Page 14 of Don't Go
“I know,” I told him. “I'm leaving too.”
He sat down in the doorway of the kitchen and watched me get ready as a form of protest. I dressed, tied my hair up, and put a pen behind my ear because it was just part of me by now. Then I left the apartment.
Half Past was three blocks from my apartment, which was how I'd picked the apartment—three years ago I'd sat down with a pen and a list and worked out that the only thing I could afford to control about my life was my commute. I walked it. I clocked in. I tied my apron. I took the pen out of my hair, gestured with it, put it back. My hands knew the bar before my brain caught up. The well. The speed rail. The ice. The mixers. The rag I hung over the rim of the trash for spills.
The customer at the corner of the bar was on her third glass of red, and she had been waiting for me to come on shift before she truly began.
“He hasn't responded to my texts,” she said.
“Mmm…”
“Three of them. Three texts. Yesterday.”
“Mm-hmm.” I poured a draft for the guy two stools down. I rang it up. I slid the guy his change. I came back.
“Do you think he's seeing someone else?”
I'd been a bartender for seven years. There is a class of questions I no longer answer in good faith because the asker has already decided. I poured her a fourth glass of red, and I didn't pour it generously.
“What do you think?” I threw the question back at her.
“I think—I think I should text him.”
“I don't think you should do that.”
“Why not?” She was already reaching for her phone. “You literally just?—”
“Leave him.”
Her hand stopped on the phone. “What?”
“Leave him. He's not worth it. You're worth more. You deserve better.”
She gave me the look people get when somebody else has finally said the truth they have been refusing to say to themselves.
“You're right.” Her eyes welled. “You're so right. I don't deserve this, do I?”
“You don't.”
“I'm going to delete his number.”
“Good.”
“Right now.”
“Yes.”
“I'm doing it.” She picked up the phone. She tapped the screen. The phone, in a stunning act of cosmic comedy, beeped in her hand.
She read it. Her whole face went liquid. “He texted me. He wants to see me.”
“Ma'am—”
She was already on her feet. “I have to go. I have to go—sorry. Keep the change.”
She left forty dollars on the bar and a glass three-quarters full. Her coat was hanging half on her shoulder, and the door swung shut behind her.
I stared at the door. I shrugged.
