Chapter 9 Roxy
Last night, I dreamt we were in the duplex again. The cool, tacky linoleum that always crinkled when I walked.
The sliding glass door to the porch, which faced the strip of grass we shared with the attached neighbors.
I was burning our wedding photos, just like I’d done the night I ran away.
Crouched in front of the fireplace as the flames ate up images of me and Liam and our two families, dressed in our Sunday best on the courthouse steps.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Liam’s muffled voice shouted from behind the front door. “What the hell, Roxy? You made me a promise!”
I stood up and found that I was no longer in our living room, but standing on Liam’s apartment balcony. He was shirtless and sweating, eyes blazing as he walked towards me.
He grabbed my face like he was going to kiss me, and I held my breath.
“I choose war,” he growled before hurling me over the balcony’s edge.
* * *
I awoke with a start and stared at my room in a wild panic, briefly confused.
It took a few seconds for my sleep-addled brain to realize that I was looking at the four bare walls of my new apartment.
I’d only picked it because it came pre-furnished and had a month-to-month lease, perfect for me because I didn’t plan to stay in town much longer.
Still shaken from my dream, I rolled over to the other side of the bed where the sheets were cooler. I choose war, Liam’s final words echoed in my ears, like a warning. Like a threat.
I choose war? What was that supposed to mean? If it was a threat, I couldn’t let it stop me from living my life.
He’s not going to intimidate me, I told myself as I reached for my phone. The clock read 7:12 a.m. My alarm was about to go off in eighteen minutes. With a sigh, I decided to just get up for the day.
It was Monday, my first day off in almost a week. I didn’t have much food in my place yet. My breakfast was a cold slice of pizza, leftover from last night, hastily eaten above the sink. Then, I went around the apartment opening the blinds, letting sunlight filter in through the dusty windows.
I sighed as I stared out at my view of the swimming pool. At least the complex had a working pool with water, unlike the motel. Knowing that I had the entire day to myself filled me with an unexpected sense of bliss. It put me in a spontaneous mood.
Maybe I should check out the pool, I thought.
I went back to my bedroom. The entirety of my earthly belongings filled two cardboard boxes and a laundry basket, all of which were still sitting at the foot of the bed, waiting to be organized into the empty closet.
I dug my bikini out of one of the boxes.
It was something I’d bought on a whim in a casino gift shop, black with a repeating pattern of acid green dollar signs.
After putting it on, I slid my feet into my shower sandals, grabbed a towel, and left through the front door.
Downstairs, I had to stand on my tiptoes to unlatch the iron pool gate. The pool beyond was a modest rectangle surrounded by a concrete deck, furnished with a few chaise lounges that were cracked and rusted from years, possibly decades of use.
Having the entire place to myself, I picked the chaise lounge located in a patch of sun and draped my towel over it before settling in.
Then, I got on my phone and opened the Tinder app.
I’d downloaded it yesterday after the dinner shift, inspired by a conversation I’d overheard at one of my tables. It had been a couple who were obviously on their first date. “Loved your Tinder profile,” were the first words to come out of his mouth.
And honestly, that moment changed me. I was twenty-one, on the cusp of twenty-two.
Technically married, but unattached in every other way.
I should’ve been out there, too. I wanted to put on a new dress and curl my hair and get to know someone over a shared plate.
More than that, I wanted the freedom to bring a man home if I wanted.
Signing the lease to my apartment was the first step.
Downloading Tinder was the second.
As a cool breeze stirred the pool’s surface, I swiped my way through half a dozen local profiles.
A parade of shirtless gym selfies and fish held up like trophies.
I felt nothing, which I decided to take as a good sign.
Proof that I wasn't just running from Liam into the arms of the first guy who smiled at me.
Proof I could actually want something for myself.
Then I saw Mark.
Dark hair, easy smile, a photo of him hiking somewhere green and lush. His bio said grad student, dog dad, will absolutely bore you about mid-century architecture. A grad student who loved architecture? He seemed deep, which wasn’t something I was used to.
I swiped right before I could talk myself out of it. We matched immediately.
A few minutes later, Mark sent me a message:
Hi. Love your pics. Got any more?
I squinted at my screen, taking stock. I didn’t love the fact that his opening message to me was essentially a pic request.
Hello to you too, I typed back. Then, I opened my camera to snap a quick selfie. My bikini top filled the lower half of the frame, and I let my eyes peek out over the top of my sunglasses.
I hit “send.”
Mark responded quickly with a series of heart-eyes emojis.
Got him, I thought to myself. Feeling triumphant, I slid down into the chaise lounge and asked him how his day was.
Not bad, he replied. It would be better if I was with you in person.
An anxious flutter erupted in my belly. I kind of liked it. Grinning, I typed up another response. You can see me in person when you take me out on a date.
By the time ten minutes had passed, we made plans to meet up later that night.
* * *
I put on a green dress I'd bought secondhand in Boston and did my makeup at the bathroom mirror, humming along to the radio like a woman with nothing to prove.
The dress was satin and came to the midthigh, short enough to be flirty without being vulgar.
When I caught my own reflection smiling, actually smiling, I decided that was worth something.
Mark was already sitting at a table when I walked into The Wandering Wren, a downtown wine bar.
He stood up a little too fast when he saw me, which I found charming instead of eager.
He kissed my cheek, smelled like cedar and clean laundry, and pulled out my chair like his mother had raised him right.
"So," he said, sliding my glass of Sancerre across the table, "tell me something about yourself that isn't on your profile."
"I used to be a bartender in Atlantic City," I said. "I make a mean Old Fashioned and I have zero patience for people who order it 'skinny.'"
He laughed, and it was a good laugh, unguarded.
For a while, it was easy. He talked about his favorite midcentury buildings in the city, and I let myself lean into the sound of a man talking about a future that had absolutely nothing to do with territory or family or debts.
Something normal. It felt like fresh air.
It felt like the life I'd been trying to build in fits and starts for three years, finally holding still long enough for me to actually stand in it.
I was midway through telling him about the world's worst nanny job in Florida when I noticed the man at the table behind Mark's left shoulder.
He wasn't doing anything wrong, exactly.
He had a beer in front of him, three-quarters full and gone flat.
To my bartender's eye, I recognized it as the kind of prop drink that exists to make the server stop asking if you need anything.
He wasn't on his phone. He wasn't reading anything.
He was just there, angled just slightly toward us, the stillness of a man clocking every table in a room without making it look like a job.
I knew that stillness. I spent two years married into a family built on men who could stand in a corner and disappear, right up until the second they didn't want to anymore.
My stomach dropped before my brain caught up with why.
It was the forearm that did it, a flash of ink when he reached for his glass.
It was a Celtic cross wrapped in barbed wire, green shading gone slightly blue with age, the kind of tattoo half the men at Niall Murphy's cookouts wore like a family crest. I'd watched Liam's own cousins get matching ones at a shop on Fifth Street the summer after I got married, all of them wincing and laughing and comparing pain tolerance like it was a rite of passage.
"—and then the crab just sat there," Mark was saying, "for like a full minute, before anyone noticed—"
"Sorry," I said, my voice coming out steadier than I felt. "One sec."
I excused myself to the bathroom, which was really just an excuse to walk past his table and get a better look without turning it into a scene.
Up close, the tattoo was even more familiar than I wanted it to be.
It wasn't just the design but the placement, low on the inside of the forearm, exactly where I'd seen it a dozen times at family barbecues, on wrists that passed me plates of potato salad and shook my father's hand.
He didn't look up as I passed. That was the worst part. A stranger clocks a pretty woman walking by. This man didn't, because I wasn't a stranger to him.
I was a job.
In the bathroom, I gripped the edge of the sink and stared at myself under the fluorescent lights, waiting for my pulse to slow. Okay. Okay. Think.
It could be nothing. Northridge was full of Irish blood and bad tattoos.
Not every Celtic cross belonged to a Murphy soldier.
But I knew, the way you know weather is turning before the sky actually changes, that it wasn't nothing.
Someone had been watching me long enough to know where I'd be tonight.
Long enough to sit through an appetizer course pretending to nurse a beer he clearly didn't want.
The question was who sent him.
Liam, obviously. The jealous husband, staking his claim, making sure his soon-to-be ex-wife wasn't out there test-driving somebody with better manners and a real career. That would almost be a relief. Predictable, at least. Familiar poison.
But there was a colder thought underneath that one, the kind that made the back of my neck prickle: what if it wasn't Liam at all?
What if it was someone I hadn't thought about in over a year? Someone who might still care very much about a job I used to have, a casino that used to exist, and whatever might've slipped into my bag on my very last night behind that bar?
I splashed water on my wrists and made myself breathe.
When I walked back out, Mark was still smiling, still talking, still blissfully unaware that his date had just aged five years in a bathroom. I smiled back, slid into my seat, and picked my wine back up like nothing had happened.
But I kept my eyes on the man behind him for the rest of the night, waiting to see who he called when I finally got up to leave.