Page 79 of Love at a Funeral and Other Awkward Conversations

I roll my eyes. “I don’t want any fucking artisanal olive oil.”

I pivot around and head back out the door to the girl wishing me a nice day. I don’t even have Marissa’s number to text her. We always connected in person, and for the first time since I moved away, I understand acutely how alone I am.

When I lived here, I had social media, but I also had friends who I didn’t need to meet through a screen. I had honest-to-goodness relationships. When I moved home, I shut down, shut off.

My brother was right.

I didn’t even try.

I was disillusioned and gave up. It was easier that way, to live behind a screen and avoid sharing my failure every time I had to explain my situation to someone new.

After not sleeping last night, I’m completely strung out, and it suddenly hits me. I need to sit down. There’s a place called VINO around the corner, and I take a seat at the bar, ordering a glass of red wine. The bartender talks to me about the vineyard it’s from in California, but I don’t really listen. I can only repeat “uh-huh” over and over as I contemplate the disaster that is my life.

“Are you okay?” he asks mid-Cabernet ramble. “You look…” He frowns, shaking his head like a bobblehead. “Knackered.”

He’s not far off. “I am most certainly not okay.”

“You need a chat?”

I eye him. “Don’t you have other customers to wait on?”

He laughs. I like the way his dark brown skin crinkles in the corners of his eyes. And I really like his English accent. “We just opened, it’s barely noon. The only other people here are the yoga birds in the corner.”

I turn to follow where he gestures. There’s a trio of women, all in overly expensive athleisure wear.

“So,” he says when I face him again. “Let’s have a chat.”

I down the rest of my wine in a few unladylike gulps and begin to describe the whole sad, sordid tale. I tell him how I used to live here, a few blocks away, and that I couldn’t find a job, so I became the NDA’s assistant. I explain how I eventually ran out of money and moved home to my parents’ basement and took a crappy job. I unleash everything about my brother and how my parents are divorcing, and how I hurt the one guy I actually loved.

And I drink three more glasses of wine.

He hands me tissue after tissue.

I’ve eaten almost every appetizer on the food menu and run up quite a tab by the time Cole, handsome English bartender guy, hands me a glass of water and tells me I should sober up and head home.

“I can’t go home,” I say.

“You can always go home.”

Like it’s so easy. He points to the water, and I down it, only to ask, “Can I try a glass of the 2006 Merlot?”

“Absolutely not,” he says sternly but then laughs in spite of himself. I really like his laugh and wonder if he’ll let me stay with him. I open my mouth to ask, but he shakes his head. “I’m cutting you off.”

“Hey.” I sway in my seat. “I thought we had a good thing going here.”

He holds on to my hand. “We do, love, which is why I need to tell you, you’re pissed, go home.”

“Pissed,” I repeat in an English accent, giggling.

I pucker my lips, trying to look cute, but he rejects me with a stiff, “No,” then hands me the receipt to sign. My signature is chicken scratch. Cole takes the thin paper back, watching me as I cross the strap of my purse over my body. “You don’t want to move away from home. That’s why you’re so upset, because you think you have to now. But nobody’s got a perfect life. Go home and get sorted. You’ll be good.”

His advice floats through my brain like a feather and lands somewhere in the back, right at the top of my spine. Where Vince often held me.

I aim two finger guns at him. “It’s been real, mate.”

He nods at me. “Take care.”

I plan on following his instructions and going home, but I make a quick pit stop at a liquor store and buy a small bottle of wine by the checkout. They stick it in a paper bag, and I drink out of it, like a true city caricature.

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