Chapter Eighteen
Jo
Ashley Biernacki didn’t recognize me at first, though, in this state, I suspected she might not have recognized her own mother. I planted myself in the chair next to her, rested my chin in my palm, and waited to be noticed. Ashley leaned over the bar, gesticulating to a bartender who was pointedly ignoring her.
“Excuse me,” Ashley said, not giving up. “Excuse me, I need another drink? I spilled mine?”
“Ashley,” I said firmly when it became clear I might be waiting awhile.
Ashley blinked up at me. Now that I was sitting next to her, I could see that her eyes were glassy with something more than just alcohol.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” she said blearily. “I’ve had too much to drink, and now I’m seeing things.” She reached out suddenly, and I dodged, wincing when the tip of her sticky finger brushed my cheek. “Weird. I was just thinking about you, and now you’re here.”
I swung around to make eye contact with Dahlia, who gave me a wide-armed gesture that I translated to meanWhat the fuck?asshe stood. I shrugged, then turned back to Ashley, who was staring very intensely at me.
“You need to go home,” I informed her. “Did you come here with anyone?”
Ashley dissolved into a fit of giggles.
“Come with anyone? That, my dear Josephine, is the entire point,” she said. She leaned in conspiratorially, bathing me in breath that smelled strongly of rum, then in a stage whisper said, “I don’t think that’s going to happen, though. I’m a bit of a mess.”
“That’s an understatement,” I muttered. I made a point not to ask her why she was hoping to pick up a random man in a bar before noon; what went on between her and Ezra was none of my business. What mattered to me was that she got home. “Do you have your phone? Can I call someone to pick you up?”
“Sure,” Ashley said, handing over her phone. Then, inexplicably, her eyes filled with tears. “It’s the least I could do.”
I definitely wasn’t going to ask what she meant by that. This version of Ashley Biernacki’s tears was defanged, too red-nosed and snotty to get me in trouble, but they still made me skittish; I didn’t care to stick around for long enough to be made into her aggressor again. Thankfully, her phone still recognized her face. I tapped into her contacts.
“Oh my god, she’s crying,” Dahlia, who had materialized behind me, said. She placed one hand on Ashley’s back to rub it in soothing circles and braced the other on the back of my stool. “So... who’s this?”
“My childhood bully,” I deadpanned. Dahlia’s jaw dropped. To Ashley: “Where do you live? Is there anyone you want me to call?”
Ashley wiped her face with a napkin, smearing her mascara around her eyes.
“I deserve that,” she said in lieu of an answer. “I was so mean to you. Why was I so mean to you? You’re so nice. And you got soooo pretty. Eventually. Like an angel.” Her lower lip wobbled. “You know he calls you that, right? Hisangel.”
I snapped my fingers in Ashley’s face. “Focus, girl. What is your address?”
But Ashley was too far gone, her sobs transforming into absent-minded giggles. Exasperated, I made eye contact with the bartender, who was shaking up a cocktail and pointing with her eyes toward the door.
Shit.
The knot in my throat felt like one of the vegetable pills Renata had once tried to get me on in medical school, but what else was there to do? I scrolled toEin her contacts, found Ezra’s name, and tapped “call.”
The phone rang four times. My heart had settled after my brief exchange with my mother, but it was off to the races again in anticipation of one with Ezra. I rehearsed what I would say in my head.Keep it to the point, I thought.No small talk. Just a location, a time, and then hand Ashley over like bitter divorcés exchanging their kid on a Saturday morning.And, best case, Ezra wouldn’t pick up at all, and I could say that I’d tried my best, throw Ashley into an Uber with a twenty-dollar bill folded into her palm and whatever showed up as “home” in her map app set as her destination, then send her on her way.
“Hello?” Ezra said. “Look, Ashley—”
I’d almost forgotten what Ezra sounded like, the thirty-pack-year smoker rasp of his voice that had always added an edge to his boyish charm. I’d heard that voice almost every day, on voicenotes he recorded for me when he was shooting overseas, snickering next to me during one of his dad’s self-important speeches at a company release, through my television, professing love to an actress I knew he couldn’t stand.
It had been easy, in his absence, to say that I was over Ezra. But if that were true, why had hearing him sayhername make my throat constrict?
“Ashley is currently completely trashed and alone at Early Bird in West Loop,” I said. “Can you please come pick her up? I don’t know where she lives, and right now, neither does she.”
Ezra didn’t say anything for a moment, and I steeled myself at the potency of his pause.
“...Jo?” he finally said. “Jo, what are you—”
“Don’t worry about what I’m doing,” I said quickly. “And come get your girl.”
