Chapter 5 Bad Day. Bad Luck. Bad Ideas
“ A re you sure you’ve done this before?”
Patrick looked unconvinced as his eyes traveled down to the shards of shattered glass covering the bar floor. My second broken glass of the day.
“Yeah, it’s just been a while is all.” I tried to laugh off my inexperience, but Patrick grunted in response and turned his burly form away from me, going for the broom and dustpan yet again.
“Just make sure you wear something tight and short, and the customers shouldn’t care if you serve them drinks with glass in ‘em.”
I huffed out a breath through my bangs, trying to hold back my eye-roll. Bartending may look easy in the movies, but that was all a facade that Hollywood had cooked up. In reality, making drinks was hard . Or I was just really, really awful at it.
I’d never really been bad at anything in my life before this, and I didn’t like the feeling of not acing it on the first try. Grande Jete? Nailed it on the second day. Making a Long Island Ice Tea? Failed miserably and broke two shot glasses.
On the bar, my phone lit up and danced along the wood as it vibrated. Patrick dragged his tired stare up to me. “You can get it. I need to clean this all up anyways.”
Guilt sunk my confidence to the pit of my stomach, and I thought for a moment to offer to clean my mess up myself, but chickened out at the last second.
Patrick was an okayish guy, but he also sort of terrified me with his frozen grim expression that fell further and further into annoyance the more I failed this morning.
Snatching my phone, I walked towards the back of the empty bar before looking to see who was calling.
The second I saw his name, my mood plummeted alarmingly fast and already, I was bristling with anger. With bite set and ready in my tone, I answered.
“What do you want?”
Jonah’s exasperated sigh was the first thing I heard on the other end of the phone. “Hi to you, too, Alice.”
Rage burned a heated pathway across my chest at the condescension in his voice that seemed to always be present whenever we spoke since the break-up. “I’m at work. What do you want?”
“You got a job? Doing what?”
“It’s none of your concern what I’m doing now.”
“It was just a question, Alice. You don’t have to jump all over me. I’m happy for you, though.” My fingers tightened at the fraudulent compassion in his voice, creating a fist I wished I could punch Jonah right in the face with.
“Is there a reason you called me, Jonah, or are you just bored?”
A pause hung across the line, and my gut clenched in preparation for whatever was about to come.
“The deposit for the apartment,” he finally said.
Uncertainty pinched the space between my eyebrows. “What about it?”
“You took the whole deposit and technically , half of it was mine.”
Disbelief stole any next words from my mouth. I tried to work out what to say next in my brain, but the astonishment of what he’d actually had the balls to say to me snipped the line between my tongue and brain completely.
“Alice? Are you still there?”
“You’re not serious, are you?” Jonah might be the world’s biggest manipulative douchebag, but he wasn’t stupid. Not this stupid at least.
“Yeah, I am. We split the $800 deposit when we moved in there, and I know you got the whole deposit back when you moved out.”
“Yeah, because I cleaned the place for three days straight! By myself. I don’t recall you ever knocking down my door with a mop and broom trying to help me.” The fact that he was serious and not pulling my leg was enough to flicker my vision white with rage.
“That’s because I didn’t know the day you were moving out. You weren’t exactly giving out that information willingly,” he shot back with the gall to sound justified.
“You have a phone. You could have used it.” Plus, he knew when I was leaving. Everyone at the studio did. He just didn’t care.
Another aggravated sigh of his came through the phone. “Alice, can you please just make something easy for once ? I don’t want to have to get lawyers involved over $800.”
Outrage expanded inside of me, growing at an imposing pace.
“Are you threatening to sue me over a deposit for an apartment that you didn’t even live in for the last three months?”
“You know my mom works for lawyers. It wouldn’t be a hard ball to get rolling.”
“That’s bullshit!”
Jonah groaned from the other end. “I know we’re not going out anymore, but please listen to me when I tell you that cursing is not for you. It sounds weird when you do it, and men don’t respect women who curse. It’s really not attractive.”
More embarrassment and rage than I thought possible to feel at once surged through my veins and in seconds flat, I was seething.
“You do not get to tell me what to do anymore, okay Jonah? That’s done .
And, you’re forgetting that in the end, when you went to go live with that tramp of yours, you took your name off the lease for the apartment.
You have no right to that deposit, and you have no right to tell me what I can and cannot say anymore! ”
My thumb crushed down on the button to end the call, every bit of fury I was feeling at that moment being pushed into that one button. Ragged breaths cut in and out of my lungs, and I stood there in the middle of the bar, zeroing every bit of focus I had on trying not to scream.
Three months ago, I didn’t have many buttons that could be pushed, let alone a button that could send me into a blinding fit of rage like what just happened.
Now, nothing in the world set me off like Jonah did.
His voice, his face, his new girlfriend.
Anything to do with him sent me into an anger so furious, I honestly didn’t recognize who I was while I was in the midst of it.
“So, I think I’m just gonna send you home for the day, yeah?”
Spinning around, I found Patrick staring at me with wide eyes and loads of judgement sitting in them. “Seeing as I don’t need anymore broken glasses today and right now you look like all you wanna do is smash everything, how about we just pick up here tomorrow?”
His phrasing could have been better, but I tried to ignore that and instead focus on his thoughtful gesture. I wasn’t sure I could think straight right now, and anything I learned today would go to waste anyhow. Me going home was probably the best move for my anger and his unharmed glassware.
* * *
After thanking Patrick and promising to be a better employee tomorrow, I left the bar with more built up energy than I knew what to do with. The entire drive home I was fidgeting, tapping my toes, and bouncing my head to every beat on the radio.
Arriving home, I peeled off the jeans I’d worn to the bar and exchanged them out for a pair of workout shorts. I checked—twice—that I was the only person home before moving the furniture around in the living room.
The coffee table had to go, the loveseat had to be pushed up against the wall along with the couch, and every potted plant my sister had gingerly placed around the living room was moved to the kitchen. I needed space.
I needed to dance.
It was the only way I knew how to deal whenever I was feeling too much at one time. Too much excitement? Dance. Too much sadness? Dance. Too much alcohol? Dance harder.
Every word that Jonah had spoken over the phone, every insult he drilled into my mind was like rage electrified. My hands and feet were lightning, eager to strike out at the first drop of the beat.
Hooking my phone up to the speakers in the T.V., I pressed play on my Pump Up playlist and smiled when Paramore’s Misery Business came through loud and furious. The perfect song to dance out any level of frustration to.
The beat of the song vibrated the walls and the floor beneath my bare feet.
It rose up through my legs until the sensation had consumed my body whole.
I rolled my neck to the humming of guitar strings being plucked and pulled, just as the strings of my heart had been.
The only difference being that the strings of the guitar were still smooth and intact and eager to be played.
The strings of my heart had been abused beyond repair and frayed down to nothing.
Angry drums beat through the song to mirror the rapid beating of my heart as the music swelled and everything inside of me cried out for a release.
And I gave it just that.
Every painful memory Jonah’s call had stirred up for me flew out through the tips of my fingers as they swayed through the air, whipping and snapping in every which direction my arms sent them. His grating words were stomped out beneath my heels, crushed and buried into the ground below.
I spun and swayed and danced every single word he’d spoken to me today out of my body until the room was splattered in his arrogance and insults.
I didn’t need them. I didn’t want them. I didn’t have to stand for them anymore.
I’d let five years of slights and cruel comments roll off my back because I thought I had to.
I had no other choice but to love the man who continually made me feel like crap just because it made him feel better about himself.
I let myself be his punching bag because I so desperately wanted him to be happy, no matter the expense or how it made me feel.
I’d clung to his kindness whenever it showed to get me through periods where it was nothing but bitter contempt for everyone around him.
I made excuses, I put myself down, and somehow never saw how blatantly toxic he was for me.
How everything he said and did was at my expense, and I’d just let it happen.
Because I was in love.
Love had gotten me nowhere and given me nothing in return. It was a one-sided relationship that I found myself on the wrong side of, and I was sick of it.
Sick of love. Sick of losing. Sick of Jonah freaking Hart.
A fallen pillow from the couch caught my foot, and I gave it a swift kick across the room.
The music shook the walls around me as I swung my body around.
I propelled it to a stop that threw my head down low.
With energy pulsing up through my spine, I whipped my head back up, rolling my body with the music as my hair fell in untamed waves across my face and sticking to the sweat on the back of my neck.
Through the crack of vision left unencumbered by my mass of hair, my eyes fell on something that ripped a shriek from between my lips and nearly jumped me out of my skin.
Heavy breaths drew in and out of my lungs as shock petrified my body in place. With my chest rising and falling in disbelief, I spoke.
“How? How does this keep happening to me?”
Ethan, who I’d just now noticed leaning casually against the front door, fought down his smug smirk with very poor effort. “I have impeccable timing, GoldieLocks.”
My entire face scrunched in time with that awful nickname leaving his lips.
“That’s what you decided was better than Wonderland?”
“What? You have blonde hair that’s more of a golden, shiny…” He trailed off, the fight dwindling in his eyes.
Thoughtfully, he tilted his head to the side. “Yeah, I’ll keep thinking.”
Grunting at my uncanny bad luck, I flung my body down on the couch and crossed my arms over my face, hoping to hide my blush at being caught by him again . This had to be some kind of cosmic joke, right? No one single person’s luck could be that bad with the same person this many times.
“Bad day?”
I peeked through my arms to see Ethan come into the room, dropping the shoulder strap connected to his briefcase to the floor.
I groaned into the bend of my elbow. “You have no idea.”
“Is it the type of bad day that can be fixed with wine and some killer eggplant parm?”
“Nix the parm. Double the wine.”
“Ah, I see. In that case, I might have something else that could help.” His voice grew closer until it stationed over me. Moving my arms down, I found Ethan standing right above me with his hands resting on his hips. “If you’re interested.”
I met him with a curious arched eyebrow. “Do you mean drugs?”
His face cracked into a full blown grin, his eyes lighting up above mine like twinkling stars. “No, I don’t mean drugs. I’m a man of the law, remember?”
Actually, I didn’t. Aside from carrying the stereotypical briefcase, nothing about Ethan said ‘Almost a lawyer’ to me. Monica… Monica looked and acted like a junior lawyer. Ethan so far looked and acted like pretty much anything else that wasn’t a boring lawyer.
“Okay, so what is it you had in mind then?”
A dot of excitement sparked in his eyes just as a slow smile pulled up onto his lips. The look he was giving me from above twisted my stomach into all sorts of unpleasant angles, but I couldn’t look away. Not even as those lips of his parted and set my nerves on fire.
“You’re gonna have to get in the car to find that out.”