SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2023 #2
He can feel Alice’s eyes burning right through him from across the room.
It doesn’t matter that Beverley’s on her best behavior.
That Quinn’s new friend Jason is here playing videogames with him in his room while his parents enjoy the party.
That Polly has come out of her room and is actually being social.
Or that the guests all seem to be having a good time.
Alice needs something to be annoyed at, and if all else fails, she can always find reason with him.
He’s drunk. Not so drunk that he can’t hold up his end of the conversation with this incredibly boring banker guy, but admittedly drunk.
He preferred talking to the guy’s wife, who left to use the bathroom a few minutes ago; at least she reads books.
She also had an ass that daily squats built.
He’s pathetic. Lusting after some guy’s wife.
He knows it, but it’s not like he’s being a creep about it. He’s keeping it on the inside.
He lifts his glass to his lips and realizes there’s only ice left.
Giving the boring banker a pat on the shoulder, he excuses himself to get another drink.
The bottle of bourbon in the bar cart is empty and because he doesn’t think he should mix drinks this late in the game—he learned his lesson last time—he’ll have to go out to his writing studio to get one of the bottles in there.
He considers asking if Ralph wants to escape with him, but he seems engrossed in a conversation with some guy who Geoff can’t remember if he met already.
Ralph is also driving home from the party so has to stay sober, and Alice has accused him more than once of being a bad influence on her friend’s husband.
As if Geoff pours alcohol down Ralph’s throat whenever they’re together.
Alice appears to be once again safely ensconced in a conversation with Libby, which means she won’t be coming up for air anytime soon to tell him he doesn’t need any more drinks.
He takes his chance and ducks out the back door.
To his delight, the boring banker guy’s wife is standing on her own on the back deck enjoying a cigarette.
“Oh,” she says when she sees it’s him. “You caught me enjoying my dirty little habit.”
He saunters over to her, enjoying the contrast between the bite of the late-September air and the warm, slow feeling he has inside, making him feel drunker. “It’ll be our secret, I promise.” He moves right up beside her and holds out his hand for the cigarette. “As long as you share.”
She laughs and bumps him with her hip, which as far as he’s concerned is flirting. “I didn’t take you for a smoker,” she says, passing him the cigarette. “You come across as the go-for-a-run-every-morning, eat-granola-and-lean-protein kind of guy.”
He puts an arm around her lower back, resting his hand on the crest of her very tight ass, planning to gradually let it slide lower, possibly cup it softly before removing his hand.
Just harmless flirting, which she started.
His drunkenness makes it easy to ignore the gritty feelings of guilt and shame that accompany the urges.
He’s still a good-looking man for his age.
He notices the glances he gets from women—just not his wife.
Why let it go to waste? It only lasts for so long.
“You’re not wrong,” he says before putting his mouth closer to her ear.
“I also like to smoke, and drink bourbon with attractive young ladies.” She lets out a low, conspiratorial laugh and he feels movement in his underwear.
It doesn’t take much these days. He’s just about to slide his hand down, cup that ass even sooner than he’d planned, when the back door opens.
“Geoff?” Her voice is a nip at the back of his leg, and he drops the cigarette in surprise. The guy’s wife steps a safe distance away from him to extinguish it with the toe of her suede boot.
“Alice,” he responds, working at sounding more annoyed than guilty. She steps out onto the back deck.
“Lovely party,” the guy’s wife says to Alice before skirting back inside.
“What are you doing out here?” Alice asks, her tone suspicious.
“Just fraternizing with the guests. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do at your own party?” He remembers why he came out here in the first place and steps off the back deck to cross the lawn to his writing shed.
“Where are you going?” Alice asks, following right behind.
“We’re out of bourbon. I think I have a bottle in my writing studio.”
She puts a hand on his arm to stop him. “I think you’ve had enough, Geoff.”
He pulls his arm free of her grasp. “It’s not for me. It’s for that banker guy I was talking to. I promised him a glass.” He starts walking again and she keeps right on his heels.
“Did you also promise to grab his wife’s ass?”
Her words are a paper cut. He didn’t want her to see that.
He loves Alice. He really, really does. She just doesn’t love him back.
She thinks he doesn’t notice, or maybe that he doesn’t care, but he does.
Every time he lets her down, every day that he’s not a successfully published author, or a better dad, or better in any way, he feels like he loses pieces of her.
One day he knows she’ll be gone entirely and that will break him.
He just has no idea how to fix it and ends up getting drunk and grabbing asses that he shouldn’t.
It’s never ever been more than that, but it still makes him an asshole.
“Oh my God, Alice,” he says with practiced contempt, “I was standing close to her because we were sharing a cigarette. There was no ass-grabbing. My only offense was smoking.”
“That’s far from your only offense,” she hisses back.
He spins around to face her, trying not to wobble. “Okay, here we go. Tell me, Alice, what are today’s capital offenses?”
“I’m not doing this with you right now, Geoff. Just lay off the bourbon for once. Drink some fucking water and sober up. Maybe then your hand won’t accidentally land on another woman’s ass.” She turns to go.
“Any other orders, Captain?”
“Just be…” She pauses, searching for the right word as she keeps walking. “Just be better,” she calls out as she moves away from him. “For fuck’s sake, be better.” Her final words echo around the yard, bouncing off the trees and landing hard against his body.
He watches her go, and even though it was he who grabbed another woman’s ass, it’s he who’s drunk, and it’s he who just gaslit her, the walking-away feels like an unforgivable offense.
Why doesn’t she want to stay and fight to the resolution?
They are in a constant state of unfinished arguments, and he’s not sure how much longer he can live like that.
Before they got married and had kids they had epic fights.
Fights that would rip their hearts out because they cared so bloody much.
Fights that they’d spend hours resolving and then have the kind of sex that made him feel like a rock star.
Back when she used to look at him like he was the smartest, funniest, most handsome man on the planet. What happened to that? he wonders.
Just be better. Her words ring in his ears.
He wants to be but is just too tired and too sad to do anything differently.
He has to pee. He thinks he might have to throw up as well.
Smoking that cigarette was not a good idea.
He passes his writing studio and takes the path into the woods.
He walks in only a few feet. It’s dark, the kind of dark that makes you feel like if you move even just slightly, you’re going to bump into something.
And it’s too quiet. He can’t even hear the music from his house.
He’s sure that it was still discernible just a few feet away.
“Be better,” he mumbles, because it’s still going through his head, and because his own voice is comforting in that kind of deep quiet.
He’s just unzipped his pants when, even over the pounding of his hot piss on the ground, he hears the crack of a branch breaking behind him.
“Hello?” he calls out. There’s the rustling of leaves, but he can’t turn to look while he’s peeing.
“Who’s there?” His voice bounces against the trees all around him and echoes through the darkness.
Something approaches.
Polly
She figures the party is probably what kept Gray away.
Maybe because his parents were there, or there were just too many people.
She can tell he’s an introvert. Earlier in the night she’d gone out to the kitchen under the guise of being social with all the stuck-up neighbors.
She was only out there to steal a bottle of wine from the stash her mom had bought for the party.
She was hoping to share it with Gray later.
While she was out there, she scanned the room looking for adults who bore any kind of resemblance to him.
Only one woman who could have possibly passed for his mother with her dark hair and fine features.
Even then, it was a stretch. Still, Polly made a point of talking to her, asking questions as though she were actually interested in getting to know her neighbors, only to find out that the woman had three daughters, all under the age of twelve.
After that she’d ended up outside her bedroom window, alone, drinking the bottle of wine and smoking a joint, accidentally overhearing her parents’ fight in the backyard, which is why she’s now drunk and stoned lying on her bed, staring at her phone.
They had no idea she was out there, or how much voices carry across open lawn.
Adults are so fucked. She’s never getting married or having kids.
She chucks her phone away and rolls over to put her face in the pillow. She feels like she might cry. Gray is the only thing she has to look forward to in life right now and she’d really wanted him to come tonight. She squeezes her eyes shut tight. She doesn’t want to cry. She’s so sick of crying.