When Girlfriends Let Go

by Savannah Page

  Lara sits taller in her seat, a look of smart satisfaction coating her lips. “That’s right.” She crosses her legs. She’s still wearing a pair of power suit pants but has dolled it up for the night out with a flowy magenta and black v-neck top. “I’ve got myself a date.”

  “A Claire setup?” Emily asks with a smile. She lets go of Gatz’s hand as he heads to the end of the bar with Chad and Evelyn. Taking a seat next to me, she says, “Is she pawing around your love life again?”

  “Nope.” Lara takes one of the blue shots from the bartender.

  “Was it Jackie?” Emily raises a quizzically playful brow as I take the second of three shots.

  “Thanks,” I say with a wink to the bartender. I look to Emily. “No, it wasn’t my doing.”

  “Cheers!” Lara says, holding up her shot glass. I follow suit and we look down the bar to Chad, who now has the last shot.

  “Cheers!” I yell, raising my glass higher and gesturing Chad’s way. But he’s too busy laughing with Evelyn and Gatz to notice. “Whatever.” I look to the girls and clink my glass against Lara’s, then against Emily’s cocktail. “To Lara’s hot date!”

  “Phew,” Lara winces as the burning sensation makes her face pucker up.

  “So, spill it,” I say as I wipe the back of my mouth. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

  “His name’s Worth Rowlinson,” she says, and she cannot hide that goofy grin that’s spreading across her face.

  “Sounds important,” I say with a laugh. “Sounds rich.”

  “Met him at that business party,” Lara goes on to explain. “The one with Jennings & Voigt.”

  “Ugh!” I slam the empty shot glass onto the bar and knock it a few times to get the bartender’s attention. “That lame-o party?”

  Emily gives me a remonstrative look as Lara says, “We got to talking about the caviar, over caviar,” she blushes a little, “and just made some small talk and—”

  “Hey,” I say to the bartender who’s just about to pass by. I clink the glass a few more times against the bar. “Hey, what’s your name?”

  “Blake.”

  “Blake, can I get another one here? Please?” I wave the glass in front of him.

  “Sure thing,” Blake says, returning the wink I passed his way earlier.

  “And get my friend here another one,” I point to Lara. “She’s finally going to get laid. So happy for her!”

  “Jackie!” Lara says, swatting my arm. She turns to Blake and says, “But, sure, I’ll take another shot, please.”

  “On me!” I yank Lara’s glass from her and hand it over to Blake. With another wink, Blake snags the glasses from me, his fingers grazing mine for a second longer than it would be had it been accidental and says, “Another specialty of the night”—a smirk with another wink—“on its way.”

  “Anyway,” Lara says with a clearing of her throat. “As I was saying.” She shares a brief yet petulant look with Emily. “We weren’t even talking business, Worth and I. We were totally getting along and having fun and were relaxed and—”

  “Thank you,” I say in a slurry way to Blake when he reappears with fresh shots. “I so need this. My friend here. She’s getting lucky with some guy.” I close my eyes and nod my head. “Some guy from Vennings & Joint, where my husband works.”

  I can feel Emily’s fingers grip and tug lightly at my forearm, trying to bring me back to the conversation with Lara. I’m feeling lightheaded and kind of careless—actually the first time in a long while I’ve been able to completely let my hair down and have fun like this—so I ignore her, trying to shrug her off.

  I lean further into the bar and tell the blonde, brown-eyed cutie on the other side, “Blake, my husband’s an ass. Totally boring. He’s like twice my age and if he in’t sleeping, or workin’, or bangin’ his sec-tary, he is making…my…life…miserable.” I raise the glass up an inch or two, then whisper, “Here’s to hope Lara’s booty from that place in’t a total boooore.”

  “Jackie,” Lara’s low voice commands my attention as I knock back the next shot.

  I set the glass down and turn in my seat, but not before saying to Blake, “Marriage blows.”

  “All righty,” Emily sings, grabbing both my arms now. “How about we get our dance on, honey?” She nods enthusiastically, smiling her bright, wide smile. “Some dancing? I know how much you love to dance, Jack.”

  “Whatever,” I mumble, rolling my head about. “Lara, I’m happy for you.” I hiccup suddenly, then giggle at how fast my intoxication has hit me. “Just don’t get maywied. Ever. Okay?” I hold up a finger. “No mahwidge. Kay?”

  “Dear lord,” Lara says as she wraps an arm around my waist. “Let’s dance this off, okay?”

  ***

  “No, I think she’s fine,” I hear a voice say. “We’ve got to go.” A pause. “She won’t pick up. Think she’s hungover. I’ve left her a message.”

  I lift my head. Something’s on top of it. I peel open my eyes and squint into the amber light, the stuffy air. I lift my head higher and slowly the pillow and blanket atop it fall away.

  “Thanks, Claire,” the voice—Emily’s voice—says. “Just for a while. At least until she’s all right or Lara can come over.”

  “What’s going on?” I say once Emily says goodbye into the phone. I pull myself up into a seated position and look at Emily across the way, her lips pursed as she fidgets with the disconnect feature of her cell phone.

  “Sunshine, you’re up,” she sings gaily. She tosses the phone into her patchwork hobo bag.

  “What the hell happened last night?” I rub at my throbbing head. “I didn’t drink tequila, did I?” I make a repetitive smacking sound with my tongue, detecting a great deal of dryness to my mouth. “You know tequila and I do bad things together?”

  Emily leaps from her seat on her living room chair and dashes towards the kitchen. “Nope,” she says, “but you had plenty other dangerous drinks. Lucky for you, Lara and I stopped you before you got too tanked to forget everything that happened.”

  “What did happen?” I pull a pillow into my chest and sink further into the sofa.

  “Okay, maybe we didn’t,” Emily says with a worried face as she pops her head around the corner. “Anyway, it’s all about recovery for you today. I’m making you a get-well drink, and Claire’s on her way over to baby you until you sober up.” I hear her rummage about in the kitchen—silverware, glasses, the refrigerator opening and closing. “Or at least not as hungover, dear god.”

  “I didn’t…” I begin, scratching at my head as if it’s going to bring back the memories of the night before. I wasn’t so wasted that I really forgot what had happened. I’m just a bit groggy from the sleep and the drinks, obviously. I scratch harder, trying to summon the memories quicker.

  “I didn’t do anything stupid, did I?” I wrinkle my nose, worried about Emily’s answer, but deep down certain that I didn’t actually do something that incriminating. Maybe there was a tabletop dance, or perhaps an accidental flash of a boob, or maybe a drunk dial to Andrew, or Nikki, even.

  “If you don’t call kissing Chad something stupid,” Emily says flatly.

  Or that, I think.

  “And?” I ask. “What happened?”

  “Oh, it was nothing,” she says easily, yet with confidence. “He knew you were sloshed. He was kind of sloshed too, in fact.” She emerges from the kitchen with a tall glass of red liquid. “You were just excited on the dance floor, jumping up and down and screaming. You know?”

  “Jackie-like,” I say dryly.

  “Exactly.” She carefully hands me the beverage and tells me to drink up. “We were talking about Lara having a hot date, and you mentioned how Gatz and I were going home to shack up while you slept—passed out—on the sofa.” She flashes a smile. “Your words, my dear, not mine.”

  I nod while sipping the peppery tomato juice.

  “But we did take the opportunity since you were out like a light,” she says, eliciting from me a
snort into my juice.

  She carries on, saying, “Anyway, you screamed a bunch of things at the club—Sophie getting it on in Paris, happily married Robin, happily married Claire…and then you got down on yourself. Chad said something about being single, too, and, well…” She holds a hand out to me. “You kissed him, but it was no biggie. Drunk Jackie stuff, I ‘spose.”

  “God,” I breathe in between hearty drinks.

  “Evelyn sure had a gobsmacked look about her, though.” She makes a tsking sound, then bounds up and towards the bedroom. “Don’t know what that’s about, but, anyway…”

  She quickly throws her untamed mane of hair into a ponytail. “Gatz and I are headed to the café and Claire’s coming over to nurse you back to health, kay?”

  “I can take care of myself,” I say through the glass.

  “Last time I heard that, a stogie got a little too friendly with my futon.” She opens her bedroom door. “Gatz? Ready in five?”

  He mutters something about being chronically late as I set the half-drunk glass of juice on the coffee table.

  “Chronically late, yeah, yeah,” Emily says through a friendly sigh. “And be easy on Claire,” she says to me. She looks briefly my way as she fills her bag with a bunch of crap.

  “Be easy on her? What’s up with Claire?”

  “Ready!” Gatz says, emerging from the bedroom a second later, out of breath and head still quite wet.

  “Hey there, party animal,” he says to me with a goofy smile. He slings his messenger bag over his chest and snags one of the bright green apples from the fruit bowl. He tosses it up, takes a hearty bite, then says through a full mouth, “Feeling tip top?”

  “Shut it,” I groan, falling back onto the sofa. I pull the fuzzy blanket around me.

  “Claire should be here any sec, but she can only hang out for a little while,” Emily explains as she takes abrupt strides to the front door. She swings the creaky thing open. “She’s pulling an extra shift at the hospital today—a hefty one, apparently—so she’ll be by soon, but not for long. After that please take care of yourself. Call me or come by the café if you’re bored. Kay, babe?”

  I wave a loose hand. “Yeah, yeah.”

  Then, before I can ask again why I need to be easy on Claire, the sound of the creaky door slamming shut echoes throughout Emily’s apartment, and she and Gatz rush past the living room window hand-in-hand.

  When I can finally muster the stomach to stand, I drag myself to the bathroom, grabbing my white Chanel clutch on the way. Relieving my bladder, I rifle about for my cell phone, curious if Andrew called to check in on me. He knows that if I’m not home at night then I’m most likely with Emily. There’s no need for him to call and check up. But, still, it’d be kind of nice if he did. Just to show the effort—prove that he cares.

  As my fingers search about for my phone, a small note sticks itself to my bright red lacquered nails. I’m about to flick the note free when a bold letter ‘B’ stands out. Pulling the note free from my nail and turning it right side round, I immediately gasp.

  “Crap,” I whisper, clapping a hand to my mouth. That woozy feeling I had in my head, that nausea I could feel come the moment I even considered standing from the sofa, all rush forward like a tidal wave.

  I’m anything but a total bore, the note reads. “Call me—Blake,” I read aloud. Then I scan over the seven digits.

  “No good. Crap, crap, crap.” I cram the note back into my clutch and am about to set it aside when I see my phone.

  I swallow the visiting frog in my throat and touch the circular button on my phone. I squeeze my eyes shut right as the screen glows to life. I’m filled with such a mixture of emotions. I want Andrew to have called, yet I also don’t want him to have.

  I let out a loud, low moan and pry open one eye. Not a single missed call or text message.

  “Phew,” I breathe out in relief…and disappointment.

  “No,” I quickly blurt out when I look at the note again. “No. Everything’s fine. Nothing happened.”

  I shove my phone back into my clutch and tear up the note into several tiny pieces. I drop them into the toilet when a cheerful and familiar voice rings out. “Jackie? Emily? Anyone home?”

  “Claire!” I say happily, but a little too loudly. My head begins to throb more forcefully. “I’m in the bathroom!” I flush the toilet and watch the colorful confetti disappear, telling myself once more that everything is okay.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “You sure you’re all right, Jack?” Claire asks, flipping through a stack of photos Emily had printed up from her trip to Zambia for Robin’s project.

  Robin’s been making progress on getting a coffee table book published of Emily’s photography from various trips to Africa. Things are moving a bit slower than Robin had hoped, what with now being part-time at her publishing house and having two little ones at home—she jokes it’ll be ready by the time Emily gets back from Australia. Although, who knows how long that could end up being.

  “Huh?” I ask, massaging my temples.

  “You looked like you’d seen a ghost in the bathroom.” Claire, dressed in dark blue scrubs, sets the thick stack of photos in her lap. “Major hangover?”

  “Yeah,” I reply loosely, thinking back to that incriminating note. I wasn’t even flirting that much with the bartender. Blake, his name flashes through my mind. I groan at the thought of his name, at the fact that only minutes ago I had a come-on note from him and his phone number in my clutch. I lean back into the comfy sofa.

  “Damn, Em’s talented.” Claire passes a photo my way, looking at them sweetens my sour mood, at least a little. It’s of two young children from her village in Zambia, one looking so curiously on at the camera, eyes wide and filled with interest, the other, who’s wearing a beautiful and ornate necklace of beads, has a bright smile and is pointing off into the distance.

  The photo’s in black and white—a great choice for this shot. Emily often asks my opinion of whether or not a certain photo should be black and white, maybe even sepia, or as-shot in color. I never know. She has her reasonings for each, and often it’s a difficult choice. Here, the black and white perfectly captures the emotion and stillness as well as the underlying vibrancy and life.

  “Well,” Claire says with a high sigh. She sorts the photos into an even-edged pile and sets them on the coffee table. “I’ve got bucks to make, so off I go.”

  Turns out Claire’s been putting in extra shifts at the hospital and grabbing any available rounds she can find as a caretaker. It’s exhausting her. Evidently Conner’s really unhappy at work, and things are on edge what with him not getting the promotion he was up for. She thinks he’ll either quit abruptly or get fired if he doesn’t find replacement work soon, the tension’s so high.

  Claire told me this morning that Conner’s been putting in applications everywhere, but he’s just not finding that stroke of luck he had straight out of college six years ago, when he landed the accounting gig he currently has.

  Claire said if he doesn’t end up finding a new job soon at least they’ll have the income from her overtime to help stay afloat. But only for so long. He’s already had three interviews, but nothing came of any of them. Not to mention, finding interviews is so difficult they’ve actually decided to start searching out of town! Claire insists it’s just precautionary—they’re still aggressively working on finding something in Seattle—but she says they have to do what they have to do.

  And I have to do what I have to do now that Claire’s left for work; Emily and Gatz are at the café; Lara’s apparently still in dreamland, not having responded to my multiple text messages; and Robin’s at a baby Gymboree class, whatever the hell that is. There’s nothing else to do but try to deal with that suspicious and terrifying little note I found in my Chanel clutch.

  Sophie, I type out an email on my cell phone. I’ve sunk to a new low. Marriage is still a mess, I’m so lonely, Andrew’s checked out, apparently—no calls, no care�
�and I went out last night. With Em and Lara.

  I stop writing my email for a second to ponder. Pieces of last night’s events—events that ultimately led to the receiving of that note—rush forward. I recall that episode of verbal retching—words spilling all sloppily and shamefully together. I was telling this Blake guy how miserable I was in my marriage, and I was drinking. A lot. Flirting, too.

  I’ve warned myself of this behavior before. It’s dangerous. Any Cosmo reader knows that talking to another man about how discontent you are in your relationship with your man is an invitation for messages just like the one Blake left for me. Each complaint about Andrew I spewed was meant to help to fill the void, heal the wounds, make me feel the way Andrew used to make me feel.

  “He must have stuck it to my receipt or my credit card,” I say under my breath. Massaging at my left temple, I return to my email.

  Ragged on Andrew to the bartender, I write to Sophie. Total hottie. He left me his number and I was so wasted I never noticed. I’m such a horrible person, Sophie. The situations I get myself into… But I can’t remember when I’ve been so unhappy.

  I look out the front room window; Emily’s tacky, worn, and damaged mini-blinds are turned open to let in a full and shining morning sun.

  Everyone has their someone, their something. All I have is my mess, I write.

  I’m not sure where to go with this email next, so I set my phone aside again, and prop my bare feet on the coffee table and stare dead ahead.

  Emily’s stack of Zambia photos are still in their neat pile, just as Claire left them, except the black and white one is on its own, off to the side. I lean forward and pick it up. You can barely make out the huts or tents in the background, and some of those savanna-style trees.

  I bring the photo nearer to examine more closely. The smile and the inquisitive looks on the two children are priceless. I want their joy, their curiosity. I lightly run my thumb around the outline of one of the enquiring faces, and then I get an idea. I can feel my own eyes, my own face, fill with joy and curiosity.