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“Noah,” Mason said, sinking back into his stool to drag his fingers wearily through his hair, “this is Rachel…”
Noah set two shot glasses in front of us. “What’s the craic, Rachel?”
“…my wife.”
Noah’s eyebrows disappeared into his wavy blond hair. “Oh. Right.” He took the shot glasses back and replaced them with full-sized glasses.
I pushed mine away and exhaled irritably.
“Well, then,” Noah said awkwardly in the heavy silence, “I think I’ll just…hmm, that sounds like the, er, phone in the office? I better go get it. It’s probably Aubrey or my accountant…or someone who needs me for a very long time.”
Noah disappeared back through the door he came from. Seconds later there came a blaring of Irish music that made my nails dig into my palms.
Mason poured himself a drink, a full four fingers. He was about to pour one for me when I pushed the bottle away. Whiskey sloshed onto the divorce papers and I cursed. Mason didn’t seem to give a damn as I flapped the wet papers over the edge of the bar.
“Mason, we don’t need to make this complicated,” I said and then added after glancing over at him, “or difficult.”
“You should have had that drink,” he muttered.
“All I need is your signature,” I told him.
I didn’t tell him that I didn’t drink whiskey anymore. Not since Vegas.
“Today isn’t really a great day for me,” Mason said.
I rolled my eyes. Like it was a great day for me?
“Then let me make it better,” I tried. “Sign these papers and I’ll leave you all alone. Then you can get back to whatever it was—whoever it was—that you planned on doing today.”
Mason finished his drink and poured another. He poured slowly. Not rushed at all. I realised that my toe was tapping on the footrest of the bar stool. Being angry with Mason had distracted me. Given me a shot of adrenaline. Numbed me almost.
But now I was coming down. Now I was faced with reality. I was there. On a bar stool. Next to Mason. The man I’d loved. The man I thought I’d spend my life with. The man who I’d apparently married.
I tried to remember that woman’s ass. The one that had been against Mason’s cheek. I tried to remember it and hold onto it. In my mind, I tried to think of it naked. Of Mason’s hand on it. Of his fingers digging into its soft flesh.
I tried to remember my anger. My hurt. I tried to hold onto it. That adrenaline. That numbing rush.
But the bar was so silent. It was too obvious that it was just him and me. And all I could remember was that bar in Vegas. His fingers around my wrist. His words on my heart. His eyes on mine.
“Can’t you just sign the damn papers, Mason?” I asked, my voice suddenly dry. My throat tight.
Mason was running his finger along the lip of his glass.
“No good.”
I scoffed. But it was just an act. I no longer had the indignation for it. The annoyance for it. It sounded hollow even to my own ears. An act. And not a good one.
“What do you mean ‘no good’?”
“It seems to be that you want to bother me with signing and I want to be bothered with drinking and those two things are opposed to one another.”
“So we’re at war then?” I said, remembering a different bar. A different time.
Mason’s eyes were on me in the mirror behind the bar. This was one was dirtier. Smokier. Smudged and covered in hasty rag streaks. But his eyes cut through it all. Cut through right to me. He smiled at me in the mirror.
“You think you’ll win?” I said to him.
His eyes on me were driving me crazier. It was making that anger, so bright and red and hot just seconds ago, feel like dying embers I couldn’t possibly hold onto. I wanted to jam the papers against his chest.
I also wanted him to jam me against his chest. Against the bar. To sign his name, but not on the papers. On me, with his tongue.
“I think I’ll take that drink,” I said, swallowing heavily.
Mason grinned and poured me two fingers of whiskey. Not enough, I was sure. Not nearly enough.
