The Deal Maker (Book I)

Chapter Twelve - Too Close

                                                                          Chapter Twelve

                                                                              Too Close

I’m not entirely sure how long I spent sitting at the bar with nothing but a soda in my hand. I just stared blankly at the wall of bottles filled with the exact liquid that would give me utter joy and relief. The entire time I stared I had my mind focused on the escape the booze would give me, even if for a few hours. Ten thousand dollars, poof, gone. How could I screw up so badly? How could I let money like that slip through my fingers? Why must I become emotional over her crap? I hated myself, not just for letting her go, but for letting the opportunity to change both David and I’s life just slip away. I could have paid off some debt, I could have bought a new car, I could have bought new clothes. Here is the real question: what will Matthew do with me when I tell him of my failed job?

The sun was due to come up in maybe an hour. Here I was, a human, and I thought of the sun as a curse. It meant Lucy was somewhere safe, it meant that Matthew would sleep and wait for my job to be a ‘success’ instead of an absolute fail. Would he kill me? Pft, that thought didn’t even worry me. David, the kindest friend anyone could ever ask for, was the person I feared for. I looked at the beer that was in the hands of some man to my right. His thin lips pressed against the glass as he sipped the beer, causing the foam of it to create a mustache on his upper lip. He wiped it away and looked at me quizzically. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked, his husky voice barely audible in the blasting music.

Yes, I thought in desperation. He wasn’t my type at all, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that his grey hairs on his chin showed that he was most likely in his forties. It didn’t matter that I was nineteen and that drinking at my age was illegal. It didn’t matter that I could see his wedding ring pressing against the inside of his jean pocket. If it wasn’t for the bartender, who dropped a bottle and shattered it, I would have said yes. But the shattering bottle pulled me from my trance and brought me back to reality. “If you’re unhappily married, deal with you crap at home. Don’t bring your broken life to me,” I snapped and shoved away from the bar in fury. I was desperate to get away, yet I couldn’t bring myself to go outside.

The next thing I knew I was popping quarters into a vintage-looking payphone and jabbing the numbers as if they had done something to me. He should be awake, if not, I’ll wake him up. By the sixth ring I heard the groggy voice of the man that had saved me from this place over a year ago. “Hello?” he mumbled into the phone.

His voice made me feel relax and far from this hell I was in. “David,” I choked, barely able to say his name.

“Joanna? Is that you?” I heard rustling, most likely him sitting up and flipping on a light.

“Distract me.”

Those words he knew rather well. Months ago I would use those words when I nearly slipped into my old ways. Once I called him and begged for a distraction with a bottle of vodka in my hand. He talked to me for two hours about Pixar movies and what he used to dress up as for Halloween. “That old couple came into the restaurant again, they even sat in the same booth as they do every Thursday night.”

I smiled and pressed my forehead against the top of the payphone. David had been complaining about this couple for a few months now, saying that they only come there to eat chips and drink water. They always asked for his booth, never left a tip, and spent five bucks at most. “Seriously? Did you decide to finally tell them to order something different?”