AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Rachel
The taxi circled round and round Dublin city.
The rain slashed at the windshield as city block after city block passed in smears of grey. I spent the afternoon hunched over in the backseat, stretching to keep my cell phone plugged into the USB port on the dash. The cabbie sent me the occasional questioning glance as the meter ticked up and up, but I just shooed him with a hand or gave him another nod.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but that’s our earliest flight available.”
“I need to get out sooner.”
“I’m sorry, but—”
“What about standby?”
“There’s really no chance until tomorrow morning. Again I do—”
Then I was on hold with another airline.
“Tomorrow.”
“Nothing earlier?”
“The earliest is tomorrow.”
Round and round Dublin we drove. Airline after airline I called. All the same red lights. All the same answers. All the same streaks of rain. All the same truth: I couldn’t run. Not yet anyhow.
“We have one more seat on a flight tonight—”
“I’ll take it.”
“Are you sure, ma’am?”
“Yes, yes, book it.”
A little longer. A little longer to run. To escape. I took a taxi round and round Dublin. I ended up, of all places, at The Jar.
It was still an hour or so before opening but “Thor” let me in. Okay, fine, his name was Noah as far as I could remember.
I was fairly certain Noah was afraid of me. In better times I might have taken it as a compliment. But it wasn’t better times. In all probability he just thought I was crazy. A mad woman. Just another one of Mason’s scorned Miss Last Nights.
I guess I couldn’t really blame him. I must have looked like an absolute mess. If I dared to lift my chin enough to check my appearance in the grimy mirror peeking out between the line of liquor bottles, I would have been a little wary of that woman as well. Hair frizzed from the rain. Messy from the sheets. Makeup smeared from the humidity. Patchy from the sweat that covered my brow, covered my body while my fingers twisted in Mason’s hair. Clothes rumpled and unmatched. Buttons done wrong. Sweater on backwards.
And my eyes… I couldn’t imagine what they looked like. Dull and empty. Vacant. Not angry. Just…nothing. No me left at all. Rachel…gone.
Noah, as he pushed a beer down the bar top toward me with his fingertips, wanting (understandably) to stay as far away as possible.
“What’s all of this?” I asked, nodding my head toward the staff who was working on setting up a small stage over by the DJ booth. Two girls, one with auburn hair and the other with black curls that made mine look limp and lifeless in comparison, were hanging a bright red sequined fabric across two poles. All around the stage were boxes with mics and cords, costumes and go-go boots, instruments and batons, lyric books and fire extinguishers.
“Talent Night,” Noah answered. “It always brings in a rather amusing crowd. We provide a bunch of costumes and props and shite so people who swear they don’t have a talent can remember their talent after a pint or two and still get on up there to give it a lash.”
I watched him smile at the girl with the auburn hair. His eyes followed the swish of her ponytail as she stretched to pin the sequined fabric in place. I heard her laugh. Saw the reaction in his face as he heard it, too. An ache bloomed in my stomach and I drowned it with a big swig of beer.
“You know,” Noah said, looking across the bar at me, “I don’t know what you and Mason are up to, but if you want to—”
“I don’t have a talent,” I interrupted curtly.
Noah poured me a shot and nudged it closer with a wink. I rolled my eyes, but took the shot nevertheless. With my suitcase in one hand and my beer in the other I found the darkest, quietest corner of the bar. The one with the stickiest tabletop. The one with the wobbliest chair. The one with the column positioned awkwardly in front of it. I didn’t want to hear laughter. See smiles. Sense love like a stirring breeze.
After my second beer I decided to call Tim. Maybe it should have told me something that it was only once I was a little tipsy that I even thought of my fiancé. Before that there had only been one man in my mind. One face behind my eyelids. One voice I mistook Noah’s for time and time again…
