Chapter Eighteen
Jo
Ashley Biernacki didn’t recognize me at first, though, in this state, I suspected she might not have recognized her own mother.
I planted myself in the chair next to her, rested my chin in my palm, and waited to be noticed. Ashley leaned over the bar,
gesticulating to a bartender who was pointedly ignoring her.
“Excuse me,” Ashley said, not giving up. “Excuse me, I need another drink? I spilled mine?”
“Ashley,” I said firmly when it became clear I might be waiting awhile.
Ashley blinked up at me. Now that I was sitting next to her, I could see that her eyes were glassy with something more than
just alcohol.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” she said blearily. “I’ve had too much to drink, and now I’m seeing things.” She reached out suddenly, and
I dodged, wincing when the tip of her sticky finger brushed my cheek. “Weird. I was just thinking about you, and now you’re
here.”
I swung around to make eye contact with Dahlia, who gave me a wide-armed gesture that I translated to mean What the fuck? as she stood. I shrugged, then turned back to Ashley, who was staring very intensely at me.
“You need to go home,” I informed her. “Did you come here with anyone?”
Ashley dissolved into a fit of giggles.
“Come with anyone? That, my dear Josephine, is the entire point,” she said. She leaned in conspiratorially, bathing me in
breath that smelled strongly of rum, then in a stage whisper said, “I don’t think that’s going to happen, though. I’m a bit
of a mess.”
“That’s an understatement,” I muttered. I made a point not to ask her why she was hoping to pick up a random man in a bar
before noon; what went on between her and Ezra was none of my business. What mattered to me was that she got home. “Do you
have your phone? Can I call someone to pick you up?”
“Sure,” Ashley said, handing over her phone. Then, inexplicably, her eyes filled with tears. “It’s the least I could do.”
I definitely wasn’t going to ask what she meant by that. This version of Ashley Biernacki’s tears was defanged, too red-nosed
and snotty to get me in trouble, but they still made me skittish; I didn’t care to stick around for long enough to be made
into her aggressor again. Thankfully, her phone still recognized her face. I tapped into her contacts.
“Oh my god, she’s crying,” Dahlia, who had materialized behind me, said. She placed one hand on Ashley’s back to rub it in
soothing circles and braced the other on the back of my stool. “So... who’s this?”
“My childhood bully,” I deadpanned. Dahlia’s jaw dropped. To Ashley: “Where do you live? Is there anyone you want me to call?”
Ashley wiped her face with a napkin, smearing her mascara around her eyes.
“I deserve that,” she said in lieu of an answer. “I was so mean to you. Why was I so mean to you? You’re so nice. And you got soooo pretty. Eventually. Like an angel.” Her lower lip wobbled. “You know he calls you that, right? His angel .”
I snapped my fingers in Ashley’s face. “Focus, girl. What is your address?”
But Ashley was too far gone, her sobs transforming into absent-minded giggles. Exasperated, I made eye contact with the bartender,
who was shaking up a cocktail and pointing with her eyes toward the door.
Shit.
The knot in my throat felt like one of the vegetable pills Renata had once tried to get me on in medical school, but what
else was there to do? I scrolled to E in her contacts, found Ezra’s name, and tapped “call.”
The phone rang four times. My heart had settled after my brief exchange with my mother, but it was off to the races again
in anticipation of one with Ezra. I rehearsed what I would say in my head. Keep it to the point , I thought. No small talk. Just a location, a time, and then hand Ashley over like bitter divorcés exchanging their kid on a Saturday
morning. And, best case, Ezra wouldn’t pick up at all, and I could say that I’d tried my best, throw Ashley into an Uber with a twenty-dollar
bill folded into her palm and whatever showed up as “home” in her map app set as her destination, then send her on her way.
“Hello?” Ezra said. “Look, Ashley—”
I’d almost forgotten what Ezra sounded like, the thirty-pack-year smoker rasp of his voice that had always added an edge to his boyish charm. I’d heard that voice almost every day, on voice notes he recorded for me when he was shooting overseas, snickering next to me during one of his dad’s self-important speeches at a company release, through my television, professing love to an actress I knew he couldn’t stand.
It had been easy, in his absence, to say that I was over Ezra. But if that were true, why had hearing him say her name make my throat constrict?
“Ashley is currently completely trashed and alone at Early Bird in West Loop,” I said. “Can you please come pick her up? I
don’t know where she lives, and right now, neither does she.”
Ezra didn’t say anything for a moment, and I steeled myself at the potency of his pause.
“...Jo?” he finally said. “Jo, what are you—”
“Don’t worry about what I’m doing,” I said quickly. “And come get your girl.”
I waited for Ezra to fight me. It was his usual way, to respond to my boundaries with petulance. In retrospect, it was amazing
how often I’d let him walk all over me. Now that he finally had me on the line, he’d probably use Ashley as a hostage to keep
me talking—
“Okay. I’m coming. Don’t go anywhere.”
He hung up.
I smiled queasily to myself. Of course Ezra was coming right away. Of course he hadn’t missed me enough to fight to keep me on the phone, to bring me back into his life. This was Ashley we were talking about. He’d already chosen her before. And me? Once more, I’d managed to convince myself that I was stronger than I really was. That by shutting Ezra out, creating distance between us, I was giving myself space to heal from a decade of pining. But a few seconds on the phone with him had called my bluff. What I’d really wanted, all along, was to hurt him with my absence.
Pathetic.
My vision cleared, and I looked up to find Dahlia staring at me with round eyes. She was a smart girl, and I realized that
she’d probably put two and two together.
“You okay?” she asked. My eyes darted to her hand, still on a now-slumped Ashley’s back, and something ugly surged inside
me, not quite hatred, not quite envy, but the slimy, familiar feeling of knowing that, even after all this time, I was not
quite enough.
“I’m fine,” I said sharply. “Ezra’s coming to pick her up.”
Ashley perked up suddenly. “Ezra?” she said. I recognized her despondence; I’d seen it on the faces of Ezra’s girlfriends
before. “Noooo. Don’t call Ezra. He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you,” I said plainly.
“No, no, he does,” Ashley insisted. “Because I wasn’t nice to you. His most precious person in the world. No way was I ever
gonna compete with that.” She sighed with her entire body, sagging onto the counter. “Karma’s a bitch, I guess. I finally
find a guy who’s rich, hot, and not a douchebag, and he’s in love with Jungle Jo.” She paused. “I can’t believe I used to
call you that. That was hella racist.”
“See?” Dahlia said. “Even your ex’s ex thinks I’m right.”
“Do you know how many of Ezra’s girlfriends have said that?” I said, frustrated. “Ezra isn’t in love with me. Ashley’s just
feeling insecure right now. And drunk .”
Dahlia gave me a devilish look. “Lots to unpack here, huh,” she said, snickering.
“The understatement of the century,” I said. Ashley hiccupped, a single, errant tear trailing down her face, and for a moment, I felt sorry for her.
Not enough, however, to oversee her nap.
“Is she snoring?” Dahlia said.
“Yup,” I said.
“You want to make yourself scarce until he shows up? I can watch her,” she offered. I opened my mouth to refuse, and she held
up a finger, tutting me. “Don’t consider this altruistic. I’m just conning you into getting the bill.” Her smile flickered.
“I’m kidding, by the way. That was a joke. Obviously I’ll split—”
I laughed, touched by Dahlia’s offer.
“No, no, I’m the one who got us into this. I got it.”
“Okay, but I got you next time,” Dahlia said with a wink. “Try to flag someone down. It’s getting busy.”
I did. I was unsuccessful. In the last thirty minutes, the tables at Early Bird had filled with real brunch aficionados. From
our table, the bar was in clear view, and I sat and watched, looking up hopefully at every passing waiter and busboy, a voyeur
in my own story. The scene in front of me played out like a clip from One True Kiss . The woman with the buzz-cut blond hair and sleeve tattoo is eye-catching, but a side character, hanging on to the hot, blubbering, blond female lead. She tips a glass into the female lead’s mouth, dabs it when water dribbles down her chin. Then the door to the restaurant opens, and a man enters. He’s tall and strikingly good-looking, even dressed as he is in a Batman graphic T-shirt and heathered gray sweatpants. Even before he approaches the blonde, it’s clear that he is her counterpart. His hand delves into his hair in exasperation, but the viewers know that the movement is intentional, that it will lift his shirt just enough to reveal the crisp V of his hips, and he hands a credit card to the bartender, settling her tab. But then he turns. Looks right through the screen. The fourth wall shatters, and suddenly the man is walking forward, jaw clenched, a hundred thousand teenage girls’ dreams coming true before their eyes, because all along he was coming for them —
“You’re still here,” Ezra said, like he expected me to be gone.
Then he pulled up a chair.