27

THE UN-ESCAPE

NORA

I SPEND THE NEXT week pretending I live in New York. I pick up bagels for me and Da, toasting us each one every morning. In my mind, I’ve quit The Fly Trap—though I did let them know I had a “family emergency” out east. I also avoid Sophie’s texts and calls, because I’m enjoying my temporary fake life. Her most recent text is simply, I know what you’re doing.

At least she doesn’t tell me it’s stupid, even though I know she desperately wants to.

Despite the guilt I feel, or perhaps thanks to it, I sleep late every day. When I am awake, I visit old friends from Ireland who’ve moved to the city. Together we get very, very drunk on just about a nightly basis. I have a fair share of men approach, but every time one propositions me, I get irrationally angry. This most recent time, I’m liquored up enough that he actually gets through introductions without a boot. The guy is good looking, but I’ve already forgotten what he said by the time I respond. The smell of his cologne burns my eyes almost as much as the sight of his popped collar.

“Ah, come on, beauty,” I hear him say, “I just want to have some fun with you.”

Then it all goes fuzzy for me. My hands grab at his neck, but I think I’m kicking or something. My entire body feels like it’s moving, but it’s out of my control. My ears thrum with a chaotic mashup of pulse and static and voices I can’t understand. It’s like the aural version of one’s vision going red. The next thing I know, I’m being dragged out of the pub by a bouncer who seems three times my size.

My friend Louise runs out after us, chattering to the guy that she’ll take care of me, and how sorry she is.

“Don’t polly-gize for me,” I say, sounding even sloppier than I must look right now. “Jesus fuck, I’m drunk.”

Louise ducks under my arm and holds me up. “Yeah, I caught that. The fuck is wrong wit ye?”

“I thought we answered this question,” I say, looking at her as she blends from three to one. “I’m drunk.”

“Nah,” she groans as we walk to an intersection to snare a cab. “For days you’ve been near a fist fight with anyone who dares approach you for a ride. Y’said you’re single. And that last one was beautiful. Tall, dark, and handsome. Nice trim beard—none of that huge and bushy, hippie shite. And forget that I can see his cock through his jeans. You practically tried to stab it with yer boots.”

“Lou,” I groan, the effort of trying to keep it all straight doing my head in. Wait, did she say beard? “I’m… I don’t know. I’m wrecked. I’m just going to go home, okay?”

“Fuck no! Your drunk ass is going to tell me why I had to leave my potential ride hanging—literally—to escort my unusually violent friend home without injury to herself or anyone else.”

My skin feels numb, my muscles like rubber. Louise shoves me into a cab, and though I hit my head on the opposite door, I don’t feel it. This is not good.

I nearly pass out when the car starts moving, but Louise slaps me none-too-lightly to wake me up. “Nora Diane Bennett! It may have escaped your whiskey-fueled attention, but I’m raging!”

I smile through the sludge of too-much-drink, her accent particularly thick right now. She’d only moved from Dublin five years ago, but it doesn’t take long for an ex-pat to find their native sound getting sanded away… until they’re either drunk or really fucking angry. Two things the Irish are stereotypically good at. Hashtag Irish pride!

“I’m sorry,” I plead, my head already starting to pound with the forthcoming hangover. “I am single. But I’m… broken.”

“Feck’s sake,” she says with a groan and slaps at the top of my head. “No more feckin’ Jameson’s for you, ya bleedin’ drama queen.”

From somewhere within me, the entire story of Doc erupts, save the part about how abusive Stephen was. Drunk or not, I can still manage to hold shit back. I’m sure I sound insane. The cab driver swerves two lanes over when I manage to throw in an anecdote about how I clamped my legs shut on Doc’s head every time his beard tickled my inner thighs.

“Jesus Christ!” Louise barks at him. “There goes yer tip.”

I try to giggle, but it comes out more like a gurgle and follow up with the just-intelligible-enough quip, “Just the tip.”

Louise laughs, as well she should, but as soon as she does, I begin to cry. And cry. And I finally dissolve into a blob of whiskey stench and snot. My friend’s arms wrap around me, her hand patting my back as we continue to her apartment.

As promised, she doesn’t tip the driver and hustles me through the door and into her elevator.

“Thank fuck you don’t live in a walk-up,” I tell her, leaning against the wall.

Louise chuckles before dragging me out when we reach her floor. Minutes later, I am face down on the sofa as she takes off my shoes. “Sober up so you can be properly interrogated in the morning.”

I can’t respond thanks to absolute lack of energy. Not to mention, I’m barely conscious anymore. Odds are I won’t even remember getting here.

In the morning, I wake to the smell of a particularly strong coffee under my nose. It doesn’t nauseate me, like it might some at this point, but rather, it smells like salvation. My head does feel like it might crack in half with the slightest movement.

“Up and at ’em, love,” Louise says.

I roll around to find the least painful way to sit up and drink the coffee, eventually giving up and just groaning a lot and loudly. I peer through my lashes to see her look of concern.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, my voice sounding like Darth Vader after he’s gargled shards of glass.

“Drink the coffee. Then you can apologize in the form of explaining what the fuck you were on about. Okay?”

I manage a weak smile before savoring my cup of liquid life. It’s a good ten minutes before I’m ready to speak, but when I do, I find I don’t have much to say.

“I’m only single because I just broke up with someone.” The words force Doc’s face to the forefront of my mind, and I want to weep, but the pressure that causes on the inside of my face and skull cranks my headache up to full power. Holding back is even worse. A deep breath and full exhale isn’t enough to purge him from my veins. There’s an anvil on my chest, and despite my record for rare barfage post-drinking, I’m guessing that streak is about to end.

“Jaysus, are you gonna toss? Do I need to get a bucket?”

“I don’t know,” I say, heaving. “Okay, yes.”

The entire scene becomes a horrible mess—and I don’t mean because I yack everywhere. I manage to make it to the proper head-in-a-toilet position, but I also set off into hysterical sobbing while vomiting. I can only be thankful that I don’t aspirate my own sick.

It takes another half hour, a shower, and a two-hour nap to get me to the physical possibility of talking. I wake to Louise holding my cell phone in my face.

To my quizzical brow she responds, “I got the story from our girl Sophie. Talk to her.”

After staring at the phone in Lou’s outstretched arm for far too long, I startle when it drops in my lap.

“Hi.” I sound shamed and exhausted, but one sigh from Sophie, and I feel relieved.

“Babe.”

“I know. I’m sorry—”

“I’m not calling to make you feel bad for freezing me out,” she says, and though I try to correct her, she cuts me off. “I understand why you’re not talking; I’m just worried. You’re free to deal with this however you need to, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on you.”

“Thank you.”

“You flew your ass last minute to London to support me,” she says. “I’d be a shitty friend if I was anything less than stellar.”

I laugh at her teasing tone. And the laugh feels surprisingly good. Surprising because I haven’t laughed un-aided (without being drunk) in a solid week. Good, because, well… doesn’t it always feel good to laugh?

“I don’t know,” I hedge. “You did text some snarky things a couple days ago. It’s put a slight tarnish on your stellar status.”

She hoots, a single-note laugh that sounds exactly like her grandma Jean—who I also adopted along with Mama Margaret. “Well, shit. There goes my Nobel Peace Prize.”

The giggles grab us for a brief moment before reality returns.

“So how are you really?” she asks.

“Hungover.”

“That part I get—I can hear your hangover from here.”

I sigh, loud and full. It’s so forceful, I wonder if I’m going to hurl again. After a few deep breaths, I regain the most minimal chunk of composure. “Not good. I haven’t been dealing all that well.”

“Because you’re in love with Doc, and that means bad things.”

Ouch. I felt that in my spleen. Am I bleeding?

She reads my silence all too well. “Look, I’ve been thinking about the whole Stephen thing, and though it is completely legit to be averse to… loving someone again, I hope you don’t give up entirely.”

“I can’t do it, Sophie.” My voice is a whisper. I shift my body, curling into the fetal position on Louise’s sofa. “I—”

“Honest to God?” She sounds pissed. “Nora, I love you. You’re my sister, so I’m not going to bullshit you. Doc will forgive you. Do you know how I know? Because I forgave Fox for the awful things he said to me before we officially got together. And that’s why you’re going to suck it up and get back to California.”

“Soph, I’m not—”

“Are you feeling better than you did when you left?”

I can’t answer that. “I’ll call you when I do feel better.”

She sighs. “Listen, babe, I’m not trying to step into your shoes. At all, I promise. I’m just gently reminding you that you are so much stronger than you think you are. You know you’re a badass. Doc certainly does.”

The taste of tears slips past my lips and salts my tongue before I feel them fall. “I am so not badass.”

“Like I’m even accepting arguments on the topic.”

“I was awful to him, Soph,” I say, my heart pulsing painfully in my temples.

“Yeah, well now he’s being awful to himself,” she says before mumbling something under her breath. I thought I heard concussion.

That makes me sit up. Literally. “What do you mean? What concussion? Is he okay?”

My body is instantly flooded with adrenaline, enough that I forget the pain of my hangover, if only for a brief stomach-twisting moment.

“Shit. I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Sophie!”

“He’s fine, babe. I promise. He’s just been acting a little careless at work,” she says.

She doesn’t say anything else about it, but she doesn’t have to. I’m worried regardless of what she says… And I am suddenly way too far from where I want to be.

“No matter what,” Sophie says softly, “you have backup. All you need to do is tell the truth—to yourself, and to Doc. But that’s just my two cents.”

I just breathe and think for a minute, and my girl is silent and patient. My heart turns over a few times before I can restart and tell her, “I have to come home.”