Chapter 13
SLOANE
The Watering Hole has a pool table, a jukebox, a bar with eight stools, and a mounted deer head on the wall.
There are about fifteen people here, mostly men in jeans and work boots, most of them holding bottles of beer.
A few women at a corner table are sharing a pitcher of something.
The TV above the bar is showing a baseball game with the sound off and the whole place smells like spilled beer and sweat.
I'm sitting at a small table by the wall with a glass of white wine that is marginally better than the bottle from the general store.
I'm wearing a black cocktail dress, the only one Irina packed, and sneakers, because I put on heels at the motel and made it three steps before my feet staged a revolt.
They're swollen and sore from standing all day.
But nothing I wear in Duster matters. No one here is looking at my outfit for style advice.
The motel room was making me lose my mind so I came here.
The fridge was vibrating on the floor again and the walls were closing in on me.
I figured it would be best to get out before I started talking to the furniture.
The diner was out of the question after the phone incident, which left The Watering Hole.
I've walked past every day and never considered entering because it looked shady but desperation took over.
A few heads turned when I walked in. The bartender — a thick-necked man with a gray beard — looked at me for a beat too long.
The women at the corner table glanced over and one of them leaned in to whisper something to the others.
I ordered my wine and took my table and sat down, ignoring their stares.
I call Sita and I'm grateful when she picks up.
"Sloane! Oh my god. Finally. Are you okay? How is it? You're in that little town, right?"
"Yeah. Duster. It's —" I lower my voice and turn toward the wall. "It's horrible, Sita. It really should be called Dustbin."
"Oh, babe."
"I'm sitting in a bar right now that has a dead deer on the wall and it's looking at me."
"Stop." Sita laughs and I crack a tiny smile.
"Listen," I say. "What are you doing this weekend? Can you come get me? You could drive out here Friday night — it's only about four hours — and then bring me back Sunday night."
There's brief silence. "This weekend's tricky," she says. "I'm going to Palm Springs with the girls."
"Oh my god, take me with you. Or send a car for me. Please. Dad cut me off financially while I'm here and I just need to be somewhere that isn't Duster. I'll pay you back, I promise."
Another pause, longer this time. I can hear background noise on her end — music, voices, the hum of a normal life in a normal city.
"The thing is —" She stops. "I would, Sloane. You know I would. But it's some of the girls — I mean, everyone loves you, obviously, but —"
"But what, Sita?"
She exhales. "You're kind of hot right now. In the press. And not in a good way. And some of the girls feel like — I mean, Nicole specifically said —"
"Nicole."
"She just thinks that if you're seen with us — if someone posts something and you're in it — it could —"
"It could what? Contaminate you?"
"She didn't say contaminate. The paparazzi and the Princess Pigpen stuff and — she just doesn't want to be associated with — she doesn't want it to reflect —"
"On her."
"I'm sorry," Sita says. "But it's Nicole's house."
"It's fine."
"It's not fine. I know it's not fine. And just so you know, that's not how I feel about you at all. I'm here for you, Sloane. Nicole is too. She just needs some time until all of this dies down."
"She's clearly not here for me," I say flatly. "I'm at an all-time low in my life and come to think of it, she hasn't even sent me a message to check how I am. Mel hasn't either."
"I'm so, so sorry," Sita says again. "Talk to me. Tell me what you're doing there."
But I don't feel like talking anymore. The words have dried up somewhere between my chest and my throat and what's left is a tight, sick feeling that I can't swallow past. These are my friends.
These are the women I've spent every birthday and every New Year's and every long weekend with for the majority of my adult life.
We've shared hotel rooms and secrets and hangovers.
I was there when Nicole's marriage fell apart and I was there when Mel's mother was ill and now I'm the one who's falling apart and they won't even text me.
"I have to go," I say.
"Sloane —"
"I can't do this right now. Bye, Sita."
I hang up and take a long drink of wine. The music switches to something annoying with a fiddle.
"Hey there."
I look up. A man is standing by my table. He's maybe thirty-five, wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He's holding two bottles of beer.
"Mind if I sit down?" he says, already pulling out the chair.
"I'm not really —"
"Just thought you looked like you could use some company." He sits. He puts one of the beers in front of me, even though I have a glass of wine. "I'm Travis."
"Thank you, but I'm not interested, Travis."
"Just being friendly. This is a friendly town." He leans back in his chair and looks at me. "You're not from around here. Passing through?"
"Something like that."
"Well, if you need someone to show you around —"
"I don't."
"Come on. One drink. You're here, I'm here…" He takes a sip of his beer. He's not leaving. Men like Travis don't process rejection as information. They process it as a challenge.
Even if I weren't in the middle of the worst period of my life, even if I weren't off men entirely after Tyler, even if Travis were the last human male on the planet and the survival of the species depended on it — I would choose extinction.
I would even walk back into that county jail and ask for a life sentence before I ended up in Duster with Travis.
"Holy shit." The voice comes from the bar. A younger guy with a cap has turned around on his stool and is staring at me. "That's Princess Pigpen."
"No way," says the guy next to him. He pulls out his phone. "You're right. That's her."
My stomach drops. Not again. I can't do this again.
The diner, the photographers at the sanctuary, the bus, the street — there is nowhere in this town, nowhere in this entire godforsaken valley, where I can just exist without someone pointing and filming and laughing.
My father has taken my money. My friends have dropped me.
The entire internet has turned me into a meme.
And I can't even sit in a bar in a town no one has heard of and drink a glass of bad wine without being hunted.
At least in jail the walls kept the world out.
I stand up and put my phone in my purse. My wine glass tips and spills across the table and I don't stop to fix it. When I rush toward the door I hear them behind me — laughing, oinking, someone shouting "night night Pigpen" — and I push through the door and run.