Page 2 of Love on the Rocks

I didn’t hear her come out of the office. “I guess I’m the one in the way, huh?” She runs out of the bar.

“Bess! Damnit, will you come back and talk to me,” I shout, but she doesn’t turn around.

A man my size chasing down a woman only a few inches over five feet outside of a bar doesn’t usually end well, so I let her run to the car. It’s not like I don’t know where she lives.

“Fuck,” I shout to the sky. I pace in front of the bar, probably scaring away customers, but fuck them, I don’t want to pour drinks right now, and hope she is just driving around the block. After about fifteen minutes I have to accept she isn’t coming back to the bar. Pulling my phone out of my back pocket I call my friend Griffin. “I need your help.”

“Is that why your wife just pulled up outside of the garage crying?” he grumbles into the phone.

“Yes, but it’s not even close to what she thinks.”

He grunts, which is Griffin for agreement or he’ll see for himself. Who knows. Either way, I know he’s coming.

2

Bess

I tug at my skirt,out of habit, as I get out of my car. I don’t really need to though, because this corduroy fabric is so stiff it barely bends, and it’s way longer than the ones I usually wear. It’s also beige and boxy, but it’s what the other moms at Jack’s school wear to pick up and drop-off.

I’m used to people looking at me. Hell, I encourage it. No one steps out into the world looking like they were styled by Lisa Frank without wanting attention. I don’t have daddy issues, and there are no skeletons in my closet. Everyone has a certain amount of trauma by the time they reach their thirties because the world fucking sucks, but I don’t have a super tragic backstory. I just really like being the center of attention.

Man did that blow up in my face. It’s been a month since what I’ve been calling “the incident” in my head. I’ve told no one what happened. Wren has noticed the changes I’ve been making. Donovan, bless him, has been running around the house confused. He’s probably done every chore that needed to be done and then he bought me lots of chocolate. I’m pretty sure he thinks I’ve got the worst case of PMS I’ve ever had.

There I was,rolling up to pick up my son from third grade thinking that I’m the absolute shit. Seriously, could there possibly be a cooler mom than me? My combat-style boots had a bit of a heel, giving my short skirt an edgy vibe. I know I’m thirty-five, but I keep my shit tight, and everything is covered.

Not once did I consider the other parents might look down at me. Truthfully, I don’t typically give two shits what other people think about me period, but then I realized Jack was suffering because of how I carry myself. And that, I do give a shit about.

My phone beeps, and I have to lean against the wall to dig it out of my bag. There’s a giant tree thing, one of those fake potted plants that is probably supposed to be a ficus, which totally hides me.

There’s a text from Wren asking me if I can grab Parker and the twins for her while I’m here to get Jack. While I’m texting her back I overhear some other moms talking about me.

“It’s bad enough his mom dresses like Harley Quinn before her breakdown, but she can’t even be on time to get him from school?” one of the moms whispers, or at least tries to.

“What do you expect? She spends all her time in abar.” The way she stresses the word bar you’d think it was a synonym for brothel.

“Well, so does her husband, and to be fair, they own it. It’s not like they’re drinking all day.” I can kind of see which mom is sticking up for me. She’s the one I’ve been calling “rebel mom” to myself because she didn’t sign up for all of the schoolfundraisers, and she bought baked goods with gluten in them for her kid’s class party.

“That might be, but she needs to grow up for the sake of her son. We wouldn’t let our Paul invite him to his birthday party. He seems like a nice kid, but withheras his role model, you can only imagine what kind of morals that kid has,” the second mom judges me.

Normally I don’t give a shit what people think about me. Especially uptight bitches like them, but this isn’t about me. I’ll fight to the death to preserve my individuality, but not at the expense of my son. I guess this is the moment when I finally have to become an adult.

The next morning, after I dropped Jack off at school, I went straight to one of those bland box stores and walked out looking just like the mannequin in the window. I washed the highlights out of my hair, blue that week, and it’s been my natural baby blonde for the longest time since middle school.

Since that day,I’ve been dressing like a beige square, and bringing work home so I wouldn’t be spending so much time in a bar. It’s stupid because it’s not like they’re watching me to see how much time I’m actually here working in the office, but I don’t want to be an embarrassment to my child.

Donovan rushes to the door to help me bring in my box of shame. Too bad I don’t have more time to ogle him. There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to spend objectifying my husband. The only good thing about bringing work home is watching his biceps strain as he takes the box out of my hands.

I hear him ask, “Bess, why did you bring all these home?”

I’m slow to answer because my imagination is busy thinking of all the wicked things we used to do in the old bar, and all the ways those same muscles used to strain when we did. The look on his face tells me he is not thinking about the same things. I scramble to think of something to tell him because I’m not ready to tell him that I’ve embarrassed our son at school.

“It just felt cramped trying to do all of this here.”

“Sharing the same space you mean. When did you start needing space from me, Bessie?”

He knows I hate when he calls me that, but everything feels so fragile between us. Like everything else I do, doing nothing is the wrong thing. He takes my silence as confirmation that I do want space from him.

“I’ll go work behind the bar. Aaron had an emergency, so I’m waiting for the new girl, Angela, to come take over,” he rambles an explanation and practically runs out of the room.

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