The smile on my face froze, and I shook my head. “Neither.”
“Seriously? You just ended things with a hot, sweet guy who’s going to be a doctor?”
“Yep,” I said, reflexively taking a sip of the pomegranate martini I’d ordered when Heather had asked for her drink. I’d asked for it for appearance’s sake, just to have something to do with my hands, but now, the alcohol warmed my belly and eased the tension in my muscles.
“That’s nuts,” Heather said. “I’d kill for a guy like that.”
“He’s living in Seattle,” I said. “I’ll give you his number. Go for it.” I couldn’t believe the words as they came out of my mouth; they were something I never would have said before.
“Girl, please,” Heather said with a grin. “No way I’m settling for sloppy seconds. If you don’t want him, he can’t be all that great.”
“He is, actually,” I said, swallowing down a bit more of my drink. I’ll just have this one cocktail, I thought. I won’t do any shots. Definitely no tequila. “But I’m not ready to settle down yet. I’m too young. I want to focus on me.”
“I get that,” Heather said. She took a handful of the trail mix the server had set before us when we got there and popped it in her mouth. After she had chewed, she spoke again. “That’s kind of what I told my parents when I said I wasn’t going to college. My dad totally freaked. He had some weird idea in his head that I might follow in his footsteps and become an English professor, too. Which was crazy, because my grades begged to differ with that fantasy.”
“Why didn’t you want to go to college?” I asked, enjoying the there-but-not-there feeling the martini was giving me, especially on an empty stomach. I couldn’t believe I was just sitting here like any other twenty-something girl, having drinks and conversation with a friend. I wondered what hidden, dark circumstances the lives of the people around us might hold. Maybe all of us were walking around, pretending to be normal, when inside, our worlds were falling apart.
“Mostly because I was focused on being a dancer for so long. I thought I’d go to New York and join some prestigious ballet company and make a name for myself. And then my knee gave out and that dream was over, so I started teaching at a private dance school in Berkeley. I love it. It’s all I want to do, and even though I’m totally supporting myself, my parents are all over me to get a degree ‘just in case.’?”
“In case of what?” I asked. “If dance classes are outlawed or something?”
“Exactly!” Heather said. “See, you get it. The studio owner already is grooming me to take over for her when she retires, so I’m saving as much as I can, and working on a business plan to present to the bank so I can get a loan. I researched how to do it on the Internet. I don’t need a degree.”
“No,” I said. “You don’t.” I paused, and allowed myself to eat three peanuts from the bowl of trail mix, just for appearance’s sake, chewing each of them slowly, happy that I didn’t have to fight the urge to throw them back up. Heather and I had been so busy talking, neither of us had mentioned ordering an actual meal, which was fine with me. It would be easier not to.
Just then, our server appeared again, as though my thoughts of food had summoned her. She held a tray with two more drinks in hand.
“We didn’t order those,” I said, looking at Heather and then raising a single eyebrow. “Did we?” I wasn’t drunk, but I felt tipsy enough that I figured I should ask, just to be sure.
“No,” the server said as she set the cocktails in front of us. “They’re courtesy of the gentlemen sitting at the end of the bar.” She nodded in that general direction, and the men sitting there lifted their pints of beer and smiled. They were older, in their mid-to late thirties, probably—suit-and-tie types who were likely married and looked like the sort to hit on younger women for sport.
“Awesome,” Heather said, quickly finishing her first drink so the server could take the empty away. “Can I get the fish tacos, too, please?” The server made a note on the pad she carried and then asked me if I wanted something to eat, too.
“No, thanks,” I said, and so she left, heading toward the kitchen. “I don’t know if we should accept those,” I went on, looking at Heather. It felt wrong, somehow, letting these strange men pay for our drinks, like we were giving them the right to the possibility of more than that.
“It’s just drinks,” Heather said, lifting the second cocktail up and smiling at the men, too. “It doesn’t mean anything else.”
I nodded, but I didn’t know how to tell her how wrong she was. That it’s possible for a man to interpret a woman’s initial permission as license to steamroll over any boundary she might set after that. That once a woman says yes, it’s possible a man might not give a shit when she changes her mind. He might tear off her clothes; he might bruise her body and send splinters of blistering fear into her soul. He might do this even if he’s someone she knows, someone she loves and trusts. And then she might end up in a bar with a fake smile plastered on her face, trying to act like none of it mattered, trying to believe, despite the agony deep down inside her bones, that she’s over what he did, desperate to pretend she’s safe.
Tyler
If I’d had a choice in the matter, I wouldn’t have gone to work after Tom punched me. The last thing I felt like doing was showing up for my shift, but sitting around in my apartment, staring at the walls while I replayed the events at the party over and over again in my head, wouldn’t do me any good. I told myself that the distraction of work would help, that keeping busy was the best thing for me.
And so, after having rested on my mother’s couch for a few hours with an ice pack on my face, I showed up at the station house with a burgeoning black-and-blue right eye. “Whoa,” Captain Duncan said when I walked into the locker room. “I’d hate to see the other guy.”
“Got into a brawl with a weight machine at the gym,” I lied, forcing a smile. “It sprang loose and knocked me in the face.”
My captain nodded, and looked as though he believed me. I couldn’t imagine telling him what really happened. Mason, however, was a different story. I knew there was no way I could keep the truth from him—that after Tom had hit me, I’d lain on the grass for less than a minute, only briefly unconscious, dazed by my skull bouncing on the hard ground when I fell backward off the steps. I came to quickly, only to find my mother kneeling next to me, threatening to call the police.
“No, Mom. Don’t,” I said, feeling a bit dizzy as I sat up. My eye ached, and I touched it carefully, feeling around the socket to make sure I wasn’t bleeding and that no bones had shattered. It hurt, but everything seemed intact. Tom just punched me. I couldn’t believe it. Even my own father, with all his flaws, had never been physically violent with me.