Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
She squeezes me back. “Take care of yourself.”
“Always!” I say brightly, nodding and smiling hard as I pull back and wave, walking away.
I don’t want her to see I’m just walking across the street to the bar, so I turn the corner like I’m walking back to my car. I didn’t even bring my car; I took the train. But I hang out there for five minutes, then peek around the corner until I figure she’s cleared out. I don’t see her anywhere.
Then I book it across the street, ignoring a car that honks at me, and slip into the bar.
I’m huffing for breath as I land on a barstool.
There’s barely anyone else in here. Probably because, yeah, it’s one p.m. on a Tuesday. But it’s five o’clock somewhere, yada yada, and the tequila in my bloodstream hasn’t nearly got me numb enough to handle this fucking bullshit day yet.
For fuck’s sake. For a second back there, I was actually contemplating motherhood. I shudder.
“Two shots of whatever will have me unable to feel my legs the fastest.” I wink at the bartender.
He’s a guy in his fifties who brightens as he tosses a bar towel over his shoulder and starts my way. In the old days, I would’ve started immediately flirting and trying to get him to abandon his bar for five minutes to fuck me in the bathroom.
Once, when a steadfast bartender refused to abandon his register and top-shelf liquor, I snuck around the bar top and gave him a blowy while he kept working.
I stretch my neck against the itch working its way underneath my skin.
Bane might’ve given me permission, as it were, to get it outside our marriage, but knowing how good it is with him, I don’t see how trying to get fucked at some ratty bar by some shitty old bartender or another dumb fuck also getting drunk here at this time of day would feel like anything but cheating. It’d be cheap and stupid and make me feel worse than I already do.
You’re gonna grow up ‘n be a slag just like yur mam, ain’t ya, Moira? C’mon, flip up your skirt and show us your fanny!
Nothing but a two-bit slut.
I could never be a mother. Why would I ever pass down this curse to a kid? I’d be an embarrassment to them. What would their pious father tell them when I ended up in a place like this, fucking around again? Because I always will end up back here. Who the fuck am I kidding?
“Gotta say, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” the bartender says, pouring my shots and placing them on the bar in front of me. “What brings you in, beautiful?”
I down the shots, one after the other, ignoring him. Fire burns my throat as my eyes water and my thoughts spiral darker.
I ruin everything.
It’s what I do.
I look around the bar. There’s a younger guy who looks about my age in the back corner, nursing a beer with several empties on the table, thumbing through something on his phone.
My stomach feels sour from the shots. It would be easy to walk back there and sit across from him. Make small talk until he got in a better mood, then ask him if he wanted a good time. I could probably get it done before Mads even showed up.
I squeeze my eyes shut and pull out my phone, staring at her message.
Why does she want to even meet, anyway?
I didn’t know she could be out and about in the daytime. That’s new. I try to distract myself by wondering about it, but my eyes keep sliding toward the guy at the back table.
I jerk my gaze back to my phone and text Bane instead.
Me: What are you wearing?
Me: I’m dripping wet, thinking of your huge cock. I want to tie you to the bed and milk you until you beg me for mercy.
I hit send and smile. It helps a little to think about how in control I am in those moments he lets me take the reins.
But it’s a short-lived feeling.
Because he doesn’t text back.
I just keep staring and staring at the phone and…
Nothing.
It’s just like when he didn’t look up at me this morning when I dressed all pretty.
Like an empty gulf is opening up in my stomach where moments before I felt full and happy. But now there’s just nothing but unbearable, crushing sadness.
And the itching. I slam my phone down on the counter.
“That kind of day?” the bartender says sympathetically, pouring me another shot. His sympathy’s not real. I know the look in the eye of a man who’s hoping to get laid. He probably gets off in an hour and is hoping to take me with him.
Bane’s the only man who’s ever looked at me with anything real.