This is a continuation of yesterday’s post: For worse, for better, for…whatever.

My phone actually rang twice, but it wasn’t until the end of the second missed call that I heard it. I slide my feet off E’s lap and retrieve it from the study.

“Uh-oh,” I say, walking back into the living room.

“What?”

“Two missed calls.” I point at the phone. “Melissa a few minutes ago. Ben just now.”

“I wonder what it is,” he says, twisting his mouth into a frown.

“They had their first marriage counseling thing tonight,” I remind him, flipping the phone open to dial Melissa. “It looks like it did not go well.”

Mel doesn’t pick up and I leave her a quick voicemail. I try Ben next, and he answers with the same small, broken voice he used when he first told me she was leaving. “She doesn’t want to work on it,” he says. “She doesn’t even want to try. It’s completely over.”

I can’t pretend that I didn’t know this would happen, so I make some sort of mumbly noises as he continues, telling me what she said that clued him in to the fact that there really is no chance. I’m shocked that he says these things, not because I didn’t expect him to tell me what went on, but because she’d told me before that she didn’t intend to tell him certain details. “Some of these things could be really hurtful to him,” she’d told me over lunch one day. “I’m leaving and that’s going to hurt him enough, I don’t want to tell him things that will just make it worse.” She was right. So now it’s worse.

I don’t have time to reply to Ben before he says he has to go and hangs up the phone quickly. Sitting back down next to E on the couch, I snuggle into his arm. “Bad, huh?” he asks.

I tell him what was said.

“Ouch,” he says, eyes wide. “Really. OUCH.”

“Yeah.”

My phone beeps with a new text message. It’s Mel, asking if we can meet up and go somewhere to chat. “You don’t mind, do you?” I ask E, even though I know what his answer will be – had BETTER be. “I know we planned to spend the evening together but – “

“Go, baby,” he says gently. “I’ll wait here. You need to be with her right now.”

I slide over and smoosh into his lap, dropping a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you, honey.” He kisses me back. “This sort of simple thing, this is what I need from you. Just understanding when things are hard for me too.”

E hugs me close for a moment. “I know. And I’d never tell you not to go. It’s going to be okay.” I text Mel back, telling her to come pick me up whenever she’s ready, and I go to pack. “What are you getting?” he asks as I head into the kitchen.

“I am getting what is necessary for an evening like this,” I announce, opening the fridge. “I knew there was a reason I saved this thing!” Shoving the bottle and two plastic cups into my (fabulous) new Juicy Couture satchel, I head back out to the living room to wait for her.

“What did you get?” I hold up the Polka Dot Riesling, mine and Melissa’s favorite, and make a pouty face. E frowns at me. “Honey…”

“Pleeeeease.”

“I won’t tell you what to do,” he says resignedly. “This quitting drinking idea was all you, so it’s your decision.”

“Just tonight, it’ll only be tonight. We’ll sit in the park and drink like winos and bond over our troubles and I will come home to you safe and sound.” I hear her car in my driveway and tuck the bottle back in my bag. “Bye, sweetie – I’ll call you if we’re gonna be late or when I know what’s going on.” He just smiles and shakes his head.

I get into the car and immediately pull the plastic cups from the parish picnic out of my bag and plop them in the cupholders. “What are those – “ Mel asks, then sees me reach for the wine. “Woo!” she squeals as I twist the cap off (yeah, it’s the classy kind) and pour us each half a cup. I take a long swallow of mine, savoring the sweetness that is all the sweeter because it’s forbidden.

“All right,” I said. “I talked to him and he told me what you said. And you said you weren’t going to tell him those things – but now you did. What the heck happened?”

“I just… it just came out. It was just something I had to say.” I ask why, what had changed since she said she didn’t want to hurt him with harsh facts. “It started off with the counselor asking us questions,” she said, taking sips from her cup. “Mmm, this is good. But anyway, he was asking us questions and so we were talking to him, and then it really just came to a point where we were talking back and forth to each other and not to the counselor.”

I nod, almost sloshing wine down my jacket as she turns onto the main road. “Did he specifically ASK you about that?” I wonder aloud.

She sighs. “Kind of. But not.” We let it go at that and sip the wine, stopping for a refill at a stoplight. She abruptly lurches right. “Let’s get chocolate martinis!”

Breaking no-drinking vow? In for the penny, in for the pound. This is all about solidarity.

In the Applebee’s parking lot (I told you, we’re classy girls), we park among three cop cars and keep working on the bottle of Riesling, giggling about nothing and saving the crucial conversation for the hard liquor.

“Hi, can I help you ladies with—“

“Two chocolate martinis,” she says quickly. When they land on our table, we swirl the chocolate syrup from the bottom with our straws. “Now,” she says, turning to me mischievously, “now we can talk.”

“Okay. So you told him. WHY?”

“I was mad.”

“And…?”

She sighs and savors a hefty sip of chocolatey goodness. “Bek, he was SO condescending! Said that I could move out, be on my own and just ‘get it out of my system’ like it was some sort of phase, and he insisted that I’d get over this ‘independence thing’ and come back home and be a family again.” I sip and nod in agreement. Ohhhh, the chocolate is making me happy. “It’s like he didn’t take me seriously, like he just had to humor me for a few months and then I’d get over it. Like I hadn’t thought this through already, like I couldn’t possibly make a decision and stick to it.”

“Well, he wants to give you space, Mel, he doesn’t want to pressure you to try and stay right now because that would obviously be counterproductive…”

“I don’t know, it was just the way he said it, like he was treating me like a child, saying ‘Go, go, you’ll be back’ and I KNOW I’m not going back and frankly, I want him to know that. I didn’t know how else to get it through his head.”

“So you told him.”

“So I told him.”

Long, slow swallows of chocolate. Oh, so good. We look at each other and I can tell she’s asking me not to judge her and she can tell I’m trying not to. “I guess you did what you had to do,” I say finally. “I guess it’s kind of like what I did with Bear.”

“You told him the same thing?”

“No. I felt the same thing. I never said it. I couldn’t bring myself to tell a man who loved me, who I loved but was not in love with anymore, that I was no longer emotionally or physically attracted to him. He would have blamed himself for everything that was wrong instead of blaming me, and I was the one who deserved the blame for what went wrong with us.”

“I had to tell him. It just came out.” She signals the waiter for another round of martinis. Tasty drinks are dangerous like that. “But I can’t be stuck in a marriage like that, a marriage where I have to fake the most important things. I’ve been trying Bek, I have, but I can’t fake it anymore.”

“I faked it with Bear sometimes. And I loved him, but we were never super great at… that. But we were practically kids. I thought it would get better.”

“Yeah well, we’ve been together for ten years.”

“But don’t tell me you’ve been faking ten years. That’s not true and you know it and I don’t believe it. You guys have had great times, don’t just write those off because the last six months or a year have been rough. I mean, come on, how many times have you told me how much you love your husband, how you guys have such a great sex life and all that? I mean, walk out of this if you want to but don’t say there was never anything good there.”

She covers her face with her hands as though that will magically make the next round of martinis appear, and then peeks at me through her fingers like a child. “Maybe I wasn’t always telling the whole truth.”

“MEL!” I lean across the table at her. “What the heck?” The waiter brings the martinis and we mumble “thank you” in unison and I get back in her face. “Why would you lie about that? It’s not like I ever just came up and asked you about your sex life, so why even bring it up and brag on it?” And why is everybody lying about being in love these days anyway?

“Because it sounded better than the truth.”

At this we grab greedily at the martinis, both of us feeling the buzz off the wine and the first round. “And the truth, then?” I probe.

“The truth is I don’t know if I should have gotten married so young. Or to him at all. And I did love him and I wanted to make that commitment to him but… Bek, I’m just done. It felt like it could be the right thing at the time but I can see now that it’s not.”

I drink because I’m not sure what to say. So much of this draws me back five years to the wedding I was supposed to have just one month before Melissa’s, to the relationship I ended before I could regret marrying the wrong guy, marrying too young, and having to fake the most important things in life. This could have been me. I have a strong suspicion that it WOULD have been me, with a husband, a baby, a job, and an unshakable feeling of claustrophobia and regret.

I remember my friend Bella, on leaving a marriage begun when she was only 21 or 22, went right out and launched into an affair with someone she said she felt more connected to than she had to her husband for a long time. God, she was funny when she went back into the dating world, going on and on about how this guy understood her and listened to her, and by the way, was extremely well-endowed and knew what to do with it. It was Bella like I’d never seen her before, high on her new freedom and regrets be damned. It’s what I did when I ended my engagement – well, minus the super well-endowed guy.

During the third round, Mel asks about E and I tell her about the events of the last few days. We ponder the mess, what we’ve taken to calling the beautiful mess of our lives. “This is what it means to be a single girl,” I warn her.

I call E when we get back to the car, giddy from three martinis each. Mel doesn’t really want to go home, so we invite her in for awhile and the three of us sit on the porch and talk about her plans for getting a new apartment, getting furniture. Getting a future all her own.

After she leaves, E and I get ready for sleep. “What’s this?” I ask when I see the bubble bath out on the counter. “Were you getting pretty while I was gone?” I tease.

“I was going to make you a bubble bath.” He looks a tiny bit embarrassed and does not meet my eyes. “I thought you’d probably be all stressed. But,” he says, nipping at my waist, “you’re all sloshed and not stressed, so I think I’ll take you to bed instead.”

“Mmm, yes please.”

He’d even done the dishes.

“I want to be called THE RAVEN!”

We’re at our third bar of the evening. I take a small sip of my seventh Sprite.

“You said everyone gets a code name.”

“I didn’t say you get to pick.”

“Come on.”

“What makes you think I’m going to write about you anyway?”

“Because I’m interesting. I bet this is the most interesting conversation you’ve had all night.”

“Perhaps it is. But that doesn’t guarantee you posterity on the Internet.”

“I love when you use big words. That’s so cool. See, we’re both literary!”

“Wanting a code name from a piece of poetry does not make you literary.”

“Come on.”

“It’s not like you’ll get to read it anyway.”*

“Please?”

“Shut up, Frank.”

Across the room, Captain raises an eyebrow at me. I shrug.

“You have a top for that thing?” The barely-past-puberty valet gestures at my Jeep, where KK, her boyfriend, and Captain are jumping out by drunkenly swinging off the roll bars.

“It’s got the safari top on,” I say. “Besides, it’s not going to rain.”

“Not rain. If you’ve got the top you should, like, put it on.”

“Do I look like I have it on me?” I ask, holding up my purse. “What’s the problem here?”

“Well, it goes in an unattended parking lot.”

“And?”

“It’s like, open. And no one will be watching it. You should really put the top on it.”

I speak very slowly. “I am not going home to put the top on my car. Anywhere, any time I park it and walk away, it is unattended. Trust me, the poor thing is used to this treatment. It does not have a nanny. This is why I have insurance and you have a no-liability clause.” I force my keys into his hand. “Park. The. Damn. Car.”

He hands me a paper ticket and practically runs for the driver’s seat. God, I’m bitchy when I’m sober.

“Wheeee!” The blonde girl crashes into KK and knocks both of them off the chair, almost but not quite spilling her champagne as they tumble to the ground laughing. Captain and I watch incredulously from our seat on a neighboring couch as the waiter brings yet another round of shots and they grab for them from the floor.

“To the bride!” the blonde girl yells, knocking one back in honor of the girl I don’t know and whose bachelorette party I am attending for reasons I have yet to ascertain.

“Yay!” “Bride!” “Woo!” All the girls join in, picking up glasses from the tray. There is one left.

The blonde girl snatches it up and lurches toward me. “’Have it!” she slurs. “All th’ girls are ‘aving one!”

“Thanks, I’m good.” I sip my eleventh Sprite of the evening.

“No, a toast to Angie! The bride!”

“That’s all right.”

“You sober driving?” She gets close to my face. “Cuz one’ll be fiiiine.”

“I’m pregnant,” I say dryly.

Her mouth opens in a wide “o” and she plops down on the couch next to me – on TOP of Captain, who had leaned behind me to say something to a friend and is now unfortunately pinned sideways by the blonde girl’s hip.

“I got a great boyfriend and I love him sooo much and I’m not after your boyfriend, I promise,” she whispers, gesturing at Captain in his awkward horizontal position.

“Oh, he’s not my—”

“He’s NOT? But does he know you’re… you know?”

Captain is trying to wriggle free. The blonde girl, I may have forgotten to mention, is not especially tiny. I help him out by giving her a friendly shove and he manages to sit up, and the blonde girl is now perched unsteadily on his lap.

“Hey there,” he says wearily.

“YOU drink this!” the blonde girl says, handing him the shot. He obliges. “Did YOU know that she’s—-“

“Not a big fan of cherry bombs, yeah,” I finish for her.** I turn to Captain. “Are we leaving soon?”

The Jeep, of course, was perfectly fine.

After that bar there was another, and two more Sprites before last call. I drove the drunks home and stopped at Jack in the Box for a chocolate milkshake before heading to my house.

It sure would have tasted better with a shot of Bailey’s.

—————–
* I learned something in Chicago.
** Yes I am.

I had a first-date last night. I’m getting a lot of practice with those.

On Friday night, I was feeling sickish in the stomach and a bit green around the gills, so I had no desire to go out. Mel texted me at about ten o’clock.

Copper’s been asking about you since we went out the other night! You should call him, his number is blah blah blah.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? The Copper is a friend from Mel’s police academy class so she can vouch for his character a bit. I’ve met him several times and he’s been very flirty, etc., but it was always when I was with E, so he got the brush-off every time he asked for my number. It wasn’t until an outing the other night that he even found out I was single. However, at said outing, some chick I’d seen him with before was practically climbing all over him and he was looking most uncomfortable. The word on the street is that they stopped dating a few weeks ago and she didn’t get the memo.

I text back: Isn’t he still with whatsherass?

No, they’re really done. He wants you to call him.

I am tired of being the aggressor. I am not trolling for men. Give him MY number, I wrote back, and we’ll see if he’s a man of action or a man of words.

Well, he was a man of action. I appreciate that. He called me yesterday morning and we made plans to hang out that evening. We went out for drinks, met up with Ben and Mel for awhile, and had a very nice time. I always have a very nice time when three buckets of beer are involved, but in all seriousness, it was fun to hang out with him outside his usual group of mad cop friends. He didn’t try to get me to go home with him or really do anything but kiss me goodnight. Again, this “taking it slow” thing. And, unlike Captain, he has already asked me to go out again.

I am completely weirded out.

I wrote this some time ago, just for the heck of it. The events are real, the dialogue is as accurate as I can remember. It’s rather profane – but then, the circumstances of the day made profanity not only warranted but necessary. Actual events occurred in January 2007. Enjoy.

————–

I wake up and squint. I’d forgotten that his room gets so bright in the morning, and out of habit I roll over to bury my face in his shoulder, but he’s not there. And in my squinty stupor, I’m confused and don’t remember what I’m doing in his bed alone.

Mike is talking from the doorway; it’s not Tim snoring and making grumbly noises in his sleep. “Becky, wake up.”

“I’m ‘wake,” I mumble, grabbing my cell phone to check the clock. It’s only eight, and we’re supposed to be at the airport to get him at one-thirty.

“You’re not gonna be happy about this.” I sit up straight, pulling my t-shirt down to make sure I’m not flashing my boyfriend’s brother, and look at the face he’s making. All five of the brothers do this, the half-smirk I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening-but-boy-am-I-pissed look. When two of them start eyeing each other like this, it’s best to duck and cover.

“What happened?”

“He and his guys got smashed last night in Baltimore and missed their plane because they were all hungover and didn’t hear their damn alarms.”

“You’re kidding. You must be kidding.” He shakes his head. “Do they have a later flight?”

“On standby for a nine o’clock. And he is fucking DEAD when he gets back. He’s highest ranked so he’s responsible for all of it.”

When your boyfriend is deployed to the Middle East, you don’t want to hear anything about him with the word “dead” in the same sentence. Even though I know he’s perfectly safe and back on American soil, I shiver involuntarily.

“What will happen?” I ask in a small voice.

“He’ll get his ass handed to him. They’ll probably threaten to revoke his promotion.”

“They wouldn’t actually do it, would they?”

“They might.”

He is military too, so I believe him. I narrow my eyes and a thought occurs to me. “Why didn’t he call me?”

“Because he’s a pussy and was afraid you’d be pissed at him, so he let me do the dirty work.”

I point out that I can be pissed at him no matter who tells me that he screwed up. Mike looks madder than I feel though, and I’m a little grateful for that because it will make me look like a good girlfriend.

“What about your parents?” I ask. They got into Kansas City last night like we did and are staying at a hotel in town.

“I’m gonna call them now. They’re gonna be so pissed. This is just like him. Oh, his ass is DEAD.”

Small shiver again.

I make up my mind that I will be the best girlfriend ever today and I will be the only one who does not get mad at him. Mike leaves the room, still shaking his head and grumbling, and I flop back down onto the pillows. If a seven o’clock flight becomes a nine o’clock flight, then we’ll pick him up at three instead of at one. That’s okay. Nothing to worry about.

My phone rings at nine-thirty.

“Hi babe.”

“Baby,” he says weakly. “I can’t fucking believe this.”

I politely refrain from making an it’s-your-own-damn-fault comment. “You didn’t get the nine o’clock flight, I guess?” I’m hoping he’s on the tarmac and departure was delayed.

“We’ll be on the ten-thirty. To Cleveland.”

“To Cleveland.”

“Yeah.”

“And then?”

“There’s a one o’clock to Kansas City.”

“That’s cutting it close, isn’t it?”

“I guess. Not like we have much choice.”

We’re silent for a minute and it’s as though we’re staring at each other, face to face, trying to read each other’s eyes. “Are you okay?” I ask.

“I’m pretty much dead, you know that.” Everyone, stop saying that! “Everybody is gonna be so pissed, I know Mike is and my parents and you are and –“

“I never said I was pissed at you.” Because I am a good girlfriend.

“And when I go to the base for in-processing tomorrow I am gonna get reamed. You have no idea.”

“Mike told me about it.” I pause. “But you’re almost home. You’ll be home tonight. And yeah, you did a stupid thing this morning and you’re gonna take some shit for it but I’m still so glad you’re coming back and I can’t wait to see you.” That should do it.

And it does. “I can’t wait to see you either, babe.”

“It’ll be okay, you know that. You’ll be home safe, that’s all that matters to me.”

“I’m really sorry about this.”

We talk for a few more minutes and I get a few laughs out of him when he tells me about going out with the guys in Baltimore last night, their first real drinking expedition in four months. He still sounds so hungover and it’s almost funny to both of us by the time we hang up.

I deliver the update to Mike, he calls his parents again, and we wait. It starts to snow again and we watch the weather on TV, checking out Baltimore and Cleveland especially.

Mike gets the call at ten-twenty that Tim is sitting on the plane bound for Cleveland, and I am happy. Still irritated by the situation, Mike flips wildly through the channels in no particular order while I’m bouncing off the walls. Every time I’ve visited Tim I’ve had my car with me and I’m getting anxious, wanting out of the house so I can kill time anywhere but here with my fingers tapping.

I ask Mike if I can borrow his car – he drove us out here – and he says no: it’s too old and has a weird brake and I shouldn’t drive it in the snow. I offer to bring him Taco Bell and he just grumbles.

My phone rings at one-thirty. “Not gonn’ believe this,” Tim slurs.

“You’re supposed to be in the air right now,” I say flatly.

“We had a delayed landing in Cleveland and just missed the flight to Kansas City. They wouldn’t hold it for us because they wanted to got out ahead of the weather. More snow coming.” His tongue sounds furry.

I smack my head in frustration and Mike is mouthing “What?” at me across the room, over and over. Covering the phone with my hand, I tell him what’s happened and he stomps down the hall. “Tell him I’m calling Mom and Dad!” he yells from the kitchen.

“I heard him,” Tim says.

“So what happens now?”

“I’m in the airport bar. Having a beer with the guys.”

“No, I mean when are you going to get here?” I’m starting to sound ticked-off and I take a few deep breaths. It doesn’t sound like his first beer of the day and I doubt it’s going to be his last.

If your dumb ass misses another plane because you’ve been drinking…

He laughs wryly. “Well, it’s funny, I could get on a plane to Saint Louis in an hour.”

I perk up. “Can we just come meet you there? We’ll drive back!”

“I can’t leave without the guys and I have to be at the base at eight tomorrow morning.”

“So it’s not actually funny then.” I sound cranky again. Must. Stop. Must be good girlfriend. “When is the next flight to Kansas City?”

“Seven-thirty.” He pauses. “Yeah. I’m pretty much dead.” I don’t say anything, thinking of how I’m doing the dirty work now, having to tell Mike. “See, you ARE pissed at me now,” he says. “I’m supposed to be with you and with my family right now and I’m not and it’s all my fault.”

“Look, you screwed up, but I’m not mad at you,” I say carefully. “When do you land here, then?”

“Ten.”

“So you’ll be drinking in the airport bar for the next six hours?” I tease, trying to lighten up. I am SUCH a good girlfriend, the only person not mad at him today! “You’ve never had a problem killing time in a bar, babe. But don’t spend all your combat pay, I’m counting on a few nice dinners at least.” He laughs and promises to call me in a few hours with an update. We hang up.

And if you miss that damn plane… I take a deep breath.

“GODDAMMIT!” I scream, throwing the phone into the couch. “THAT IDIOT!”

“Knew you’d get pissed,” Mike says from the kitchen, and I walk in to tell him the news.

“Goddammit indeed.” He cracks open a beer and smirks.

And we wait.