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Mason
Now…
I sank against the couch and the world spun wildly around me.
The low lights of the bar expanded into starbursts that twisted like pinwheels as I turned my head. The last few stragglers before the inevitable last call all had at least two heads as they bent over cheap pints of beer or fingerprint-smudged shot glasses that had seen a refill or two too many. Not that I was judging. Like I said, my own world was spinning. In more ways than one.
I rolled my head to the right and narrowed my eyes at Rachel as she clumsily scratched at the label of her beer bottle. Her hair was tucked behind her ear so I could see the fullness of her cheek, the softness of her chin. In the dim light and in the drunkenness that was making it hard to focus, I saw the woman I fell in love with all those years ago. I saw her laughing. Saw her dragging me behind her to that theatre. Saw her switching on that lamp in her dressing room.
But no matter how hard I stared, eyes all squinted, vision all wobbly, I couldn’t see her extending a hand toward mine. I couldn’t see her saying “Yes” in a white dress. I couldn’t see her in my arms as I carried her back down the aisle.
I wanted to remember that moment. I wanted to have it forever, like Rachel had. Or at least like Rachel said she had.
“Why now?” I asked over the low blare of the single saxophonist in the practically unlit corner.
On the couch beside me Rachel looked up, rather startled. She was just as wasted as I was. If not more. Had she forgotten that I was there? Was it that easy?
“What?” she said, a little too loudly.
She laughed a little. Hiccupped. One of us was going to make a mistake tonight. That was for damned sure.
“Why now?” I asked again.
When had my hand come to rest against her knee? When had she moved in so close that her sweet whiskey-stained breath blew around my neck? When had her lips become so swollen, so wet, so alluring as she looked up at me with wide eyes?
“Why now what?” she shouted (there was no need to shout).
I knew I should scoot over. Should take my hand from her knee. Look at anything, anything other than her lips.
But there was my shoulder leaning against hers. My hand shifting up her thigh. My gaze fixed, absolutely fixed on Rachel’s mouth in the low light.
“Why a divorce now?” I asked. “If you’ve known that we were married all these years like you say, then why all of a sudden do you need a divorce? Want a divorce?”
Why not when we first woke up the next morning, whatever morning it was of that whirlwind week? Why not before she left forever? Why not any time at all if she knew where to find me? There was a stab of pain in my chest upon that realisation: she knew where to find me. All this time she knew. And she hadn’t come looking. Not like I had.
So why was I still moving closer to her? Why was my body doing what my heart knew it shouldn’t?
“I don’t know,” Rachel said, for a moment averting her eyes, scratching at the condensation-soaked label, bouncing her leg, the one against mine. “I didn’t need one until now.”
“What does that mean?”
Rachel licked her lips and looked back at me.
“I have a new role I’m up for,” she said. “A kind of big new role.”
“So?”
Rachel looked a little indignant. She roused herself slightly. Sat a little taller against the old leather cushions of the couch. Separated herself from me. Something that I wasn’t able to do.
“So,” she said, “it’s not like I could go on being a showgirl in Vegas, you know? I always wanted more. I always had bigger dreams than that.”
Bigger dreams than me. Was that what she was trying to say and unable to?
“And the girl who is hitched to some guy in Ireland, the result of a crazy, drunken weekend on the strip, is perfectly fine for the role of a burlesque dancer. But for this new role, this bigger role, this really fucking important role, well, he— they expect more.”
I was feeling a little indignant myself. Or maybe I was just feeling defensive. Maybe I was too drunk to tell the difference.
“So, what? You’re going to completely change for this role of yours? Erase all of who you are for it?” I said, scooting away myself this time. Crossing my arms. Getting angrier than I would have thought possible with this much alcohol in my veins. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
