Page 40 of The Man Made of Smoke

“Why do you want to know? Are you worried he might arrest you for drinking with me?”

“I don’t think he can do that.”

“I’m not so sure he wouldn’t try.” She hesitated, then sighed. “He has his good qualities, like I said, or it would never have happened. We were together for six months or so. It was never a long-term thing to me, but I guess he saw it differently, because he started to get a little bit toopossessivefor my liking. Not quite asniceas before. So I called it a day a couple of weeks ago.”

I thought back to my conversation with him yesterday.

“Does he know that?” I said.

She laughed. There was no humor in it.

“He knows I need space,” she said. “I’m engaged in what I choose to describe as a very carefully managedextraction. Sometimes you can just end it and everything’s cool. But with some guys, this is just the safest way of managing things. If you tiptoe out a step at a time, they can tell themselves they never really wanted you and it was their decision all along. Not that I expect you to understand, by the way.”

“I understand a little.”

“Oh really? Psycho ex-wife about to burst in through the door?” She frowned and put her drink down. “Actually, I shouldn’t say that. I apologize in advance if it’s possible that might happen.”

“Don’t worry. I never got married. And my exes are all surprisingly lovely.”

She smiled.

“That doesn’t surprise me. How come things never worked out?”

“Apparently I’m too closed off. I don’t let people in.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me either.”

I smiled in return, but only briefly. It was a joke, maybe, but there wasn’t anything funny about it. It made me think of Laura leaving last year, and the way she’d seemed more frustrated than angry. All my relationships had followed a similar pattern. Women were often intrigued by me at first, and maybe they imagined I’d eventually allow them inside. But even when I wanted to, I never could. The panic kicked in. The shutters came down. I watched people walk away, while a voice in my head told me that I wasdetachedandcalm, and that everything was fine.

My defense mechanisms had served me well in so many ways, but they had also protected me from so much more than I needed them to. They were like old friends who had kept me safe once, but who kept sabotaging me now. I knew I should let go of them, but I didn’t know how. Perhaps a part of me was even scared of doing so.

I shook my head.

“What I meant before,” I said, “is that I’ve worked with men like that in the past. My patients are on a different level, obviously, and I’m notsaying Liam is anywhere near as bad as that. But there’s a scale there in terms of behavior.”

“Any advice you want to offer as a professional?”

“I’m sure that you know what you’re doing.”

She looked at me for a moment, on the verge of saying something else, but then Fiona at the karaoke machine shouted over.

“Sarah—you’re up.”

“On my way.” She looked back at me. “Hey, you want to duet?”

“Maybe later.” The idea of standing up there in front of everyone—exposed like that—filled me with horror. “By which I mean, several drinks later.”

I watched her bound over, and then listened as she belted out a note-perfect rendition of “Rolling in the Deep.” There were so few people in that she might as well have been singing alone in her kitchen, and yet she was totally in her element, the microphone held loosely in her hand, lights flickering on the disco ball rotating above her.

A star on a small stage, perhaps, but a star nonetheless.

After the song finished, she stopped by the bar and brought us both a drink back. We talked more casually then, and before I knew it, it was my round. Then we chatted some more.

She sang another song. Bought more drinks.

For me, the alcohol and conversation helped to loosen the tension of the day, and the bar began to feel like some kind of warm cocoon into which the nagging questions my father had left me with couldn’t reach. But I could still feel them there, waiting for me back home, and I knew I couldn’t avoid them forever. And I could also tell that Sarah was getting very drunk.

“How are you getting home?” I said.

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