I cross my arms and lean my elbows on the table. “I sense a but.”
She unpeels her lips, takes another drink, and then one more. “Maybe. Sometimes.” Another deep drink. “You know what? Fuck it. Becky, I…I think about him all the time.”
Holy-goodness and oh-my-stars! I feel like throwing my hands up to the heavens and singing sweet, glorious praise.
But I don’t. I control myself, nodding like she just told me something as mundane as tomorrow’s weather forecast.
“We were going to move to Texas.” She divulges this quickly, as if revealing some forbidden secret. “Andy,” she says, stumbling over the name, “was going to move to Texas for me.”
I’ve struck gold. Pure, one hundred percent fucking gold.
“Jesus, Marla,” I say, feigning astonishment. Then, shooting her a look of sympathy, I shrug. “Well, it sounds like your ex-husband was willing to go that extra mile for you, at least.”
We both know what I’m implying here.
“C-can you keep a secret?” Before I can answer, she rushes on. “I…well, sometimes…I really miss him. So much it hurts.”
I feel as if a weight has been lifted from my shoulders; the burdens that have been holding me down, holding me hostage for so many years, have evaporated like *snap* that.
“You still love him.” It’s a statement, not a question, and my stomach does a happy little flip when I see the look on Marla’s face as she grasps this realization.
“I-I don’t know,” she stammers.
Oh, but I do, Marla. I do.
I shove my giddy smile into my drink, so she doesn’t notice.
A silence falls over the table; moody, it lingers in the air like a foul smell. Across from me, Marla stares into her glass, no doubt thinking about a future that never came to pass.
I tuck this gem away in my mental Marla file, then reach across the table. I can’t have her being mopey all night. After all, I still have my needs, and my needs are to forget. Taking her hand, I give her a wink. “Come on, you fucking MILF. Let’s dance.”
She laughs as a blush blooms over her cheeks, across the bridge of her nose. But somehow, with her freckles and shiny eyes, it makes her look even more cute. Even more…innocent. “No. No, I’m not a good dancer. Like, at all…”
But I’ve already pulled her from her seat. As we pass the guys’ table, I give them a look and nod toward the dance floor. Three of them rise immediately, following along behind us like eager little puppies.
Thankfully, on Thursday nights this place revisits the eighties, and classic rock croons from the speakers. This, I can get on board with, and as I move my hips to AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”, Randall’s touch finally begins to evaporate.
Marla stands next to me, looking uncomfortable.
“Oh, come on,” I say, moving closer and placing my hands on her hips. “Just sway your body, like this.” She bends her knees and slowly circles her pelvis, looking more like a pre-teen boy at his first dance than a club-hopping woman in her thirties.
She doesn’t seem to be all that coordinated. Her movements are stiff and twitchy, even with the alcohol loosening her limbs. Which is a real shame, because I, for one, know that Hollis loves to dance. Or, well, he used to love to watch me dance, at least. In our bedroom. Naked and on his lap…
It’s not long before we’re surrounded by the guys, and almost immediately one wraps a big hand around Marla’s waist and pulls her from my grasp. She throws me a wild look before he whips her around to face him, and soon after I feel someone come up behind me, place his hands on my hips. I have no idea who it is, but it doesn’t really matter because we’re dancing, only dancing, and tonight I want to forget about everything – Randall and Nicholas and that stupid video – and this guy is going to help me do it. Leaning back against his chest, I reach up and slide my fingers through his hair while he dips his lips to my ear, whispering something I can’t make out and don’t really care to. All I want is to grind against him, feel his hands on me, and prove that Randall hasn’t tarnished me beyond repair. When the dude slips his palms beneath my halter, gliding them across my stomach, I don’t even flinch.
He murmurs something again, but I ignore him, just close my eyes and sway, losing myself to the music, adrift in the delicious sensation of being someone else.
It’s such a good fucking feeling, being someone else.
Unfortunately, I don’t get to bask in this empty-minded bliss for long. Because someone is tugging at my elbow, and when I open my eyes, I see that it’s Marla…with her hand over her mouth.
“Becky? I-I think I’m gonna be sick.”
The morning is thick. It’s all I can do to swim up from the night’s dreams, fragments of images that include Hollis and Ford switching back and forth, first one and then the other, snapping and popping like phantoms. First, it’s Ford in my old apartment, only I’m twenty-two and he’s walking out on me. He’s calling me a liar, and he’s laughing like I’m a joke, laughing like he never really cared about me at all. And the pain of his rejection, the pain of his indifference is so real, so piercing, that I feel like I could die. I want to die. Then, just as I’m crumbling to the floor, a flash of lightening throws me into a new scene, this time with Hollis. We’re on the lake, the wild lake, and it’s storming, dark waves the color of steel splashing over the bow of my kayak. Hollis is ahead of me, his kayak bobbing in and out of sight, his dark head just visible through the rain. He’s paddling away from the shore, heading toward open water, and I call to him, chase him, try to get his attention because we need to get to land, need to get to safety, because with the way this storm is erupting, there’s no possible way we’ll survive if we stay on the water. But he won’t listen, won’t even turn to look at me, as if I’m so insignificant he can’t be bothered. I cry out one last time as a wave crests, swells, flips me over, and something is grabbing my foot from inside the kayak, grabbing with an iron grip, preventing me from escaping. It’s Randall, I know it’s Randall, and even though I can’t see him, I can feel him, his serpent touch slithering up to wrap around my chest, my throat, squeezing the air from my lungs…
The dreams are like a spider’s web, a tangle of nightmares, and with each struggling attempt to wake, I pull a new thread, shake loose a new hell.
When my eyes finally peel open, I have no idea where I am. The mess of dreams has me so discombobulated, so disengaged from reality, that for all I know I could be on another planet. Everything’s a blur, and the slight weight draped over my waist is too light to be Ford’s arm…
Ford.
I’m at Ford’s.
And Marla…Marla is next to me.
Memories from last night flood in, along with a giddiness I can’t place. Something happened last night, something…good. A win, of sorts. A golden nugget of insight that I can take and run with.
Flipping backwards, I rewind the evening, from arriving at Ford’s to the Uber ride that brought us there (Marla and I sang “Unskinny Bop” over and over again, much to the annoyance of our driver), to holding her hair back in the bathroom at the club while she hurled everything she’d consumed that night into the toilet. Then, I think we danced, right? Danced with those guys, the ones who’d been eyeing us all evening…and Marla, uncoordinated…dancing to forget, just like me…