Page 38 of Liquid Courage
“Maybe I’ll join you now that gay marriage is legal.”
“Gay marriageandgay divorce.” The guy shrugged. “It’s true equality, huh?”
I’m sitting here thinking about marrying a woman I met last Wednesday.It hadn’t even been a week yet. And to think, if Vivian hadn’t come back to the bar, and if Kat hadn’t happened to have been there, last night would have never happened.It’s fate. It’s gotta be fate.Kat continued to grin like the biggest idiot in the world. She might as well have been.
How did she make it until her official break before texting Vivian for the first time that day?“Hope you’re thinking of me as much as I’m thinking about you.”
She got a response before she went back to work.“I’ve thought of nothing else since I got here. It’s becoming a problem, because all I can think about is your pussy.”
“Just my pussy?”
“And your ass. You have a nice ass.”
“Hey, Kat!” Stewart yelled across the cavernous room. “The Randy Snailis in!”
She spent the rest of her day flirting with Vivian via text and whistling her way through work. Kat had no idea how long this serendipitous life would last, but she was content to ride high on the wave until it crested and crashed against the beach.
The bar was closed on Mondays. Kat wanted to spend the evening with Vivian, but the sweet woman reported that she had long promised to hang out with her sister that night.“I’ll send you some selfies to tie you over,”Vivian promised when Kat was on her way home early that afternoon.“Maybe I’ll see you Wednesday.”
A whole week since they met. Their one-week anniversary. That’s how it worked, right? Romantic!
Get a grip, stupid.Kat kept telling herself that she needed to come back down to Earth, but it sounded so overrated. Was it too much to ask that she enjoy her life for once? It was one thing to make it week to week feeling good enough to get out of bed and go to work. Quite another to have something – or someone – tolivefor.
Damn. She really did need to get a grip. At this rate, she would be confessing her undying love to Vivian the next time they met up, and send her running.
You’re pussy drunk. Get over it.Maybe she would sober herself up with some take-out and downloading a new game on Steam. It had been a while since she distracted herself with computer games. Wasn’t there a winter sale going on right now?I wonder if Vivi plays video games…Damnit!
Kat pulled her keys out when she was only a block away from her apartment. Shower, take-out, games. In that order. Maybe a beer to mellow her out.
Someone waited for her at the top of her stairs.
Someone she really,reallydid not need to see right now.
“What the fuck?” Kat thought she was seeing the Ghost of Lovers Past lurking on her doormat. Or at least that was the kind of doom Shari usually brought in her wake. “The fuck are you doing here?”
She remained in the middle of the stairs while Shari kicked away from the door and put her hands back in her jacket pockets. The heartbreaker was as beautiful as she had been the day Kat met her – and the day Shari broke a piece of her spirit. Those dark curls creating a cacophonic siren’s song was what had drawn Kat in all those years ago. The pouty lips, cat-like eyes, golden skin and ladylike style was what got her into bed more than once. That’s what dreweverywoman into Shari’s toxic clutches. Vivian had basically admitted as much. Shari represented the dreams of every lesbian who dared to believe she could have a girlfriend who looked like she stepped right out of a magazine spread.
Shari was a little older now, but only Kat could see the differences. Nobody would guess Shari was in her mid-30s. Did that make her more sympathetic, or more pathetic? Because someone older than Kat should’ve known better than to be an epic assbutt to young women.
Kat met a vacant stare. But it was the same stare Shari employed when she was about to castrate some poor soul beneath her heels.Goodbye, self-esteem. The wraith of demolished dreams has arrived.Of course! What perfect timing!
“I came to talk to you,” Shari said. “Would you have some time to chat over tea?”
Tea. Probably made her feel sophisticated. There was one place in town one would go to for “tea,” as opposed to coffee, and it reeked of Shari’s brand of affluent leanings. Yet there was one thing Kat cared more about. “How the hell did you know I’d be home around this time?”
“Someone told me that you worked down at the docks. My brother’s a crab fisherman, so I did the math. Honestly, you should be more impressed that I remembered where you live.”
“Hasn’t changed in a few years,” Kat admitted. “Still doesn’t explain why you’re here.”
“I’d rather talk over drinks.”
Sighing, Kat relented. “Will you leave me the hell alone after this?”
“Sure. Let’s say I will.”
They went back down the stairs and stood a body’s length apart in the alleyway. At least Shari hadn’t come by to flirt with Kat. That was evident when she kept her nosed turned up and her hands firmly in her deep pockets. Kat never had the chance to change her clothes. She must’ve stunk of dead fish.
Fitting.
