Page 20 of Rooke
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Jake looks at me like I’m completely out of my mind when I explain what happened after work. I sit at the bar of the Beekman Hotel, stabbing a cocktail stick against the cool, polished marble, and he paces back and forth, trying not to laugh by the looks of things.
“You?Youwent to a book club? Forromancenovels?”
“I did.”
“I knew you were up to no good the other day. I fuckingknewit.”
“All right, all right. Fuck you, man. No need to enjoy this quite so much. Give me another double.” I slide my glass across the bar at him. He shakes his head, grinning, as he up-ends a whiskey bottle into my empty glass.
“You’re a sly dog, dude. So what kind of baggage are we talking about here? You said she had ‘stuff’ going on. ‘Stuff’ is never good.”
“Her kid died.” I throw back the whiskey quickly, slamming the glass down on the counter. I don’t want to look at Jake. I’ve already anticipated the expression on his face, and I don’t want to have to deal with it. Or defend the course of action I’m already planning out in my head.
“Rooke…”
“I know, okay. It’s fucked up.She’sprobably fucked up.”
“How did she tell you? About the kid?”
“She didn’t. I looked her up online. It was all over the internet.”
“Nope. No fucking way. You are never going to see this woman again, dude. She’s too old for you, and she hasn’t even told you about some majorly dark shit in her past. I can’t let you do it. Walk away. Seriously, look at me. I’m not fucking joking.Walk. A. Way.”
“Okay.” I give him a sickly sweetfuck-yousmile.
“Goddamnit. You’re such a bastard. Why are you even interested? You’ve got chicks slinging pussy at you from every direction every time you walk out the front door of the house.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that a pussy that’s beingslungat me is pussy I might not want to enjoy?” I tap my glass, asking for yet another refill.
“So ungrateful. Some of us can’t get any pussy, slung or otherwise. And you’re out there, chasing down unobtainable, damaged pussy. That’s pretty fucking rough, dude. And, I mean, how? She told you it’s never gonna happen. And you’re still planning on going back to some sexy book club for desperate housewives? You’re fucked in the head. I don’t know how you can even pretend to read that shit.”
“I’m not pretending. I’m reading it.”
Jake steps back from the bar and holds his hands up, shaking his head again. “Do you need an intervention? Because I can totally organize one. It’s my favorite fucking thing to do. I promise, I’ll make it a good one.”
“What’s wrong with a dude reading a romance novel?”
“Everythingis wrong with a…” He trails off, looking around, as if he’s searching for someone to back him up. Sadly for Jake, the hotel bar is deserted. “I just want you to listen to yourself for a moment. Listen really hard. You’re talking about a thirty-four-year-old woman. A woman who’s been married. To someone else. She had someone else’s kid, and that kid fuckingdied. How can you think chasing after this person is a good idea? I am really trying to understand your thought process, but it’s just completely and utterly fucking beyond me. You gotta help me out here, man.”
I stare down at my hands, clasped around the rocks glass I’m holding, which seems to be lit up from the inside with luminous, glowing amber liquid. “It’s simple,” I tell him. “Thereisno thought process. It’s just what’s happening, and I’m okay with it.”
TWELVE
LA CUCINA DEL DIAVOLO
SASHA
I’m nervous. I’m actually weirdly nervous. I may have been reading romance novels for years now, but it’s been so long since I really thought about my own love life. This is by no means an ideal date situation; after all, my date for the evening is only twenty-three years old. Honestly, this whole thing feels like a bit of a joke. I feel like this is a prank that’s being played on me, and for some reason I’m actually going along with it, even though I can see how ridiculous it all is.
I pick out a gold sequin dress and my favorite black heels, and I apply enough makeup to make a Kardashian proud. I wear some gold hoop earrings, surprising myself when I find that the holes haven’t closed up—it’s been over a year since I remember wearing jewelry—and as I survey myself in front of the full-length mirror in my bedroom, I’m shocked. Looking at my reflection, I see how little I’ve changed in the past five years. I’m a different person since Christopher died. Beyond different. I’m not even the same species of human being I used to be before the accident. It seems odd that I should appear on the outside, for all intents and purposes, like I haven’t even aged let alone transformed in the most monumental of ways.
I slowly brush a loose curl back behind my ear, studying myself. What does Rooke see when he looks at me? A stranger to win over? An older woman to charm? A challenge to overcome? A broken shell of a human being, easy to take advantage of? I don’t even know what he sees, but his interest seems out of the ordinary.
I do something then that makes me question my own sanity. I head downstairs, directly to the liquor cabinet that Andrew always used to keep locked, and I take out a bottle of vodka. I crack the lid, hold the cool, beveled glass rim of the bottle to my lips, and I drink. This isn’t just a shot of Dutch courage. This isn’t even two or three shots of Dutch courage. This is a defibrillator to my heart, the alcohol burning intensely as it flows down my throat, gathering in a pool of fire in the pit of my stomach. I’m good at drinking like this. I’m really fucking good at it. When Christopher died, I became an expert, in fact. For long months, I would stand in the small downstairs bathroom with a bottle of something strong and inappropriate pressed to my mouth, chugging back the liquid. Andrew never said anything. He never remarked on the fact that I was literally stumbling through my own life like a disheveled, half-dead stranger. A padlock simply showed up on the liquor cabinet door one day, and that was his none-too-subtle hint that I had taken things too far.
The thing about Andrew was that he never thought outside the box, though. Alcohol lives in the liquor cabinet, ergo if he locks the cabinet, I can’t drink anything. He didn’t take into consideration that alcohol could be kept in a pantry. Or in a shoebox. Or under the kitchen sink, where he was never likely to look.
