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I was both astonished and instantly jealous. She was pretty, like Bella. Coy, flirtatious. I don’t know what I was expecting from the chick who had abandoned her baby. An ogre? A drug addict or a woman who wore her callous bitchiness on her face. Not like any other twenty-something girl with long hair and contoured cheeks. She was the reason Cain sat in the bar night after night. Which made her powerful and I resented that. My emotions all rose and collided and I started to ask Cain what that meant, how he felt, but at that moment I heard a scream and turned to see Bella throw up all over Kennedy. It was like The Exorcist. It shot out full force. It was Kennedy screaming in horror.
I stood up but Bella was already running to the restroom. I accidentally bumped into a guy.
“Whoa,” he said, reaching out to steady me.
I tried to move to the right to get past him but he moved to the right as well. Then we both moved to the left. He laughed. “We’re dancing.”
“Sorry,” I said with an automatic polite smile. But then I realized I had forgotten my purse so I sat back down briefly to snag it from under my chair.
The guy started to move on past our table, giving Cain a glance.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” Cain asked the guy, who looked startled.
I was startled too. I’d never seen him get jealous before. “He just glanced over here,” I said. “Calm down.”
“I’m not going to calm down. What are you doing with my girlfriend?” Cain asked him.
“Nothing,” the guy said, shaking his head. “Jesus, man.”
I felt guilty that we had stayed there, at the bar where his brother worked. But then I realized I couldn’t take responsibility for that. It had been his choice to come here in the first place and his choice to stay even after seeing Ali. “Cain. It’s fine. Now let me go see if Bella is okay. She clearly needs to be taken home.”
He ignored me. “Do you want to fuck her, is that it?” Cain asked the guy, his voice steely. He stood up, knocking the chair back. It tipped precariously, but righted itself.
The guy was already walking away but he paused with a scoff. “Dude, your girlfriend isn’t that hot. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.”
The disdainful tone of his voice shocked me. I felt my cheeks heat with embarrassment. I could feel eyes on us, the stare of the curious, the judgmental. There was no way Ali could have heard this conversation from where she was at the bar but when I glanced over I saw her watching us, murmuring to her friend behind her hand.
I was the first one to admit I wasn’t a traditional college girl, and my goal was not to enter a room and have every man’s eyes on me. But no one likes to be told they’re irrelevant.
“What did you say?” Cain asked. His voice was low, edgy. Nasty.
I didn’t know this Cain and I didn’t like him. “Sit down, Cain,” I told him in a low voice. “It’s not a big deal.” For whatever reason I was afraid, not used to violence or being a problem-solver. He was going to start an actual fight with this guy for an accidental bump that was half my fault. It was ridiculous. Maybe it was admirable that he wanted to defend me, except that I knew that wasn’t what this was about. It was about him being pissed off about Ali being in the bar.
His outrage had nothing to do with me.
Which made me feel even more irrelevant.
He reached down and picked up his glass and took a sloppy swallow. He wiped his mouth and slammed the glass back down so hard I jumped. Then he turned and grabbed the guy by the shirt. “Say that to my face, motherfucker.”
I grabbed my purse off the floor and slung the strap over my shoulder. Bella needed to be my concern, not his histrionics. “Bella needs me,” I said, my voice louder than I intended. I tried to lower it, but I was too angry, too hurt. I dug in my pocket for my phone so I could call a ride for Bella.
Cain whirled. “I need you!” he shouted, his face furious.
What the hell? I had a horrifying feeling I might cry and there was no way I wanted him to see that.
Without any warning, he flipped the table onto its side with a huge crash and a nasty curse. Startled, I jumped back with a gasp as my beer went flying and sprayed all down the front of me. For a second I was too stunned to move or speak. I stood there blinking, the front of my top damp and sticking to my skin.
I’m no stranger to being singled out in attempts to humiliate me. Kids love to do that to the smart girl, the weirdo who had to sort her graham crackers by genus and species. I would look up to find all the eyes on me, the snickers, the laughter. I got used to it, and though it stung as a kid, it almost never bothered me anymore as an adult.
But this was attention I didn’t want. Attention I didn’t deserve.
“Fuck you!” Cain said to me. “Go to your sister. Go home to your big fucking house and your easy life.”
They weren’t the worst things he could have said to me. He didn’t slash me personally. He was just lashing out. But I was standing in a bar in a town where the locals all knew Cain hooked up with tourist girls on a regular basis, and most likely never went off on any of them. Just me. I could feel the weight of their stares, curious gazes silently observing. I could see the rage in Cain’s eyes, the fury he felt at his ex-girlfriend and his brother.
Who were most likely observing the whole thing.
And none of this was about me.
