Resist (Songs of Submission #6)(11)

Chapter 10.

The Stock was busy. Super busy. Wall-of-drunk busy. Ass-pinched-turn-around-and-I-can’t-tell-who-did-it busy, especially considering rain threatened on the horizon. I put on a happy face, but my preoccupation reduced the power of my customer-service smile. I couldn’t check my phone while I was working, and I needed to know if Jessica had called me back. I wanted to see Jonathan’s texts, because I was sure there was at least one.

I barely had time for a break, but I ran to the bathroom. On the way out, I saw Debbie.

“I’m going at midnight,” she said. “Robert’s handling the tips.”

My disappointment must have shown on my face. Not about Robert managing the tips. The system for their division was fool-proof, which was good since Robert needed a system with exactly that name.

“What?” she asked.

“I wanted to talk to you after the shift.”

She looked at her watch. “You have four minutes.”

“I don’t want to say it so fast I offend you and lose my job.”

“So don’t.”

I’d rehearsed it a billion times, but there was no neutral way to ask. “You told me I shouldn’t have taken Jonathan seriously, and you told him I’d moved on.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t understand the question. He’s not usually serious. It looked to me like you’d moved on.” She shrugged as if everything had been on the up and up.

I started to feel like maybe it had been, and I was the one who had the problem. “I’m sorry to be blunt, but it gave me the impression, well...that it was...” I stopped. How had I painted myself into such a corner?

Debbie just waited for me to get myself out. She didn’t say a word or look impatient.

“Why do you want us together?” I asked. I managed to not use the word manipulative.

“You think I’m motivated by something other than friendship?”

“I don’t pretend to know.” Another wait. I felt as if I could hear the seconds go by.

Debbie didn’t look at her watch, and there was no clock in the hall, but when she straightened a fraction and said, “Time’s up,” I knew she was right to within the second.

Break over. Time to get back on the floor. The second half of my shift passed painfully but quickly. Every douchebag with a Hugo Boss suit or Audi keys made me want to scream. The intensity must have served me well, because my tips were more than I’d ever seen. I started to think about putting some cash away in my dwindling savings account or buying myself more pretty things to wear under my dresses.

I was snapping my locker closed when Robert came up, a little self-important swagger in his gait.

“Someone’s here for you.”

I didn’t want to smile, but I did. Jonathan had come, obviously. “I’ll be right up.”

He turned and walked off, calling behind him, “She’s by the bar.”

“Ok, thanks.”

She?

Chapter 11.

I went upstairs with less anticipation, less heightened awareness than I would have if I thought I was meeting Jonathan. It was probably Yvonne or some random friend who was passing by and wanted to hit an after-hours.

Seeing a bar after closing, with the lights on and the music off, is much like seeing a beautiful woman without makeup. All the parts are there but made unappealing. Glasses thunk against bus trays, squeaky-wheeled press buckets make their way across the floor behind the slap and swoosh of grey-fringed mops. The staff laughs at each other’s jokes, which are invariably on customers. Guests lingered, mostly in earnest conversations about the next destination for drinking or f**king. Some clung by their fingernails, as if a change of venue would break a spell.

In the case of the Stock, the city had darkened beneath us as much as it ever would, and the sky was a burnt orange with reflected light. It was one fifteen in the morning. I had a pocket full of cash. Maybe I’d go the hell out and talk to people. Maybe I’d cling to a venue until four a.m. to avoid sleeping in my house for the first time in weeks.

But I wasn’t going out. I wasn’t getting drunk, and I wasn’t reacquainting myself with anyone. Only one woman was at the bar. It was Jessica, and she was not alone. Jonathan stood over her, and they were arguing fiercely. They looked like a married couple on the verge of a blowout, talking over each other, tense hands in front of them. I didn’t want to approach them. But something else took over.

She wasn’t supposed to talk to him. She wasn’t supposed to be in fifty feet of him. He was mine. I had a reaction that could only be described as biological. Rage filled my blood from some angry gland until my fingertips clenched and my teeth ground together.

Jonathan looked up. As soon as he saw me, he came my way like a torpedo.

“What the f**k?” I said.

He gripped my shoulder and spun me around. “Walk.”

“No.” He pushed me toward the back room. I shrugged him off. “I want to talk to her. That’s why she’s here.” He took my bicep and yanked me off the floor. “Get off me.”

He didn’t listen. He pulled me through the halls, past the few coworkers left, along the concrete floors of the back hallways. His face was stern and blank, a fixed mask of intention. He pushed me into the break room, locked the door, and drew shades over the window to the hall. When he finally faced me again, I pushed him away.