Page 13 of Mourner for Hire
I can barely look at him, and I can hardly tell if my vision is blurring because of the tears pooling in my eyes or if it’s because I had way too much to drink. My head feels weighed down, and I rest it on his shoulder, attempting to breathe through the visceral shock of the memory. But when he wraps his arms around me, my emotional defiance breaks, my sadness cutting through the guard I’ve built around my trauma, and I start crying.
No, not just crying. Full-on heaving, sobbing.
“What happened? I’m sorry if I?—”
I shake my head, cutting him off. I know he’s about to apologize for kissing me, and the apology doesn’t need to be said. “No, you’re fine.”
“But you’re not.”
“Not usually,” I admit, wiping at my face, trying to be fine.
He laughs a little at this, tucking my hair behind my ear with a gentle and hesitant hand. Anxiety tingles over my skin—a warning flare—and I feel like I need to quickly be held together with duct tape so I don’t fall apart.
“Can you just hold me for a minute?”
“Yeah,” he starts hesitantly then softens. “As long as you need.”
I breathe in the smell of his soap and laundry detergent. The last thing I remember saying is, “You smell good for having a dog’s name.”
THREE
DOMINIC
My fingers dancealong the warm skin of her spine. My heart is softly drumming against her cheek, and I feel entirely content. It’s not every day an out-of-towner slips into my bar, gets drunk, cries, and winds up in my bed to just… snuggle.
She hums, nuzzling into the crook of my neck. I don’t want to wake her. Her presence is oddly comforting even if it is unfamiliar.
“Oh, shit!” She springs from the bed, grabbing her clothes off the floor and putting them on as quickly as possible, her gaze buried in the floor. “This is not me. I don’t do this. Oh my God! Who gets crazy drunk and sleeps with the bartender!”
“That’s what we call inside thoughts, Vada,” I say, my voice still sleepy.
Her jaw drops, and horror fills her eyes as she looks away. Her brown hair falls in her face, like a velvet curtain at the end of a show.
“You okay?” I ask.
“No,” she whisper-screams. “I have never had a one-night stand, but alas, here I am: absolutely mortified in this apartment above a bar I got wasted in last night then we made out and did God-knows-what after I… oh, God, Icried!”
“You did a lot more than cry,” I say. She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Headache?”
“You.” She points at me, her breath hissing through her teeth.
I throw my hands up as I sit back against the wrought-iron headboard. The cold metal digs into my bare back. “What?”
“Oh,” she breathes out, her head mechanically tilting like she’s possessed by the spawn of all her feminist rage. She grabs her dress off the floor and holds it up against her bra. “I can’t believe you would do this.”
“Do what?”
Now, listen, I know how it looks, but I figured she had some recollection of last night.
“Oh, how convenient for you to not remember either.” She hocks out the words like they’re made of bile.
“Vada, we didn’t sleep together.”
She freezes. I can see the cold prickle of embarrassment puncturing her angry expression. She looks around the room like she’s looking for evidence or clues to piece together her evening.
“You were upset, and we talked and cried—well, you cried. A lot. But it was fine. Then you just wanted me to hold you.”
“The details are fuzzy for me,” she confesses. She stares at me, her clothes a rumpled mess and her hair sticking up on one side with cheeks shiny and flushed from a night of crying. “Are you sure we didn’t sleep together?”
