Today's writing

The few times we slept together were ridiculous. Epic with a few rough edges. She’s not relationship material, though, and not just because I favor dudes. Tabitha’s got some issues. We stayed up late talking about them. There was some guy who knocked her up in Missouri. Years afterward and she still hasn’t seemed to get over it. Over it or over him, I’m not too sure which.

 

We fell into it one afternoon. There wasn’t a lot to do and so I asked her back for a few beers. Then I realized the refrigerator was dry and so we made a run down into town. “We should just scoot some from the hotel,” she said, but I laughed and said no. I needed the job, still do. I used to work in a kitchen at a tech company, but I got laid off. Not fired. Laid off. I didn’t mind. Working at a minimum-wage job totally screwed up my focus on life. I didn’t miss the kitchen. I wanted to belch my anger in Stella’s stupid face. Stella was the kitchen lead. She said many things, but the one thing she liked to say most was yes. Yes to everything, especially when it came to screwing me over. I mean, you can run a kitchen very well without coming down on people all the damn time. They’re constantly facing failure. When things go well, the top people take the credit.

 

But I digress.

 

We went to Gualala Supermarket. All the tourists went across the street to the Surf Mart. But Gualala Supermarket had the better booze selection if you knew where to look. I knew the guys who worked there, still do. They kept some good stuff in the back for me. We skipped the beer and went straight to the vodka. Then we went back to my place.

 

I wasn’t necessarily planning for anything to happen. But somewhere between Gualala Supermarket and Saint Orres, it was set in motion. Maybe it was the motion of her knees beneath her skirt, the way the breeze from the open window blew the fabric. It could have been the staticky music on the radio, KTIDE, where I always had my radio tuned. As I drove, I flashed back to working as a bartender at the Gualala Hotel before it closed. When you’re a bartender, you’re in someone’s space. You’re the obstacle to what they want. You’re the fucking remedy to their problem. People respect bartenders. You’re their psychologist. That’s because we fucking care. When I was working at the Hotel, I always asked, how you guys doing over here? One time this douche said, you know, I’m okay but I wish your shirt were a little less loud. And I was like, fuck you, bro, did I ask your goddamned opinion?

 

But again, I digress.

 

KTIDE was playing Sarah McLachlan. I know you’re not supposed to like her. She’s wimpy as fuck, but fact is I do like her. I like her a lot. I like her depth, you know, her meaning. They were playing “Adia” when we pulled back into the dirt parking lot. And I just knew.

 

I just knew.

 

But when it happened, we were both surprised. Surprised in that way of well, I expected it, but now that it’s here, I’m kind of like fucking amazed. We were doing shots. We weren’t fucking around. We were laughing about front of house, how they basically fold napkins and take shots. “Back of house,” I said. “That’s where it’s at.”

 

“Yeah,” she said, and barely suppressed a burp. We both laughed.

 

I don’t know if I kissed her or she kissed me. I only know that one moment we were laughing and the next we were making out. I was still dating Kwan at the time. But it wasn’t going well. And we weren’t exclusive. I wonder if one had something to do with the other. Then I had my hands on her tits. I hadn’t done that since junior high. I’d always known I was gay.

 

“Oh, shit,” she said, pulling away. “Does that mean we’re not doing any more shots?”

 

It felt like she was in a rush to get naked. I wasn’t feeling like that. It had been a hard six months. I’d lost my grandma, I’d lost my emotional support animal. Jake was everything to me, goddamned Pit Bull mix. I became one of those people who threw myself into work. Whatever I could do around Saint Orres, I did it. Rosemary treated me like family. I needed that. Family didn’t mean perfection, didn’t mean I was the saint of the clan. It just meant that I belonged somewhere, anywhere.

 

“Hey,” I said. “Hold up.”

 

She blinked at me. Did I hurt her? I didn’t want to hurt her. She was cute. I didn’t even know how much I liked her, but I still didn’t want to cause her pain.

 

“It’s just,” she said, “I’m still kind of suffering from what happened to me a few years ago.”

 

That’s how I found out about Damian. How he got her pregnant and then acted as if he’d never known her to begin with. How she had an abortion because there was no other choice. How did didn’t cry on the table, didn’t cry at home, only cried months later when there was nothing else left to do. And then she left, moved to California, started over again. As if you could just do that. As if you could leave what you’d done, who you were, behind.

 

It’s a script. Life is a script. We played it out the way it was written. Afterward we lay on my couch, spent, stunned. “Well,” she said, “that’s where the shots took us.”

 

And we laughed. It’s what you did when you didn’t know what else to say, weren’t sure what else to do. I probably should have kissed her, at least held her hand. Instead I just stroked her hair in this confused way. I mean, what the fuck now?