1
“Another?” The bartender grins at me. Her smile widens when I groan and shove my now-empty glass toward her across the bar top.
“Make it a double.”
“Celebrating something?” She arches a brow, and I wish I could shrink away from her gaze. What does she see when she looks at me? Someone to pity? If she does, she’s too nice to say it, at least. “Or mourning?”
“The latter,” I mumble, as she slides a brand new double vodka soda back to me. I tip the glass at her in salute, and she pours herself a shot too.
“To better days ahead, sis,” she says, tapping her glass against mine.
“Amen to that.” I take a long drink, then glance at my bag. At the manila envelope peeking out the front pocket of it. Inside is the contract I signed earlier tonight. The one all my friends will be telling me “I told you so” over for years to come.
They were right. I should have listened. But I thought it was real.
I thought it was love.
I take another drink, longer than my last, while the bartender drifts away to nurse some more of her ailing customers. There’s plenty of us in here. I checked in to the largest, fanciest hotel I could find downtown for exactly this reason. Because the only people you find in places like this are the other dregs of society. People like me with nowhere else to go. No plans on a rainy Thursday evening like this one. People in transit—here on business trips or passing through on their way from point A to point B.
I thought I was done with this life. The single life, bar-hopping, the cesspool that is dating in the modern era. All of it. I figured, when I met Kevin, I was done with all that.
From the get-go, he seemed perfect. Well-adjusted, a totally normal guy. Okay, so our first and last date was at a Starbucks. And okay, after I moved in with him a month later, we pretty much stopped leaving our house entirely, and only saw our friends whenever they showed up on our doorstep to forcibly drag us out to events. But that was normal, I thought. That’s what couples do. When you find Mr. Right, you don’t need to bother with fake romantic stuff or going out on expensive dates. You just… settled into life together.
That’s why we got engaged after just four months together. Then we eloped a few months after that.
My friends all told me it was too soon. They told me to be patient, give it time. It’s not like we were planning some big church wedding, so what did it matter if we went down to the Justice of the Peace a year or two later, instead of right then?
But, exactly, I argued with them. We weren’t planning some big wedding, so why not tie the knot now? It was love—or so I told myself. We cohabitated, we got along okay. Plus Kevin had already pointed out to me how much money it would save us on our taxes.
Well. How much it would save him. He was the one with the high-paying job as the director of an investment firm. Me, I was just the behind-the-counter girl at the local florist shop, who enjoyed spending her days arranging bouquets for other people’s weddings, and other people’s Valentine’s Days, and other people’s anniversaries.
He used to joke that all that exposure to romance in my day job must make me immune to it in my own life. I agreed. But now, I wonder if I wasn’t just agreeing because I wished that were true. Not because it actually was.
How did I not see this coming?
I swirl my vodka soda on the bar and take another deep swallow. I mean, I knew Kevin had his flaws. Sure. Don’t we all. I knew he wasn’t into romance; I knew he hated any ‘unnecessary’ expenses (which included birthday or Christmas gifts, too, apparently). I knew he liked to keep everything in his life neatly categorized and organized. But I figured, that was the price of marriage. You compromise. You learn to live with each other’s quirks.
My friends tried to warn me. I didn’t want to listen. I just wanted to be done with the dating game. I wanted to move on to the next step in life, and he was… well. He was there.
Until two weeks ago. Just 6 months into our marriage. When I stopped by his office for a spontaneous visit (another thing he hated) to bring him his favorite lunch (a chicken sandwich, no toppings, and side salad, no dressing). His secretary told me he was busy, but I ignored the guy.
“I’m just going to drop this off and then I’ll be out of your hair,” I promised the secretary.
Stupid me. I should have recognized the look of panic on the dude’s face. I should have put two and two together, and realized it wasn’t business that was detaining my brand new husband.
Instead, like an idiot, I walked into his office, completely oblivious, only to find him half naked, with a girl who looked barely old enough to be out of college—probably an intern at his company too, the sleazeball—on her knees, her lips around his dick.
Fucker.
I threw the chicken sandwich in his face. He just stood there, while the poor girl leapt away and tried to collect herself. He didn’t even bother to pull up his pants.
“Don’t be so hysterical,” he told me. “I thought you were a logical person, Naomi. You know things like this happen.”
In that moment, I wished I’d had more than just a sandwich to throw at his stupid head.
I marched straight home, collected all of my things, and stormed out of his apartment. It didn’t take long. He had his place organized to his liking. He barely let me bring anything when I moved in—most of my stuff had to go into my friends’ houses or storage.
“It ruins the feng shui of the place,” he told me when I said I wanted to keep some of my own furniture.
Well, fuck his feng shui. I might have “accidentally” broken a few bottles of red wine all over his marble backsplash and lovely new hardwood floors on my way out of the door. Whoops.
I thought that this week, when I finally got a contract drawn up by my lawyer—a friend of a friend who I called in a favor with, since I’d never be able to afford the kind of expensive lawyer I’d need to take on Kevin properly in court—I’d feel some kind of catharsis. I stormed into his office one last time and served him the divorce papers to his face (thankfully, this time avoiding a scene with any questionably-of-age interns being exploited by their director).
But even slamming those papers onto his desktop and demanding he sign them right now didn’t feel satisfying. Because he just shrugged and smirked at me.
“You’ll regret this rash decision when you realize how much money my future wife is going to have at my side.”
“Trust me,” I spat in response, “you couldn’t pay me enough money to put up with you for one more minute.” I glared until he finished signing, and snatched up the paperwork before he could keep his grubby hands on it fo
r one more second. “Good luck hiring whatever gold digger you buy as a trophy wife next,” I snapped over my shoulder while I stormed out.
It’s a crappy settlement. My lawyer even admitted that to my face. “You’ve only been married for 6 months, and your prenup was pretty specific about how little you’d get in this event,” he told me.
“I don’t care,” I said. Which was true. I really didn’t care, not about the money. Not even though I needed to find a new apartment now, and fast, because I was burning through my savings, crashing at this fancy hotel.
You owe yourself this much, I reminded myself. Just a few weeks here to get back onto my feet. To find a decent spot to rent again. And, of course, to find a job to replace the one Kevin talked me into leaving when we tied the knot.