Hobie shrugged. “Least they have each other.”
Eve nodded, distracted by the realization that they were alone now. There was something undeniably porny about the situation—the handsome bartender, the lonely divorcée. She could see the video in her head, shot a little shakily from the man’s point of view, the MILF looking up, licking her lips in anticipation as she undid his belt. It was an image that would have been unthinkable at any other time in her life, but now seemed weirdly plausible. There was literally nothing stopping her. All she had to do was slip behind the bar and kneel down. Hobie gave her a searching look, almost as if he were reading her mind.
“One more?” he asked hopefully. “On the house.”
*
Later that night, after she’d watched her porn and gone to bed, Eve wondered why she hadn’t taken him up on his offer. It was just a drink, a half hour of her time. He was reasonably good-looking and easy to talk to, and it had been a long time since she’d had a fun flirtation, let alone a fling. If she’d been advising a friend, she would have said, Give it a shot, see where it leads, he doesn’t have to be perfect.
It wasn’t so much the sexual fantasy that had thrown her off—that had come and gone in a flash—as it was the nagging sense of familiarity that had snuck up on her over the course of the night, a feeling that Jim Hobie was more of the same, another helping of a meal she’d already had enough of. He wasn’t as obnoxious as Barry from class, or as charmed by himself as Ted had been, but he was in the same basic ballpark. She could go to bed with him, she could even fall in love, but where would it get her? Nowhere she hadn’t been before, that was for sure. She wanted something else—something different—though what that something was remained to be seen. All she really knew was that it was a big world out there, and she’d only been scratching the surface.
*
Amanda was a wreck the next morning, not because of her sexual exertions—Bobby only lasted a couple of minutes—but because it turned out to be one of those nights when sleep wouldn’t come, when there was nothing to do but lie awake in the darkness and watch the bad thoughts float by, an armada of bleak prospects and unhappy memories. It had been close to five by the time she drifted off, and then she was up at seven, nursing a headache that two ibuprofen and three cups of coffee hadn’t managed to eradicate.
“Are you okay?” Eve Fletcher asked when Amanda arrived at her office for their ten o’clock meeting. “You look a little pale.”
“I’m fine,” Amanda insisted, suppressing the usual urge to open up to Eve, to tell her about her rough night, and ask if she had any strategies for dealing with insomnia. “Just cramps.”
Eve gave a sympathetic nod. “I’m almost done with all that. I’m not gonna miss it.”
Amanda would have liked to pursue the subject, to hear Eve’s thoughts about menopause and growing older, but she decided that was out of bounds, too. Eve was her boss, not her friend, no matter how much Amanda wished it were otherwise.
“So you got my email about Garth Heely?”
“I did.” Eve looked upset, but only for a second. “Was it a heart attack?”
“His wife said stroke.”
“You know what? That’s how I want to go.” Eve snapped her fingers. “Quick and painless. In my own bed. That’s one thing you learn, working with old people. You really don’t want to die in a hospital.”
Amanda murmured agreement, trying not to think about her mother. Going fast wasn’t that great, either. She’d been dead for a couple of days before the neighbors even started wondering if she was okay.
“Any ideas for a replacement?” Eve asked. “We need to nail this down sooner rather than later.”
“I’ll email you the short list by the end of the day.”
“Perfect.” Eve nodded briskly. “That it?”
“I think so.”
Amanda rose uncertainly. She felt like she’d forgotten something important, like there was one more thing they needed to discuss, but the only possibilities that occurred to her were Trish’s perky nipples and the puppy-like whimpers Bobby made right before he came, neither of which were appropriate subjects for workplace conversation.
“By the way,” Eve said, “if you still want to get a drink sometime, I’d be totally up for that.”
Julian Fucking Spitzer
When you walk into the dining hall with someone else, you kinda melt into the scenery. Nobody even knows you’re there. Walking in by yourself is a totally different experience. It’s like you’re radioactive, like your skin is giving off this sick greenish glow. You can feel everybody staring.
I have friends, you want to tell them. They’re just busy right now.
Usually I ate my meals with Zack, but he’d slipped out after receiving a booty text at three in the morning and still hadn’t returned, the first time that had ever happened. He wouldn’t tell me who he was hooking up with, but he usually rushed out and came back an hour or two later, tired but happy, like a volunteer fireman who’d done his duty for the town and needed to rest up for a bit. I texted him—dude where r u—but he didn’t respond. I tried Will and Rico, too, but those guys were probably still asleep.
The Higg that morning was an ocean of strangers, so I headed past the crowded tables to the less-populated section in back. It was a reject convention back there. I guess I could have taken a book from my backpack and pretended to study—that’s what the other losers were doing—but it seemed like an asshole move, like, Hey look at me reading a textbook! At least my breakfast was pretty good, though it was common knowledge that the Higg omelettes weren’t made with real eggs—it was some kind of sludgy yellow liquid that came in a can.
One thing you realize when you’re on your own is how happy the people who aren’t alone look. There were a bunch of couples eating together, and most of them were pretty smiley, probably because they’d just woken up and fucked. Other people were laughing with their friends. A professor with crazy-clown hair was lecturing a bearded grad student who kept nodding like his head was on a spring.
There were two groups I couldn’t stop looking at. One of them was a bunch of girls who reminded me of Becca. Super-skinny, straight hair, lots of makeup. They were all wearing short skirts and sneakers, like they were still in middle school and thought it would be fun to coordinate their outfits. They kept erupting in laughter that sounded fake and a little too loud, like they wanted everyone to look at them and wonder what the hot girls thought was so funny.