flinches. “Low blow.”
“Sorry.” I give him a smile. “I’m in the same boat too, remember? Except I’m not taking it lying down.”
“No?” He gives me another wolfish look. “Which way do you like to take it?”