If it were in me to cheat on Joey, I think the blonde seated next to me at the bar would do just fine. She was obviously interested. Body language. She leaned in and smiled and licked her lips a lot; her cleavage seemed almost ready to burst through the front of her tight black sweater. Nice. Not Joey, but that was a good thing. Right now all somber brunettes within hailing distance were off-limits; the last thing I needed was a reminder of what awaited me back at home. I had just managed, with my last Scotch and soda (heavy on the Scotch, light on the soda) to drink the night away into that fuzzy dreamlike quality that worked like a salve to soothe the pain and the anger and the feeling of betrayal that she had promised me I'd never have to deal with again.
The blonde's hand was on my knee. Now, when did that happen? I looked at it in a vaguely puzzled way, as if some mildly interesting but unfamiliar creature had just crawled into my lap for a rest. She licked her lips again, a quick, sensuously self-conscious flick of the tongue, which was tinged a dark pink with the Cosmopolitans I'd been buying her. There was a time in my life when I would have taken her home and given her what she so obviously wanted without a second thought of consequences or propriety. Huh. That was the Pre-Joey Era. Or, rather, the Meso-Joey Era, if you want to get technical. Back then, things were simple and desires could be quenched through a meaningless, guilt-free fling with a pretty (if easy) girl, and it was possible to speak the truth without worrying ceaselessly what implications that truth might have on the rest of my life.
Not so anymore. Now everything, every tediously trivial slip of the tongue or bad choice of words or overlooked "I love you" or kiss that didn't last quite long enough had a terrible, unshakable weight attached to it. And these missteps were pulling us under, drowning us with their meaning or possible meaning or lack of meaning that we managed, always, to misconstrue. The blonde sitting next to me didn't look like a fight waiting to happen. She looked like the Anti-Joey, with her light hair and her slightly irritating but refreshingly inane small talk, with her straining black sweater and her forthright sexuality. Small flicks of the tongue over red-painted lips, not even trying to conceal what she wanted from me.
I was so weary of complexity. Suddenly simplicity seemed the answer to my prayers. I leaned toward her, placing my hand on top of the one she was resting on my knee.
"What did you say your name was?" I half-shouted over the music and chaotic bar babble.
"Cindy," she replied, with a slow swipe at her lower lip with that pink tongue.
Cindy—what else would it be? "I'm Pacey."
"I know," she said, and giggled with a sound like breaking glass. "You told me that already."
"Do you want to dance, Cindy?"
She plucked the cherry out of the bottom of her empty martini glass and put it into her mouth, slowly and deliberately, her wide, blue, heavily made-up eyes never leaving mine. I felt something stir deep inside of me, some sane, rational, buzz-killing part of my psyche that warned me to stop this now, now, before I stepped over the line. Before I lost sight of it.
When I took the hand Cindy offered with its fire-red, lacquered nails and led her toward the small, smoke-hazy dance floor, the stirring of Logical Pacey was stilled. I was a little surprised at how easily he went down. I put my arms around the blonde's waist and we began to move together to the thumping backbeat of the music. When I caught sight of a dark-haired woman dancing just a few feet away, I closed my eyes and slipped into the fuzzy terrain of my Scotch-sluggish mind. She couldn't hold a candle to Joey, but still, I couldn't look at her.
I walked out of the bar to take her phone call. I just left Cindy standing there on the dance floor, staring questioningly after me as I stepped outside into the frigid night air. It was still too loud. I pressed a hand to my free ear so I could hear her better. The sound of her voice, so clear and familiar and beautiful, so concerned, cut me to the core. I tried to make my own voice sound normal as I told her not to wait up for me. She seemed to understand something I wasn't saying, though. I could detect an edge that might have been near-panic in her plea for me to tell her where I was.
"You don't need to come down here," I told her. "I'm fine."
"Well I'm not," she said.
"What? What's wrong?" It was her tone that got to me, that note of desperation that I'd so rarely heard from her. It scared me.
"I want to talk to you, Pace. So either you come home or I'll come to you. I need to see you, okay?"
"Are you all right, Jo?" I asked, thinking that she sure didn't sound like she was.
"Yes—no! Come home, sweetie, please?"
Sweetie. There was a word she hardly ever used. Last time she'd used that particular term of endearment had been in the days following that terrible night of my attempted (and almost laughably unsuccessful) proposal. It struck a nerve now, as it had then. It wasn't Joey, that word. It meant something wrong and hurtful coming from her lips, it meant memories that I couldn't for the life of me erase no matter how hard I fought them. I swallowed and heard a dry click in my throat. "Not yet," I said into the phone, mechanically. "Go to bed; get some sleep. Don't worry about me." I snapped my cell closed against her protest and shoved it back into my pocket. My heart was beating hard, as if I'd just run a mile. A hand came out of nowhere and touched my arm, and I was so tightly wound that I jumped. "Shit!" I said, spinning around to see Cindy standing there. Cindy with her red lips and bleach-blonde hair and ample cleavage.
"Sorry," she said, giggling uncomplicatedly. "You disappeared on me."
I forced a smile that felt plastic and weird. "Well, you found me," I said in a tone that anyone who knew me would comprehend as phony. "Are you about ready for another Cosmo?"
I put my arm around her shoulders and guided her back inside the bar, where I bought her another drink and gulped down my own. Hearing Joey's voice had left a burning sore spot in my stomach, and dumping alcohol on top of that was like chugging down liquid fire. I winced, wondering if I was getting an ulcer. It would just figure, wouldn't it? Cindy was leaning close, cupping her hands to her mouth and pressing close to my ear to say something, and then the phone buzzed again in my pocket.
Sighing, but unwilling or unable to ignore it, I pulled it out and didn't even look at the caller ID window before answering.
"Joey, I told you, I'll be home when I'm home!" I said roughly.
"Whoa—well, I'm glad it was me instead of her, man!" came a familiar voice.
I took a deep breath and released it in a relieved laugh, wandering away from Cindy again and pushing my way through the crush of people back outside to my spot on the sidewalk. "Jack, my man, how are you?" I asked jubilantly, sounding drunk even to my own ears. "How goes it with my favorite same-sex couple?"
"Things are good, Pace," he said, and I could tell he was about to start asking questions. Like, for instance, why the hell would I answer the phone like that, and what was wrong at home? Questions I couldn't bear to answer. So I began to talk over him.
"I'm glad to hear that, you know, because that brother of mine, he can be a real ass when he wants to be, and you're a good man, McPhee, so you need to stick up for yourself if he starts in with his crap. It's not hard; I've been doing it my whole life. He's a pushover really, when you learn how to play him. How's that baby girl doing?"
"Pace—"
"I need to come home and see her before she grows up, that one," I rambled on. "She's growing so fast, and God, is she Jen all over again or what? I couldn't believe it last time I saw her. She's hardly even a baby anymore."
"No, she's a toddler. Pacey, stop for a second."
I did. I didn't know what else to do.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
I glanced over my shoulder where Cindy was waiting just inside the neon-edged door of the bar, now looking slightly agitated, her arms crossed over her black-wool-covered breasts. "Truth?" I asked.
"Always the truth, buddy."
"Not really."
"I figured. Want to talk about it?"
I paused. "Did she call you, Jackers?"
"She's worried sick, Pace. And from what I've heard already, I can't say that I blame her."
"I'm okay." I leaned against the brick wall, suddenly dizzy. "I'm okay," I repeated, as if to convince myself.
"Why don't you go home and set her mind at ease?"
"It's not that easy, Jackers. I wish it was, but it's not." My voice was choked, rising reluctantly up through my constricted throat.
"You love her. She loves you. That's pretty much all that matters," he said.
And suddenly I felt horribly, dangerously close to tears. "Shit, man!" I said forcefully, slamming my head against the brick wall so hard that stars sparkled in front of my eyes. "I wish that was true."