Page 6 of Choose the Bears

Say no and risk Mike getting angry. I couldn’t give a shit if he yelled at me anymore—that part of me well and truly dead—but it was the bullshit that came afterwards. I wouldn’t put it past Mike to try to prevent me from leaving, lurching into the path of my car and waving his arms around, relying on my innate desire not to run a man down to stop me from going anywhere. It was Mike’s unpredictability that attracted me to him once, so it was ironic that same tendency was what ended things.

But not right now.

I’d learned to be patient, hadn’t I? No one was more patient than me, so I could appease him now and then be on my way.

“One drink,” I said firmly, really meaning it, but that’s not what he heard. His grin made clear he was happy he was getting what he wanted. “I’ve got a long drive home…”

He didn’t listen to me. Why would he when he had the shouts of his workmates and friends to hear as we approached? Some of the faces were familiar, some weren’t, but that didn’t matter. They all bayed like huskies that were about to go for a run, their loud voices like nails scraping across a chalk board, all fusing together to form this utterly masculine cry that set my teeth on edge.

Why didn’t I just turn tail and drive away? Why did I keep giving Mike what he wanted? I’m sure most people would struggle to understand it, but I did. He’d made clear in every aspect of our lives just how hopeless it was.

When we got our first apartment together, I’d gloried in the chance to play house, making the rented space our own, right up until he did the same. His mother went to great pains to explain that she’d never allowed him to live like a slob when he was at home, but that meant my pleas for help with the housework were just seen as an extension of his mother’s nagging. So, he treated our apartment as his. His dumping ground, his rubbish bin, his cocoon of crap that he buried himself down in to sleep once he was done partying with his friends.

I’d gone along with it for a while. His friends seemed so much more exciting than mine, the alcohol, the drugs, the sex all promising one long stream of fun. Instead, he had all of those things, and I was forced to adult—because we were evicted from our first apartment. His parents dismissed us when we came knocking at their door for help. And mine? They closed the door, making clear that everything they’d predicted would happenwhen I first started going out with Mike had come true. I needed to get myself out of this situation, and that’s what I intended to do.

“Here ya go!”

Mike pressed a beer into my hand despite the fact I couldn’t stand the stuff. I looked at the green and silver can, seeing the condensation bead on its surface and wondered if he remembered a single thing about me.

It wasn’t always like this, I thought, as I sank down onto a log set up by the fire. When we were still at school, he was sweet, attentive, and funny, but also reckless and completely unbowed by teachers’ authority. When he pushed back against their demands, I imagined myself doing the same. I never dared to, which was perhaps why I took a sip of the beer, suppressing a wince at the bitter taste.

“So, how’s work, Imogen?”

I stiffened when Phil came to sit beside me. Not close enough to alert Mike, but still. What the fuck was he doing near me? Every muscle in my body tensed and I wasn’t sure why. Phil was creepy. Somehow I knew that, even though he’d never done a thing to me. My eyes dropped down, eyeing the space between us before his insistent gaze demanded an answer.

“Good. How’s Mary and the kids?”

He had a wife, a family. I held that fact up in my mind, as if that would form a safe barrier between us. Of course, he had to destroy that.

“Mary?” I heard the scorn in his voice and that made me shrink down smaller. “Wouldn’t fucking know, would I?” Before Mike, I would never have believed someone could drink a mouthful angrily, but its what Phil did right now, his throat almost spasming around the long swallows of beer. “She took off with the kids.”

Don’t look at him, a small voice inside my head screamed.Don’t talk to him. Just shut up and drink the damn beer?—

“Took off…?” The words fell out of my mouth, and Phil’s ugly smile went with it as I watched him drop the mask. Anger, real, hot, immediate anger burned in his eyes and somehow intensified when he stared at me. I wasn’t his wife, I wanted to say, nor his child.

“Up and left in the night, the fucking bitch, taking my kids with her. No idea where the fuck she went.” Asking that question was like lancing a boil, all this poisonous goo oozing out of him as he spoke. “Blocked my number. Can’t trace her on my phone.” He held up the device, like tracking your family was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. “Just fucking gone without even a note to say where she went. Fucking bitch.”

He’d already said that last bit, I wanted to say, but thankfully my mouth remained closed.

“But you wouldn’t pull something like that, would you, Imogen?”

Did he know? My rational mind and terrified heart got into a furious argument inside me. There was no way he could. I’d left no sign, nothing to alert Mike, let alone Phil, as to what I intended. I just stared, and the longer the silence stretched out, the uglier his expression got, until I was forced to my feet. Running was not the right thing to do—I knew that, but I moved anyway.

“Mike.” My ex continued to chortle along to what the guy next to him was saying. “Mike!”

“What?”

Had he ever loved me? I’m sure he’d bemoan me leaving him, just like Phil did Mary to his mates, but in Mike’s heart, I’m not sure he actually cared. Not having someone to mother him, he’d miss that, but that was about it. Because right now, he gazed up at me with all the interest one might a fly or mosquito. I wasannoying and he just wanted me to go away so he could enjoy himself.

I was happy to oblige.

“I’m going.” I kept my voice deliberately calm and even. “I’ll be back on Sunday?—”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

For someone who pressed upon me that I needed to stay for one drink, he certainly didn’t care that I was leaving now. Instead, he gave me his blessing with a wave of his hand, and I took it, turning on my heel and striding off to my car. Every step took me closer to freedom. If I got behind that wheel, I’d tear out of here and drive twice as long if that’s what it took to get me home. To my real home, my new apartment in a shitty block in a not-so-great part of town, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be away from here, from Mike, from Phil…

As if summoned, I heard my name called out, and when I turned around, therehewas.

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