Chapter 12: Drinking and Dancing

When we got to the bar, it was three deep. Roxie slipped through the bodies like she had done it a hundred times, and I stayed close, letting her pull me through the throng by holding onto one of my hands. The lights and the volume made everything feel slightly unreal. It had been years since I had been in a place like this and, to be honest, there was nothing this large, this loud, this intense in Iowa. My club experience was limited to the brief time I was with James. A short period before Nick, before the kids, before I had decided careful was safer.

Roxie ordered two drinks and four shots. I started to say I didn’t need the shots. She pushed the first one toward me.

“You do,” she said. “Trust me.”

The first shot burned all the way down. I almost gagged. Roxie did both of hers in quick succession and laughed at the face I made. “Come on. One more. Then we dance.”

I got the second one down. The drink that followed was strong enough that I tasted it through the alcohol still sitting on my tongue. Roxie grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the floor, leaving the drinks on a high table at the edge.

We danced. At first, I was stiff, watching the people around us and calculating how old I looked next to them. I loved to dance, but it had been years since I had experienced anything like this. My recent opportunities had been at wedding receptions, where the dances tended to be more formal, or at the occasional small party.

Once the shots started to work, my shoulders loosened. The music got under my skin. Roxie moved like she didn’t care who was watching. I tried to match her and found that, after a few songs, I was smiling. Really smiling. The knot in my stomach had loosened. I felt good. Light. A little drunk and a lot more alive than I had felt in forever.

Two men appeared in front of us. They were both younger than us, in their mid-to-late twenties. Nothing special. One of them asked if we wanted to dance. Roxie said yes before I could answer. We danced with them through three songs. The man paired with me kept his hands respectful. I kept mine to myself. When the third song ended, Roxie caught my wrist again.

“Bathroom,” she said, loud enough for both men to hear. She pulled me off the floor. I glanced back and thanked the one I had been dancing with. He looked disappointed. Roxie didn’t slow down.

“They were too young, and there are bigger fish,” she said once we were in the hallway. “I didn’t want to get caught and end up spending the whole night with those two.”

“They seemed nice,” I said.

“I’m not interested in nice,” she said.

The words landed harder than I expected. I didn’t ask what she meant.

In the bathroom, I waited for Roxie to finish peeing as she squatted over the toilet, hovering so as not to touch the seat and letting a large stream of urine into the toilet. She wiped and then looked at me naughtily and asked, “Have you ever pissed on someone before?”

My mouth fell open, and I stared at her, unable to form words. She laughed and said, I am just teasing you. Well, sort of.”

I finally was able to make my mouth work, “Um, no, I have never, and that is so gross. What on earth would make you think of something like that?”

Roxie laughed again, “Your expression while I was peeing, you had a look on your face that reminded me of a friend of mine.”