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“To outcasts and black sheep, Ms. Barrow.”
After taking a long drink, I watch as she relaxes her shoulders. She looks carefree, more like the woman I know—the woman I spend time with on Saturday afternoons.
“You’re not getting out of the love story, by the way,” she says, taking another sip.
I look down at my drink and wish I could smile, but the memories aren’t good. I spin my glass around twice, watching the ice cubes melt and hear them jangle together. Her eyes are on me. I don’t have to look at her to feel them, but she remains quiet. I finish the liquor then tap the empty glass on the bar twice to signal the bartender that I need another.
When I’m ready, I look at Charlie and start to talk. “Her name was Stephanie Dardusko. Wow. I haven’t said that name out loud in years. It still makes me chuckle. Sort of how you amuse me on a daily basis.”
“I hope you aren’t teasing me,” she says, faux-pouting. “I’m vulnerable tonight.”
“I thought teasing was all we did? Teasing is what we’re good at.”
“Well then. I’ll take that as a compliment, and by the way, change the subject much?”
“Fine, fine,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I met Stephanie one summer when I was in college. I came home to the city for summer break. I was partying too hard, but you’ve heard about that. I was drunk and horny, and Stephanie was, too.” I set my drink down and turn toward Charlie. “That’s real attractive, huh? Drunk and horny. Can you tell we both had high standards back then?” Remembering what an idiot I was embarrasses me even now.
“I’m not here to judge you.” The way she says that makes me believe her. She’s here to support me, to get to know me better, to know the man that all of these stories created. “How old were you?”
“Twenty. We hooked up, and the summer passed in a drunken haze. We partied in the Hamptons, at the newest nightclubs, the hottest restaurants, and we had sex . . . a lot of sex, everywhere. We were oblivious to the rest of the world, so we did stupid stuff. The problem is that summer ended, and I had to return to reality, to school. She came with me and lived in my apartment that year. She was just there doing nothing but drinking, continuing the party that we started in Manhattan months earlier.”
I rub my eyes, realizing this is affecting me even more than I thought it would. Maybe I haven’t put my own ghosts to bed.
“We were together almost ten months before we had our first fight, and when it did happen, it was bad. I was too sober and she was too drunk. She was yelling before I even walked in the door. I could hear her screaming all the way down the hall. I thought she was cheating on me with someone, but when I opened the door, it was just her. She was belligerent and throwing things. Broke all kinds of stuff. Shattered a picture of me and my buddies. Destroyed some of my textbooks. She just went crazy.”
I pause to take a deep breath, the image of her freaking out running through my head.
Charlie’s hand rubs my back as she asks, “Are you all right? We don’t have to talk about this, if you don’t want.”
“I want you to know all of this, everything about me, even the bad.” I turn on the stool toward her and finish my story. “I remember noticing how beautiful she was in her rage. It was the most passion I’d seen from her in months. That’s when I realized how bad she’d gotten. I didn’t complain because I loved her. I had fallen in love with her that year. I liked having her around, having her at my apartment. I liked coming back from class and seeing her there waiting for me. I liked all the wrong things about her. I couldn’t be someone’s entire world, because it sets them up for disappointment. When she flipped out, I saw the truth. I saw who she really was and how bad she’d gotten. I think I had seen it before that night, but didn’t want to admit it.”
I was more screwed than I knew at the time. Later that night, I found the remainder of a line of cocaine on my government textbook. Now that I think of it, that’s kind of ironic. Very anti-establishment of her. It was like her way of telling the world to screw off. Next to the cocaine, I found bank receipts. I guess that was her way of screwing me over.”
“She stole money from you?”
“Over the course of ten months, she took just over fifteen grand without me knowing. It was from my private account, not my parents’. In high school, I never spent much money when my friends and I went out. They all had money, so I saved mine.”
