The Weight of Life

by Whitney Barbetti

  “It is for alcoholics.”

  “That’s debatable. Are you an alcoholic?”

  She sighed and dropped her head onto her arms, which were crossed on top of the bar. Her dark hair splayed all over, and I picked up a strand to move it from the drain. I may have held onto it a second longer than necessary, running my thumb over its silky strands.

  “I’m going to have to pour you into a taxi tonight, aren’t I?”

  She lifted her head, inadvertently pulling the strand from my fingers, and her eyes were watery and almost angry. “I’m not a liquid—you can’t pour me.”

  I wanted to laugh, but I bit it back and held up a hand in surrender. Her eyes slid to the other end of the bar where Jennie was working, before they lazily slid back to mine. She looked dazed and if she hadn’t commanded my attention for most of the night, I’d have thought that she was on something besides alcohol. “What’s got you so upset tonight, love?”

  “Love?” she asked, and then made a face like someone had just kicked her cat.

  I regretted saying it. I was finding that being around Mila made me regret a lot of things I said. “It’s just a thing we say. It doesn’t mean anything.” I probably sounded more defensive than necessary, but the fact that I’d let it slip from my lips disturbed me. I picked up the wine glass and held it up to Jennie, who caught my eye. I drew a finger across my throat and nodded at Mila, sending a very clear CUT HER OFF message, which Jennie nodded to and came down to my end.

  “I thought I made it clear not to continue serving her earlier.”

  Jennie looked up innocently at me, but since I knew her better than I knew even my sister-in-law, I didn’t waver, didn’t let up. She dropped the act and handed me the rag. “Come on, Ames. She’s had a shit day. It was just wine.”

  “Don’t be daft. She was already pissed when she came in.”

  Jennie shrugged and turned toward the sink, placing empty glasses inside of it. “She was thirsty.”

  I stepped over to her and snapped on the water faucet. “Ever heard of water?”

  “Nope, sure haven’t. Thanks for enlightening me.” She turned to move away, but I stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

  “I think she needs a friend or something,” I told her, turning my back to Mila as I dipped the wine glass into the soapy water. I didn’t think I could be the friend she needed in that moment.

  “Well, I’m not her friend.”

  “Come on, Jen. Don’t be difficult.”

  Jennie shoved against me. “That’s all you are is difficult, Ames. I’m not her friend.”

  “You can pretend to be. Just like you pretend with everybody else here,” I waved a hand to all the patrons she’d served. “Just…” I closed my eyes briefly before looking at her again. “Talk to her, okay? For me? Girl talk isn’t my forte.”

  Jennie looked at me peculiarly, a new light coming into her eyes. I moved away before she could interrogate me too much, and started grabbing the stray glasses still on the tables.

  Lotte hit the bell by the warming lamp. “That’s it, right?”

  Her blonde hair was a mess and her face was bright red. I nodded at her. “I’ll be up in a few. I can close up.”

  She leaned across the pass through. “Thank you,” she said in the most grateful voice before disappearing.

  By the time I rounded the bar again, Jennie was capping the bottles that didn’t have pour caps. And Mila? Well, Mila was currently draining what looked to be another glass of sangria.

  When Jennie started untying her apron, I grabbed her elbow and spun her to face me. “Are you fucking mad, Jennie?” I hissed.

  She shook me loose and glared up at me. “She’s already drunk, Ames. You let her drink to get drunk.”

  “I didn’t let her get drunk. She came in that way.”

  Jennie flicked her gaze to Mila and then waved at her nonchalantly. “Well, she was drunk enough that anything else was basically just a bandage.”

  “That’s not how alcohol works.”

  She rolled her eyes and handed me her apron. “She’s had a rough day. Be nice,” she said in a low, warning voice.

  Why did I suddenly feel like I was in the wrong here? “I am nice,” I said. “I didn’t charge her for anything after the shots you served her.”

  Jennie raised one blonde brow. “A free refill, huh? Funny how she seems to get a lot of those from you.”

  “Fuck off,” I muttered, turning around just as Mila was leaning clear across the bar, pushing the wine glass all the way to the edge. I made it to her before the glass tipped over and crashed to the floor. “You’re cut off,” I told her, in my nice voice, and ran the rag over the drops she’d spilled.

  Mila frowned and sat back. She looked on the edge of sleep in that moment, her eyes closing and opening and closing and opening repeatedly.

  “Mila,” I snapped, trying to wake her up.

  “Yes?” she asked softly. This was such a different woman than the one I’d slowly come to know. She was quieter, darker, and I found myself missing the brighter way she had about her—but still compelled to understand this facet of her perplexing personality.

  “Don’t go to sleep in my pub,” I said and winced, knowing it sounded mean. Not nice. “What’s your hotel this week called?”

  “Oh. You’ll call me a taxi?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Four something. I think.” She grabbed her backpack purse and opened it, reaching blindly in. A clatter of things hit the floor and rolled behind her, but she seemed completely oblivious. She paused and looked at me with her head cocked sideways. “What am I doing again?”

  “I don’t know.” I sighed, watching her trying to shove things back into her bag with gummy hands before I gave up and came around the bar, picking up tubes of lipstick and other makeup I couldn’t identify. I took the bag from her hands and she laid her head down, looking at me as I put everything back into it.

  “Ames?” She was looking at me, her face blank but her eyes full.

  “Yes?”

  With the softest of whispers, she asked, “When your wife died, did you ever wish you had died with her?”

  It was as if she’d swung a bowling ball right at my chest. I gripped more steadily onto the barstool beside her, because her question had rocked the very earth beneath my feet.

  Instead of answering I swallowed and said, “You don’t remember the name of your hotel, do you?”

  Slowly, she shook her head and closed her eyes, seemingly already forgetting her question. Within seconds, I saw her entire body settle, indicating she’d fallen asleep.

  I ran a hand through my hair and sighed, hoping to bring more air back into my lungs after that catapult she’d launched into my chest. And then I caught Jennie’s attention and mouthed, “Lock the door on your way out,” with a meaningful nod toward the door before I slung Mila’s backpack over my shoulder and then eased her out of the stool and into my arms.

  I caught Lotte in the kitchen on my way back, whose eyes grew larger upon seeing Mila in my arms and asked her to help Jennie in my brief absence. “I’ll still clean up,” I promised her as I unlocked the door to our flat.

  Carrying Mila up the steep steps proved more challenging than I’d expected, but I’d managed without making too much noise. Asher’s room appeared to be completely dark, and after pausing on the landing, I determined that my noise in going up the stairs hadn’t awoken him.

  I momentarily debated laying her on the couch, but didn’t want her to wake up in such a public space as our communal room so, as gently as I could, I eased open the door to my bedroom and laid her on the bed after I peeled back the covers.

  Immediately, she curled up and rubbed her head into the pillow. Moonlight seared through my window, slashing across her on the bed. Her head was turned toward the wall, away from the light, so it didn’t disturb her from her soundless sleep. Seeing the sunglasses still on top of her head, I sat on the edge of the bed and slid them off.

  The
y got caught in her hair, so as gently as I could, I plucked all those annoying strands out of the bend in her glasses before setting them on my nightstand and then going back downstairs to finish out the night. Lotte looked at me oddly, but I just waved her off. I checked that Jennie had locked the door and then finished the rest of the kitchen.

  When I returned to the bedroom two hours later, Mila was still asleep, and appeared not to have moved even an inch on the bed. Seeing her dark hair spread across my white pillow in the exact same position as I’d left her in made me feel a little sad for her. A feeling I never thought I’d feel for her, because she radiated so much happiness and energy all the time. Even in sleep, her face was scrunched up, but she made no noise of discontent.

  I sighed and sat at the foot of the bed, glancing between her and my hands, wondering what had caused the mood she had been in when she arrived at the pub earlier tonight. The fact that I wondered about this bothered me, because—as I continually had to remind myself—she was such a new presence in my life. I didn’t have any right to worry about her; she wasn’t someone I needed to worry about, and yet, for some inexplicable reason, I did.

  What had made her sad? What had caused her to drink to the point that she did?

  I thought of what she’d asked me right before she’d fallen asleep.

  “When your wife died, did you ever wish you had died with her?”

  Because it was safe, because no one sober could hear me, I whispered my answer to her in the dark of the room. “No. My only wish was always that I’d have died instead of her.”

  And then I grabbed the extra pillow she wasn’t using, a blanket from my wardrobe, and bedded down on the floor at the foot of my bed. I could sleep on the couch, I knew, but for reasons I didn’t want to examine too closely, I didn’t want her to be alone.

  Chapter Twelve

  When I’d drummed up enough courage to open my eyes against the splitting headache I was currently dying from, the first thing I saw was a wall of dark gray. It looked completely unfamiliar to me, and I tried to remember where the hell I was. Looking down at the blankets that covered me, I took in the plaid black, gray, and white pattern. I blinked several times, trying to orientate myself to my surroundings.

  A muffled sound caused me to sit up suddenly, at a speed that was entirely too fast and caused me to mumble a swear word.

  “Fuck what?”

  I turned my head, took in Ames, who was sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed I laid in. It was all too much to process: the unfamiliar room, the fact that Ames was mere feet from me, and the headache that felt like a marching band was trampling across my skull.

  “Um…” I pressed a hand to my forehead, and swallowed the bile that climbed up my throat. “Did I puke?”

  “Not as far as I’m aware,” Ames replied. “How are you feeling?”

  Great question. How did I feel? “Like I drank all the alcohol in your bar.”

  “Pub. And you’re likely not far off.”

  I made a face of stretching my lips over my teeth that I was sure was entirely unattractive. “That bad?”

  “Horrid, actually. Hungry?”

  My stomach felt full of boiling acid and I knew I’d need to get something in there to soak up some of the alcohol I’d been unwise in consuming. “God, I could go for biscuits and gravy.”

  He looked at me with a funny look on his face. “Really?”

  I shook my head at him. “Not your kinds of biscuits. Those are crackers, or cookies, or whatever. Um,” I pushed my hair behind my ear as I tried to think of how to explain it better, “like, scones? That you split in half and butter? And then pour white, peppery gravy over.”

  He looked at me like I was speaking gibberish, which—though we both spoke English—I knew my American sayings were probably a lot like hearing another language to him.

  “Or toast? Some eggs?”

  He nodded and pushed to standing, towering over me as I sat on the bed.

  “Is this your bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you sleep…” I moved my hand across the bed, over the empty and undisturbed side.

  “No, I slept on the floor.” He motioned to a folded blanket on the chair beside the bed.

  “Oh.” I swallowed as I stared up at him, feeling the buzz of being so close to him again, remembering how he’d placed his hand under my chin and had lifted my mouth just so. The last time we’d spoken, before I’d started drinking, had been the moment right before he’d kissed me. And we hadn’t talked since.

  If I thought too much about why I started drinking, I’d think about Colin and the memory card full of my last photos of him, and then I’d be sad all over again, and I didn’t imagine being sad and hungover would be all that delightful. “Thanks,” I said, pulling his blanket up to my chest, even though I was fully clothed. “I imagine I was kind of a pain in the ass last night.”

  “Just a bit,” he said, his face stoic but not unfriendly. He stared at me a moment longer, not saying anything, and I could feel my cheeks burning. Then he walked abruptly toward the door before stopping just short of it and looking over at me. “Do you…” he shoved a hand in his hair before shoving it in the pocket of his fleece sweats. “I…” He looked at me briefly, his face contorted as he struggled to find his words. And then he opened the door and stepped out, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  Ames had kindly put my backpack on his desk, so I was able to dig through and find my mini brush and run it through the tornado that was my hair. I cringed a bit, imagining what Ames had seen when he’d looked at me. My compact mirror proved what I feared—mascara was smeared at least a half inch under my eyelids, and I had what looked like twin black eyes with how my makeup had settled in my sleep. I rubbed a tissue over it, trying to salvage what little of my makeup I could, and braided my hair into one long plait that I hung over my shoulder. There was nothing to be done about my clothes, wrinkled as they were.

  But I plastered a brave smile on regardless and opened the door a crack, peeking out into a hallway that was empty, but not silent. Music spilled from a room at the end of the hallway, and light spilled across the glossy wood floors. I waited a second before I heard Ames’ distinctive voice, and made my way as quietly as possible down the hallway.

  Just outside the doorway, I heard Lotte laugh, and steeled myself. I mentally kicked myself, for about the fifteenth time that morning, for looking as unkempt as I did. But I sucked it up and stepped around the opening, seeing Ames, first, who was at the stove, his back to me. At the table was Lotte, reading a newspaper, wearing gray leggings and an oversized pink sweater, bouncing her bare feet on the tile along to the beat as she pored over a newspaper. I wondered if she’d seen my antics the night before.

  Ames turned then, and stopped short upon seeing me. His gaze darted between me and Lotte before he said, “Good morning,” as if he hadn’t just seen me minutes before. But his eyes were warm, and he gave me a small, encouraging smile.

  Lotte turned, and her smile filled her face. “Oh, hey Mila.” Then she blinked and looked between Ames and me before returning her attention to her newspaper. “Sleep well?”

  I couldn’t remember the night before—just slices of things here and there. Lotte wasn’t, not surprising, in whatever vestiges of my memory I still had. I didn’t know if she knew why I was there—or what assumptions she made from that fact.

  Looking toward Ames for reassurance, I waited for him to explain. But he didn’t rescue me, didn’t offer any explanation for my disheveled appearance in his house. He just watched me, waiting for me to explain myself.

  “I’m afraid you have me at a loss, Lotte.” Lotte mirrored her brother-in-law’s look toward me. “I’m not sure if you know why I slept over.” I gestured a hand over my unkempt clothes, looking one last desperate moment at Ames.

  “Oh, right.” She nodded and gave me a smile that I was sure was meant to reassure me, but the words out of her mouth did the exact opposite. “You shagged.”
She waggled her finger between us.

  Ames coughed, and I was sure my face paled to an unnatural color. I opened my mouth, but Ames stepped beside me, and his hand came to my lower back. “Come on, Lotte. Don’t torture her any further.”

  I found it shocking, the way the heat from his gentle touch spread across my back. I turned to face him just as he turned to face me, and his hand lifted and brushed the hair that had fallen across my face. That was one of my favorite things he did, touching me like that.

  “Oh, gross.” Lotte made a face and dropped her newspaper. “Did you shag her, in that state, Ames? I thought you had more respect than that.” She stuck her tongue out like she’d just tasted something disgusting.

  “Knock it off, Lots.” Ames hadn’t stopped looking at me. “How are you feeling?”

  “Hungry.” I gave him a smile, and he smiled back, all soft, and for a moment I questioned whether or not I was in a dream.

  “Have a seat. It’ll be ready in a minute.”

  Sitting beside Lotte, it was like I realized for the first time that she was the sister of Ames’ wife. I’d always thought Lotte beautiful, but a thought pushed its way to the forefront of my mind—if she was this beautiful, how beautiful had Ames’ wife been? “Ames is cooking us breakfast.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “Such a nice thing, he doesn’t normally do.” She squared her sights on me. “So, I suppose I have you to thank for that.”

  Ames stiffened a little, but cracked another egg in a bowl and didn’t look at us at all.

  Lotte folded up the newspaper and pushed it away. “Tea?”

  I shook my head. “Still acclimating to tea,” I said.

  “It always helps my hangover.”

  I pushed my hair from my face, feeling very much like a slob in her presence. “Well, luckily for me, I don’t have the kind of headache I’m sure I deserve.”

  “Oh, that kind of night?” She propped her chin on her hand. “I’d love to hear about it, but I’m afraid you can’t indulge my curiosity if you can’t actually remember it.”

  “I can.” Ames finally spoke. He handed me a plate of scrambled eggs and salt and pepper shakers. “Seeing as you racked up one hell of a bar tab, I think I’m qualified to talk about how you behaved.”