The Bar
She decided to wait until 8pm. A few more sips of wine, a few more uncomfortable glances at her phone to see if he had texted, 15 more minutes of sitting at the bar feeling the familiar mix of hope and anxiety.
As she lifted her glass up to her mouth, pinching the stem between her manicured fingers, she tried to remember the last time she had felt like herself, the last time they had felt like them? Between the last 10 months and the massive void between reality and her own disbelief of what had happened she had never felt more adrift or like a shadow of her former self.
She glanced at her phone again. A notification from lululemon that her package had been delivered and that the waiting game was finally over, nothing from him. She shifted on the stool, right leg crossed over left, bare arms exposed under the thin material of her cute blouse, her favorite pair of jeans that were once snug in all the right places now fitting her like she fit into her life, awkwardly. Too short for her feet to reach the bottom bar of the stool, she was swinging her right foot ever so slightly, a thing she did when she felt exposed and small. He wouldn’t, she thought to herself. But then she caught herself midway through entertaining this certainty. Every time throughout the past year when she was certain she knew what he was going to do, what he was going to say, how he was going to respond she had been proven wrong. She realized as she sat on that bar stool that she had absolutely no idea if he would or wouldn’t show up. She didn’t even know where he was coming from, where he was living, how he was wearing his hair, if he was still trying to pull off that post break up beard. After they had separated and she had stopped by his friends house to drop off his mail and he opened the door it infuriated her when she saw it for the first time. She had asked him for years to grow it out, told him how sexy she thought men with beards were and he always told her that growing beards made his face itchy. She shrugged her shoulders slightly as she played this scene out in her mind, her asking, him withholding, her wanting, him refusing. It was really just another perfect example of how resistant he was to ever truly pleasing her or in his words, to giving in to her.
Uncrossing her legs she glanced at her phone again, five more minutes, 7h55. She would give him 5 more minutes and then she would pay her bill and leave. She would go home, she would pour herself another glass of wine from the opened bottle on the counter and that was as far as the plan got for the rest of her night. She looked up from her phone and woke up to the scene around her. A low lite bar, polished glass, yellow lights, bottles reflecting off the mirrors, reds and greens, blues and purples, pretty bottles of all shapes and sizes. She took her hand from the stem of her glass and traced her palm along the surface of the well worn wood at the edge of the bar. The feeling of the wood beneath her hand allowed her to come back to herself for a moment, she took a deep inhale, softly shutting her eyes, she let her breath out slowly. It was at that moment that she knew he was not going to show up. Sometimes her moments of deep knowing were so strong that she had no defenses around surrendering to them even when every part of her wanted not to believe, not to know.
This bar would have been the perfect place for a date with him a few years ago. They would have wandered in after a dinner out, maybe at their favorite taco joint where the waitress was always so strange and awkward, and the food always so delicious and consistently messy which was just how they liked it. He would order the burritos, she the fish tacos, they would start with a spicy jalapeno margarita, one each after their long weeks and then he would switch to the tequila tasting menu and she a glass of wine. They would giggle at the number
