Before I can skulk out of the building and lick my wounds in peace, my friend Kayla intercepts me and pulls me toward her. “Hey! Did you get my text?”
I look down at my phone and realize I’ve had it turned off for the past hour. Being unreachable is another cardinal sin in for a reporter. I’m sinking deeper into a hole. “Ah, no, I haven’t checked my phone.” I power it back on, hoping there’s no urgent news-related message I’ve missed. Other than Kayla’s texts, I don’t seem to have missed much.
“I wanted to see if you were free. So, perfect timing. Let’s go get a drink,” Kayla says.
“I can’t,” I tell her. What I mean is, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be around merriment and other humans. I want to take my lumps like a big girl and run home and hide. But that would require a longer explanation than I want to give, and Kayla doesn’t give up easily. It’s what makes her a great lawyer. She’s on the partner track at her firm, and I have no doubt she’ll get there. It also means she’s not letting me out of her clutches tonight without a fight.
We were roommates until six months ago, when she moved in with her boyfriend, Lucas, and I found housing nirvana in my gorgeous but pricey rental unit. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve seen her, even though her law firm is in the same building as the news bureau. In part, that’s because we both work crazy hours, but hers tend to start later and end way later than mine. It’s a rare day when she’s in the same elevator as me.
“Actually, I had a really crappy day. Maybe I could use one drink.”
“Or maybe two. I’m sorry about your day, but I’m secretly happy it works to my advantage.” She puts an arm around my shoulder, and we walk through the building lobby.
I realize I miss her, and maybe it would do me good to spend some time with someone who really knows me. I still feel like the new kid at work, and since there’s a hiring freeze at the paper, it’s unlikely that someone newer will come along anytime soon. For that reason, I mostly come to work, do my job, and leave. Occasionally I’ll run out with Pauline to grab a sandwich if neither one of us is working on deadline, but mostly I save the socializing for the friends I have outside of work. They’re in the same boat as me—associates at law firms, techies at startups—so we work long hours and have a long way to go to prove ourselves. Those are the people who can commiserate when I need to vent about how much Jack works my last nerve.
“Where should we go?” I’m not in the mood to make a decision.
“Let’s make it easy. George’s?”
“Perfect,” I say, and we walk out the front doors of our office building to the bar a couple blocks away. I pull the hair clip out, feeling relief as my hair falls across my shoulders and the ache from having it up all day starts to subside. I always wear it pulled back when I’m working because it’s annoying to have it in my face when I’m typing, but the second I leave the office, I want it down.
“I used to hate when you did that when we lived together, and I have to say, I’m still a little jealous,” Kayla says.
“What did I do?”
“The hair thing. You have the most gorgeous hair and when you take it down, it’s like a shampoo commercial or something. I expect mermaids to fly down and carry you off to frolic with them.”
“I’m pretty sure mermaids don’t fly. But thank you for not hating it anymore.” I inherited my wavy auburn hair from my mom, and she didn’t start to go grey until her early fifties, so I’m hoping I’ll get lucky that way too.
It feels good to be outside, even if I’ve already missed all the daylight. Being in a high-rise all day with recycled air sometimes makes me feel like a rodent in a lab experiment.
The evening commuter traffic is fierce, horns honking and cars clogging the intersections to create gridlock that leads to more horn honking. One more reason to be glad I’m out with Kayla and not boxed in on the road, frustrated and delayed from weeping into my double fudge ice cream at home.
I can hear a flurry of voices as we get closer to George's, which has a patio crammed with people sitting around reclaimed wood high tables and backless barstools. I’m shocked by how many people are out on a Monday night. Then it occurs to me that I don’t ever go out, so I’m probably not a good judge of what normal people are doing on a Monday night.
We push inside, where it’s a little less chaotic and find a table flanked by low leather club chairs and sink into them gratefully. I look around the room, seeing mostly people our age dressed in everything from suits to jeans and T-shirts. There’s no way to discern who might be a lawyer, agent, actor or anything else based on what they’re wearing, and the scene feels celebratory but a little desperate, like everyone’s trying hard to have a good time but secretly hoping they won’t have to go home alone. It gives me comfort to know that I’ll be going home alone to the duplex I probably love more than the prospect of hooking up.
A tiny votive burns on the table, and I use its light to help me decipher the tiny black writing on the bar menu.
“It might still be happy hour,” Kayla says, checking the time on her phone. “We’ve got fifteen minutes, so let’s order some food too before the prices go up.” Even though Kayla makes better money at her law firm than I do, she loves a good happy hour drink deal.
“Ooh, I could go for the tuna tartare and some fries,” I say, noticing they’re on the list of bar snacks. Even though George’s is near the news bureau, I’ve only been here a couple times and the menu has changed since the last time. “And a tequila and soda. Definitely that.”
Kayla flags down a server, who wears her shoulder-length blonde hair in pigtails I doubt I could pull off and blinks her long eyelash extensions at us while Kayla decides between a flatbread pizza and fried chicken. “You girls might want to put in a second drink order if you want the happy hour prices. I can wait and bring the next round ‘til whenever you’re done.”
“That’s awesome of you,” Kayla says, looking at me for agreement that we should order the second round.
“Why not?”
A few minutes later, I’m squeezing a lime wedge into my tequila and soda and feeling marginally better about my day, mainly because it’s over and I’m hoping for something better tomorrow. “So what happened today? Or would you rather not talk about it?” Kayla asks.
I explain the whole miserable episode, including the part about how Jack was almost human about my mistake before telling me it was my fault for ignoring the company. “I mean, for a minute I actually thought he was being empathetic, but then he went back to his judgy self and let me know, once again, that he doesn’t think I’m up to the job.”
And just as I’m saying this and feeling the heat rise in my cheeks at the embarrassment of the verbal beat down, I glance across the room and see that Jack is standing at the bar, looking directly at me. It’s really loud in there, so I’m almost positive he couldn’t have heard me complaining about him, but from the smirk on his face, I can’t be sure. “Oh crap,” I say, looking away from him and pretending to fix my hair so it might seem like I didn’t actually see him.