Page 19 of Dirty Ink

But you didn’t see the way that Rachel hopped up onto her side of the booth after darting over to the jukebox. How she stepped up onto the table like it was the grand stage at the Bellagio. How she ignored the shouts from our waitress, “Hey, hey, hey!”, ignored the clattering of the cups and plates and jars of hot sauce, how she ignored everyone else in that Denny’s, everyone else on that flashing neon street, everyone else in the whole damn world except for me.

Rachel stood tall above me and gave me a wicked wink before closing her eyes as the music began. She swept her hands down low and then raised them up, up, up. She sang along and danced. She got dirty looks from the other customers and threats from the waitress and catcalls from out on the sidewalk, but she didn’t hear any of it, see any of it. She was dancing. Dancing for me.

She saw only my eyes on her. She saw only my mouth stupidly open. My arms limp at my sides like I no longer had any use for them. My head shaking slowly side to side because I couldn’t believe that I’d found her.

Rachel saw me fall in love. I was sure of it. Sure of it from the way she smiled down at me as she danced. Like she knew. Like she’d always known. She saw my heart open to her. Unfold for her. Break into a million pieces for her.

Rachel danced up there on that table and I sat below her on that red vinyl booth and she saw me imagine our lives together. Our future together. She wiggled her hips and she saw me imagining the words I’d say to her when I proposed. She shouted the lyrics at the top of her lungs and she saw me imagining the dress she’d wear as she walked down the aisle toward me. She kicked her long, tanned legs, one and then the other, and she saw me imagining the children we’d have together. The colour of their eyes. The shape of their tiny lips. The texture of their delicate curls.

I was drunk and she was drunk and it was obvious to everyone around us. They would have called us fools. Idiots. They would have said what we had couldn’t possibly be real. Be true. They would say this is what annulments are for: people who rush in when they have no business at all rushing in. People who can’t see past the alcohol. People who are just pretending for a night or two.

But they didn’t see Rachel looking down at them as she danced her burlesque dance on the table. They didn’t see me looking at her as I watched, transfixed, hypnotised, struck dumb by dumb, dumb love.

They didn’t know. They didn’t know like we knew.

The song ended and the manager told us the police were on their way. A few customers gave a few confused claps, but I just smiled and stared at Rachel. She swept into a low bow. Her face was there just above mine. Her lips sticky with maple syrup. Her cheeks bright. Her eyes catching the neon lights from outside.

“Well?” she asked. “What did you think?”

I was silent for a moment, the chaos of the restaurant and the busy strip outside disappearing for a moment as I stared into her eyes and she stared into mine. At first I think she meant the question simply. What did I think of her dance? But the longer our eyes remained locked on one another, it became more and more clear that the question was growing.

Her in her sweet little curtsey up on the table. Me at the edge of the booth with my heart leaping up toward her. The question hung between us. Her eyes searched mine and mine hers.

“Well,” I said at last because the question had become everything, a gap between us that I wanted to cross. “I think I love you.”

Rachel’s sharp inhale was the last thing that was in silence. I grabbed her round the waist and pulled her into my lap. She yelped gleefully and all the noise came crashing back in. The waitress’s bellowing. The manager’s angry threats. The customers all laughing or cheering or returning to their own drunken late-night antics. The cars out on the street, the pedestrians stumbling down the sidewalk, the music pounding from nightclubs. The rattle of the dishes as Rachel’s foot caught the side of one of the coffee cups and sent it crashing.

There was noise and life and Rachel in my arms, smiling up at me. Laughing wildly. Kicking her feet and draping her arms around my neck and pulling me into a kiss.

The coffee spilled and dripped off the table onto the floor, but I didn’t care.

Because I was in love. I was sure that I always would be. Then and forever.

Rachel

Now…

Coffee sloshed over the edge of the cup. The waitress who set them down hadn’t exactly been the pinnacle of fine service. She hadn’t tried to hide at all that she was pissed about having to work the late shift again at the BoBos Burgers (a funny name for a burger joint until you were told Bo was Gaelic for cow), a Dublin institution on Wexford St that stayed open late. The waitress’s loud sigh was meant to be heard. Meant to be interpreted exactly as: fuck you. Fuck your drunken selves. If you fuck with me and my peace and my magazines, I will fuck. you. up.

As she walked away, I eyed her warily as I slumped in the booth across from Mason. Arms crossed petulantly across my chest. Toes tapping on the sticky floors beneath the table.

“A wonderful country,” I grumbled. “Really just a lovely place. With lovely people.”

Mason and I had been talking (and drinking) all day long. It was now dark. Probably somewhere around midnight. My phone was long dead. My vision long past being capable of focusing on the little clock on the wall across the diner. My sense of time and place so fucked up that I guessed it was midnight, midnight later that night, but it could very well have been midnight ten years in the future. Or ten years in the past.

I’m not sure Mason and I had really gotten anywhere in our long, antagonistic discussions except for wasted. Very wasted. My head buzzed. Bitter laughter came easily to my lips like bubbles to the top of a glass of champagne.

“Tell me something,” Mason said, dragging his finger through the spilled coffee.

I’d told him everything already. Everything that he needed to know at least. We were married. I didn’t want to be married. He needed to put his signature here, here and here. What else was there to know?

To know why electricity still snapped between us so we were forced to avoid each other’s eyes most of the night?

To know why every glance at him brought me back to Vegas? To his hands all over my body? To the way he made me feel? Alive. Free. Me.

To know why after all this time we had been thrown back together after we’d been ripped apart? After he ripped us apart?

I don’t think either of us wanted to know any of that. I don’t think it was smart, asking those questions. I don’t think it was safe, looking each other straight in the face and answering those questions.

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