Chapter 15
fifteen
. . .
Bex
Neon lights nearly blind me, burning the back of my retinas, and I stop in the middle of the threshold to the hipster dive bar as I try to adjust. There’s a stickiness to the old linoleum flooring that even a healthy layer of sawdust can’t hide, and the smell of stale booze and body odor lingers in the air.
It’s a far cry from my favorite Michigan bar in Charlestown, or even the pub I like in the Financial District, but the more Ceci drags me to this little hole in the wall, the more it’s growing on me.
Like mold.
The black mold in the bathrooms, to be exact.
My friend sits waiting at the bar, a cocktail in front of her. She’s wearing a floor-length, strapless burgundy gown with a generous slit in the thigh and sky-high stilettos, her berry-red lipstick immaculate as always.
As I stride toward her, I can feel the tension seeping out of my shoulders. I need a drink, stat. She takes one look at me and waves over the bartender.
“Amaretto sour, and a rum and Coke. Make them doubles,” she orders as I take my barstool.
“You can tell, huh?”
“Oh, sweetie.” She pats my arm condescendingly. “Everyone can see the bags under your eyes.”
“Fuck off,” I mutter, although I smile to take the sting out of it. “I thought I put on enough concealer.”
“Drawing attention to it.” The bartender places a drink in front of each of us, and she murmurs her thanks before swiveling to face me. “Okay, tell me everything.”
I take a sip of my drink, letting the crisp flavor of the rum override my fraught nerves. The bubbles in the Coke burn as I swallow. “I think I’m an asshole.”
“Oh, you are,” Ceci assures me.
“Thanks for making me feel better about myself.”
“You know that’s not my job.” She rolls her eyes. “But what is the issue now?”
“I hurt people before they can hurt me.”
“Again, not a surprise. You’ve been on a self-destructive path for as long as I’ve known you.”
Hiding my scowl in my drink, I ignore the way she’s been able to read me so clearly. “I know you’re a brainiac, but you’re supposed to be good with computers, not with people.”
She tosses her head back and laughs, her long, chocolate-brown waves fluttering with the movement. “Oh, sweetie. I contain multitudes.”
“Don’t quote Whitman at me,” I huff.
“There, there.” She pats my arm again. “You’re determined to be grumpy today, aren’t you?”
“I’m in a negative headspace, and I can’t seem to get out of it.” My thoughts keep looping, over and over and over again, and none of the techniques I’ve learned are working. “I’ve booked an emergency session with my therapist, but she’s not available until tomorrow.”
“Alcohol to the rescue, then,” she says without a hint of sarcasm. “We’ll get you out of your head, if you can’t be in it. Drink until you’re ready for your therapy session.”
I frown. That doesn’t seem healthy, either.
Ceci must understand that, though, because she sighs. “I’m shit at coping mechanisms. All I can do is bury my thoughts and feelings in work, and if that doesn’t work for you, I get it. Don’t know what else to try.”
“I’m just kind of… done. With everything.”
“Work going okay?”
Rolling my lips inward, I try to figure out what to say. “I’m bored.”
Her perfectly sculpted eyebrow darts into her hairline. “Bored?”
“None of the guys have had any issues lately. I can only re-review the same findings so many times before I go nuts. I’m not working on any other patients, and I don’t want any of them to get injured, but I’m starting to wonder what I’m doing.
Am I really wasting my time like my parents think I am? ”
“Your parents are fucking assholes,” she snaps.
I sip my drink. “Mm-hmm.” No arguments there.
“It sucks that you don’t have a lot going on. Maybe talk to team management about taking on outside projects? I can’t imagine they’d be too happy if it takes time away from your actual job, but maybe…”
“I have to be on call. Annaliese can’t travel with the team, and if something were to happen on the road, I need to be there.
” With a heavy sigh, I slump on my barstool.
“When someone is injured, I’m busy. So busy I wouldn’t be able to manage anything else.
But when everyone is healthy, and I’m hoping they all stay healthy, it’s hard to find the motivation to keep going. ”
“Doc Hudson works at a clinic outside of the team,” she points out. “It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for you to consult with a neurologist as a specialist. You could take patients on the days you’re off, once or twice a week.”
“I’m not a medical doctor, though.”
She pins me with a flat look. “If you tell me you aren’t qualified to talk about neuroscience with two master’s degrees and a fucking doctorate, I’m going to whoop your ass.”
“Okay, okay.” I lift my hands into the air. “No ass whooping, please.”
“What are your colleagues doing?”
My face screws up. “I don’t want to go into Big Pharma.”
“Academia? Maybe you could take on one or two classes as an adjunct?”
I shake my head. Already thought of that. “Not with the team’s schedule. I’d miss too many classes with road trips.”
“Do you want a start-up? I’d fund it,” she says off the bat.
My half-panicked chuckle bubbles up from within me, bursting from my lips. “I’m not going to take your money.”
She opens her mouth, but I jump back in before she can say anything.
“Besides, I don’t know what I’d work on that the team can’t already provide. I have an idea for a helmet prototype, but I’m still a few years away from designing it, much less developing it. I want to do a few more studies.”
“Fair.” Ceci sighs, setting her chin in her hand. “Clinical work? Public policy?”
“Mildly interesting.”
“Okay, let’s circle back to this later.” She sips her drink. “Why are you lashing out? What specifically triggered this episode?”
Nick.
He’s always there. Always around. Since running into him in the parking garage last week, it’s like I can’t escape him. If he’s not physically in the room, I’m still thinking about him.
“Bad memories coming to the forefront,” I finally say. “I never dealt with them, and now I can’t avoid them.”
The bar grows louder as pop-punk music pulses around us, punctuated by my friend’s silence.
Finally, Ceci offers her opinion. “You know how to do the healthy thing. You’ve done the work, you have the skills.”
“But?” I prod.
“But if that’s not working, maybe it’s time to try something new.”
“Like what?”
“I’m going to say this once, and then we’re going to forget I brought it up,” she says.
I nod. “Deal.”
“Maybe you need to address it with the source. Your parents—”
“This time, it’s not my parents,” I cut in.
Her eyes widen. “For real?”
“I hurt someone else, someone I don’t want to care about, and I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Have you apologized?”
“No, because every time I see him, I end up snapping back. He brings out the worst in me. And I don’t like that,” I rush to add.
“I don’t like the person I’m becoming when he’s around.
But I can’t seem to stop. Everything about him sets me on edge, and it’s ninety percent because of the way I keep treating him. ”
“And the other ten percent?”
“He’s hot as fuck and I want to jump his bones.” Again.
I mean, it would be a terrible idea, for multiple reasons. But it doesn’t keep me from wanting to take another ride on his magnificent cock.
Fuck. Maybe the alcohol is hitting me harder than I thought.
Ceci’s face clears of her confusion. “So why don’t you fuck it out?”
Been there, done that.
“Why do you think I’m in this position?” I down the last of my drink, and she waves over the bartender, pointing to my glass. “I can’t drink too much. I drove.”
“I’ll get you home safe and sound,” she promises.
Despite my misgivings, I let myself relax. She’s never done me wrong. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Right back at you.”
The bartender delivers my refill, and Ceci pushes the glass toward me. “Drink up. We’ll find a man to fuck the melancholy out of you.”
“I don’t want a man.”
“Woman?” she asks without judgment. “Nonbinary?”
I blow out a breath. “Sadly, I’m only attracted to men.”
“Same. Kind of sucks sometimes.” She eyes Pablo, the cute, young bartender who isn’t looking twice at her. “Dating in your forties is the fucking worst.”
“Worse than your thirties?”
She nods. “I’m totally over it. But I also don’t want to end up alone. Guys my age are either doing the family thing—no thanks—or want an arm trophy, and I’m not about that. Joke’s on them. I’m the whole damn trophy case.”
My chuckle is dark and bitter. “You and me both.”
“I just want a man who can keep up with me, will keep challenging me to grow, and won’t care about my money.” Ceci sighs heavily. “Seems impossible to find.”
“Trade a famous brother for your money, and I’m right there with you.”
She knocks her glass against mine in halfhearted cheers. “What are we going to do?”
I shrug, then bring my drink to my lips and gulp down the alcohol. It burns all the way down.
“You tell me.”