Page 16 of Contention

Snatching her tote away from him, she leans in to grit out, “Don’t fucking talk to me again. Don’t look at me. We can go back to pretending you’re not the type to prey on a girl and that my skin doesn’t crawl at the very sight of you.”

With that, Kara leaves him standing there in the women’s restroom, leaving him to turn the running sink water off.

When she swings by the bar on her way out, she asks for the bill, but the bartender waves her off. “He already paid for all of it,” he says with a questioning glance.

Kara feels her cheeks heat. “Of course, he did,” she says, feeling like she has knives in her throat.

Then, she leaves.

Night has fallen over the city by the time the cab drops Kara off in her neighborhood. On shaky legs, she gladly exits the quiet car, eager to get home to try and get herself back under control. She feels like she’s spiraling, like suddenly she’s lost control of something and Kara doesn’t. like. feeling. that. way.

Cool. Calm. Collected. Perfect. Everything she should exude, the costume she wears. It’s fraying at the edges and she forces herself in to inhale slowly, deeply. Trying to keep herself in place. No matter what she does, her thoughts crawl back to him, that night, wishing she could evaporate her blurred memories and make them clear and crisp.

So, he split her lip. He wasrough. She’s engagedwillinglyin worse things. Kara tries to rationalize it away, but her mind just won’t stop spinning.

He thought she’d been a whore, okay,offensive. Not like he’s much better, clearly.

Her mouth is dry. Kara isn’t sure what angers her more; that it happened or that she wasn’t aware enough to participate and claw his face open, dig her fingernails so deep into his thighs that he’d think twice before doing something so screwed up again.

She’s thirsty and not for water. She wants to be numb.

There’s a liquor store around the corner and she finds her feet moving towards it, heels clicking on the sidewalk. It isn’t a nice place, not exactly. She probably looks like a closet degenerate in her tight skirt and nice blouse, salivating for a drink. Kara pauses outside, staring up at the neon lights in the darkness. They bathe her face in a strange red as she stares at the words. OPEN. It’s like the holy grail. But, not.

You shouldn’t.

But, you deserve this, don’t you?

How will you sleep tonight if you don’t? You threw all your pills away.

You haven’t done this in years. You’re stronger than this.

With an angry snarl shaping her lips, Kara walks into the liquor store and grabs the first vodka her hand touches. She doesn’t care so much about quality or brand; she isn’t here for the taste. She’s here for asolution.

Girl, your solutions are bad news.

The cashier gives Kara a pitying look, eyes hovering about her lips. No doubt her makeup washed away with the alcohol from the bar, leaving her split lip no longer disguised. The girl probably thinks Kara is an abused housewife.

Oh, yeah. Kara knows all about those.

As she walks home from the store, her shoulders are tight, as if she feels like someone might be shadowing her steps. Whenever she turns around, she’s alone.This is ridiculous.

With shaky fingers, Kara throws herself inside her apartment, eyes wild. It isn’t until she sits down on her couch that she realizes that the bottle is the brand that always sat on the wet bar in her childhood home. Another charming reminder of her father, how he’s always a phone call away.

A reminder that her motherisn’t.

Drinking from the bottle isn’t classy in any social construct, but Kara does it anyway, hating herself the whole way through. She drinks and drinks more, trying to drown out the awful, filthy thing that is her human body. Her skin no longer feels like her own, as if something has happened to it while she wasn’t looking. It’s wrong, it’s absolutely wrong and she has no idea how she’s blocked it out until now.

Then, an hour or so in, her stomach rebels and she’s hovering over the toilet, feeling her esophagus burn as most of the clear liquid comes back up. Faintly, she realizes she never ate dinner and that she’s made a large mistake that she’s going to pay for in the morning.

In the end, the bottle of vodka gives Kara the result that she was chasing. Sleep. A mind silent and drowsy enough that she sinks into bed and passes out, alarm set.

That night, when she dreams, it isn’t about the man that took advantage of her in his fancy stretch limo, while other men probably watched. Or the hookers that had probably looked on with vacant eyes. Oh, no. This night she finds herself back in the past, dreaming of home.

“There’s something wrong with him, you know.” Her mother sits there dabbing a bleeding lip, sitting there with her wild auburn hair and bitter eyes. The sun is setting and she’s sitting on their front porch, staring at the dying horizon. Sitting on their swing, her feet bare.

It’s a visual that’s haunted Kara for some time.

The image in her mind flickers and changes to something more pleasant, an emotion of elation and warmth. A memory of her father, one of the better ones.

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