She batted her eyelashes. “Good. I choose this one.”
My new neighbor waved down the bartender and decided we were going to be friends. “I’m Amanda.”
“Rush.” I nodded, keeping my head forward.
“Are you from around here? I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before.”
“Nope.”
The bartender walked over, and she pointed to my drink. “I’ll have one of whatever he’s having.”
“You sure?” he asked. “That’s pretty much a glass of vodka with a splash of 7 Up.”
“I’m sure. I had a bad day. And give my new friend Rush a refill, too.” She slid a fifty-dollar bill onto the bar. “On me.”
I put my hand out. “Thanks, but I’ll cover my own drink.”
I caught her pout out of the corner of my eye.
“I wasn’t asking you to marry me,” she said. “It was just a drink. You look like you’ve had a bad day, too. Figured we could commiserate together.”
Now I felt like a dick. I looked at the bartender. “Put hers on my tab, please.”
Amanda smiled. “Thank you.”
I nodded.
Neither of us spoke again until after the bartender delivered our drinks. She took one sip and crinkled up her nose. “This is strong.”
“Yep.”
“Wanna play a game?”
My eyes flashed to hers and back. “Nope.”
More pouting. “Come on. I can tell we both had a shitty day. Let’s compare shitty days, and the one who had a worse shitty day has to pay for the drinks today.”
“No thanks,” I said.
“Alright then…I’ll start…”
I shook my head, but it didn’t stop her flapping her mouth.
“Well…I work at Forever 21…you know…the clothes store. I was up for a promotion to be assistant manager, and my boss gave it to Tatia—some new girl who’s only worked there for two months. I’ve been working there for two years and only called in sick twice. She’s been there for a couple of months and already took as many days off. So I got upset and went to McDonald’s at lunch—where I proceed to eat a Big Mac and a cheeseburger, along with a large fries and a Coke—not even a Diet Coke. When I went back to work, I decided I was going to talk to the manager and find out why I didn’t get the promotion I was supposed to get. But when I went into the back office, I found out the reason without him saying a word. Tatia was on his lap riding him on the chair. The bitch smiled at me when I caught them and went right back to playing cowgirl.”
For the first time, I looked over at Amanda. My first assessment was—if she eats when she’s stressed, she must not get upset too often. Amanda was damn cute—the kind of woman I was normally attracted to. Lots of makeup and dark hair, a low-cut shirt that showed off big tits and a short skirt that gave a lot of leg.
“That sucks,” I said.
A smile spread across her face and she clapped. “Free drinks for me!”
I shook my head, lifted my fourth vodka to my lips, and sucked back a heaping gulp. “My girlfriend is pregnant with my brother’s baby.”
Her jaw dropped. “Oh my God. Are you kidding me?”
I rattled around the ice in my glass. “Nope.”
She opened her purse and dug out a credit card. Putting it on the bar, she said, “Drinks on me.”We were shitfaced.
Amanda turned out to be pretty cool, and it felt good to unload all of the crazy shit in my head to a stranger. I’d always been the type of guy to think people who went to shrinks were pussies—couldn’t suck it up and handle their own problems. But I was definitely starting to see that purging, instead of bottling up all that shit, could have its advantages.
“My high school boyfriend fucked my best friend.”
“That’s pretty bad,” I said.
She deadpanned. “My best friend was Darren.”
We both cracked up. Over the last hour, we had ruminated over crappy things that happened in our lives, telling each other random stories of screwed-up things we’d experienced. I was pretty sure that we were both slurring our words, maybe even talking in our own drunken language that no one else could understand. But it was my turn for a shitty story, so I sucked back a healthy gulp.
“When I was thirteen, I got head for the first time—from my best friend’s sixteen-year-old sister. I was too young to control myself and finished off in her mouth. She wasn’t happy about it, so she told my best friend that I’d hit on her and grabbed her ass, even though she’d been the one to come onto me. He decided we had to fist fight about it. I was in the wrong, so I let the skinny little shit give me a black eye and bloody nose thinking that would make him feel like he evened the score and we could go back to being buddies. Didn’t work. I lost my best friend because of a blow job.”