Kat
The minuteI walk into La Cabaña, I can tell Evan is drunk. He’s sitting alone at a table in the middle of the crowded room, staring vacantly into space. There’s guacamole and two margaritas in front of him, one half-finished. I wonder what else he’s had to drink. I wonder why he’s at that table instead of one of the empty booths along a wall, but I probably know why.
I take a deep breath and cross the room toward him, spine straight, heels clicking along the floor. There’s the familiar prickle of attention, real and imagined: the sensation that everyone here is looking at me and everyone is wondering why I walk so weird or have these glasses or didn’t wear lipstick today. It’s better now than it used to be, because meds and therapy help, but simple shit like this is what I’ve always hated the most. I’ve always wanted to walk through a crowded room without feeling like there are eyeballs rolling over my skin.
“Hey,” I say, when I get to his table. “Sorry I’m late.”
I’m not, but it’s the polite thing to say. There’s another table two feet behind me where a family’s sharing nachos, a table behind Evan with four women drinking margaritas. I know better than to think any of them care what I’m doing, but it never feels that way.
“I was about to start on your drink if you didn’t show up soon,” he says.
I push it toward him, and he snorts.
“C’mon. Might help you relax. God knows you need it.”
He takes a long pull from his own margarita, then picks up a chip.
“Evan,” I ask, quietly. “Why am I here?”
He leans forward, and his light brown hair falls into his eyes. His face is flushed, and he rubs a hand along his jaw, smiling at me. The academic part of my brain notes that he’s still handsome, and it’s still a nice smile.
“I thought I could comfort you after you got laid off,” he says, because apparently he’s had enough tequila to be honest. “Figured I’d come here, tell you how I was the one who fought for you to keep your job, buy you some margaritas, make you stop hating me quite so much. But that didn’t work, huh? Gregory actually thinks you’re good at your job.”
I’d love it if I were surprised right now, but I’m not. I’m bolt upright in this chair, trying to ignore the noise of all these people, telling myself that no one is paying us any attention. If I left, how much attention would that draw? Would it be worse than staying?
“Is this because of Olivia?” I finally ask, since he’s in a mood to tell the truth. Figures that he’d be upset enough about her to take it out on me.
First, he finishes his own margarita.
“It’s because everyone hates me now and it’s your fault,” he says, a little louder than he was. Not quite loud enough to be noticeable, but loud enough to make my skin feel a little tighter. “All you had to do was cry all over the office and it got everyone on your side. Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t give me that surprised look. Why do you think I’m here? You think I wanted to be the guy who has to go to some podunk town for a month and talk a bunch of hillbillies through a merger?”
He grabs another chip, stabs it into the guacamole like he can kill it.
“It was punishment because everyone took your side, even after you were gone.”
I open my mouth to tell him that it never felt that way to me. It felt like he moved on instantly and everything except me moved with him—our friends, our coworkers, the company we both worked for—but then I close it. I don’t care if he knows or not.
“Go ahead,” he says, waving a chip. A chunk of guacamole falls on the table. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me how I deserved getting shuttled off to this dead-end position because I hurt your feelings.”
“You slept with your assistant,” I point out, as politely as I can.
“And you ruined that, too,” he says. “You and fucking Flynn. He’s a condescending asshole. Used to act like he was everybody’s dad back in Afghanistan. I swear he almost punched me once over a Snickers bar,” Evan says, and snorts. “Then a couple years later, he told me to go to therapy.”
“Oh no,” I say.
“He’s as bad as anyone,” Evan says, and he’s suddenly vicious. “We all did the same shit. We had to. He just couldn’t handle it.”
I stare at him. My brain’s frozen, and that’s nothing new. It’s nothing new that there are tons of people in here and I’m certain they’re all looking at me, even when they’re not. It’s nothing new that there’s anxiety stuck in my chest like a sea urchin in my lungs, spikes dug deep into flesh. It’s nothing new that I can’t think of a single thing to say in response, that my brain has the same deer-in-headlights response as ever.
But it’s new that in the middle of all that, I feel… bad for him. He seems pathetic right now, drunk in the middle of a Mexican restaurant on a Thursday night, telling his ex-fiancé that he tried to get her fired and it didn’t work.
I don’t remember why I came here. Something about not wanting to let him win, whatever that means. Maybe I thought he’d apologize, and we could be… not friends, but people who existed a little easier in the same universe. I thought that might be nice, but I’m past caring. I’m past anger. I’m past ever wanting to think about him again.
“Hi there!” a voice says, and I jump. “Sorry for the wait, can I get you anything to drink?”
“Yeah,” Evan says, before I find my voice. “She’ll take a Cadillac—”
“Actually, I was leaving,” I say, and smile at her. I think I smile. My face feels a little weird and my heart’s beating so fast it’s hard to pay attention to other body parts. “Sorry for the trouble.”
“She’s not leaving,” Evan says, but I stand and grab my purse. The waitress is standing there, eyebrows up, notepad out, looking between us.
“I am,” I confirm. “Sorry for the trouble.”
With that, I turn and walk away. Evan shouts something behind me and this time I know people are looking at me, because I can see the heads turn and that sickly, sticky feeling washes through me but I keep walking without looking back.