Chapter 12: Fresh Air

At seven I went to the bar down the street with the rest of the people who had survived the day.

It was loud and cheap and close enough that nobody had to be noble about driving yet. I ate fried food that burned my mouth and ordered a margarita because I was mad and because being mad in a booth with coworkers felt like being a person who had control over their own life. I thought about Mike at home with the girls and a bedtime. I thought about Tyler at whatever desk he used to run my nervous system. I thought, very clearly, that I was really fucking things up in my life. Then I decided to get drunk and forget about men for one night, which is the kind of plan that only works if you are a different person.

I finished the first margarita. I ordered a second. Someone bought a round of tequila shots, and I did not say no. The burn felt good going down. I chased it. I laughed too loud at a story I only half heard. I let the room get warm and sloppy. I was having fun, actual fun, the kind that did not require a photograph after. Ground rules, in a bent way. I had said no to his house. I was here. That had to count for something, right?

Steve showed up in the second hour.

He was one of the doctors from the floor, the good-looking one with the wedding ring he only acknowledged sometimes. Everyone knew what he did with that ring off-shift: nurses, a tech, someone in registration last year, if the rumors were true. He smiled with his whole face and sat too close and said my name like he had been waiting to use it in a darker room.

“Bethany. You made it out. I was starting to think you only existed under fluorescent hospital lights.”

“That is mostly what makes me tick,” I said. “The rest is bad fried food and poor planning.”

He laughed like I had been witty on purpose. His knee bumped mine. I was still wound up from the park, and the bathroom and the word slut, and the attention landed in that leftover heat whether I wanted it to or not. I knew what he was doing. He wanted in my pants. That was the entire plot. I already had one too many lovers, but I still liked it.

I liked feeling desired. I liked feeling wanted by a man who was asking instead of scheduling. I liked being pursued. With Tyler I felt under him, like I was owned.

I felt paused, told to wait. I was given pretty jewelry that sat on me like a decoration he had put me in, and not a gift I had been given. With Steve, I felt like I could lean in or lean back and the night would tilt because I had tilted it. It was cheap. It was obvious. It was mine. I flirted back because I wanted to feel sexy and in control of something, even if the something was a married man with a reputation I would never want attached to my name in daylight. We talked about a case that was not interesting. We talked about the jukebox, which was worse. He asked if I wanted another shot. I said yes because I was trying to forget men, and this was a man, which should have been a clue. Hours went like that. The group thinned and thickened. Amber was not there, Mike had the girls, and Tyler was a silence in my pocket I was refusing to check on purpose. Let him wonder and sit in his house with a plan that did not get a body.