I didn’t want to go out tonight. Carla arranges for us to go out and have that much overdue drink. The one that she promised nearly a week ago before I started sleeping with her son. I needed someone to talk to when she suggested it, but now I found him, I didn’t want to go. I told her to go ahead without me. I even suggested that she go out of with the nurses. But she just looked at me as if I was mad. As far as she’s concerned, I spend every night alone. She asked me, “Don’t you ever want to go out?”

I smiled at her and told her to come around at seven. Besides Jason wasn’t happy about the idea, he turned into some caveman when I told him about tonight.

‘I don’t like the idea of you going to bars. I mean just say some man tries to hit on you. How will you protect yourself?’

He didn’t seem to mind his mom going, just not me. I went to his place this morning while she was at work and showed him what I would only do with him and no one else. He calmed down after we did it in the utility room while the washing machine was running. It was wild, and it makes me hot just thinking about it.

“Are you sure that this is the right bar?” I shout out to Carla.

She’s laughing as she looks from side-to-side. The place is too loud, and I feel old as there are kids in the bar throwing things at each other.

“One of the nurses suggested this place!” she shouts back.

“How old are they?”

She shakes her head and grabs my arm. I can tell by her actions that the nurse must be young. We get outside, and it’s as if we’re trying to catch our breath. The place was packed, and I felt as if I was going to a crowded concert. The one that I took Daniel and his friends to when they were fifteen and needed a parent chaperone. I volunteered because I’d never been to a concert. I remember afterward thinking that there were some things that I’d never experienced and I wasn’t missing out on life as a result of them.

“Now, that was difficult,” Carla says as she smiles at me.

“Tell me about it. How old are the nurses?”

She waves her hand, as I think that she spots a couple of them through the crowd.

“Junior nurses!” She laughs.

I shake my head, as I think that I’m having sex with an eighteen-year-old, but I can’t hang out in a bar that has a bunch of twenty-one or even older crowd in it.

“God, how old are they?”

She smiles. “Around twenty-two, three. Who knows? They’re young. But you would fit in easily with them. It’s me that looks as if I’m old enough to be their mom.”

I shake my head as I study her dark hair pinned up in a loose bun and the sexy red number that she’s wearing, considering she’s a single mom who works a lot of long hours she still shapes up nicely when she goes out.

“At least you’re out there in the real world. I’m the one who’s stuck at home all the time. Time is all I have,” I say, as we walk down the street and Carla takes the lead.

“Let’s find a descent place to have a drink and then we can talk,” Carla offers as she loops her hand in my arm.

I have no idea what direction we’re going in because we both left our cars at home and took an Uber out here so that we could drink and have some fun.

“What about that place?”

I point to a bar across the street as I see a few people walk in and out. People our age, not like the drunks that are leaving the bar that we just left and are making so much noise on the side of the curb.

“Looks presentable.”

I nod. “Looks like a place that women our age would go to.”

She agrees as she locks her arm into mine and we start to cross the street at the lights.

“Seriously Jenny, you look completely different compared to the last ten years that I’ve known you. Your hair’s down.”

I correct her, “Because Tom insisted that it was always tied back. ‘Never in a bun,’ he would say. ‘That’s the way that my mom wears her hair, and I didn’t marry my mom.’”

“You’re wearing short skirts. This one nearly shows your ass when you bend over.”

‘Easy access,’ Jason would say, that’s why I even bought the dress in the first place. To surprise him when he comes over. I didn’t plan on wearing it out. It just happened that way.

“‘Don’t wear anything above the knee. I didn’t marry a lousy,’ Tom would say. So, I never showed off my knees. ‘Besides your knees are too knobbly, and people would think that you never eat or something.’”

I was doing a bad impression of Tom, but that’s exactly why he said that and the reason why I never wore short skirts in his presence. Even out of it, I still had a complex about my knees after his comment.

“What about pants? I don’t remember you ever wearing pants,” Carla asks as her brows cross and I shake my head about what Tom used to say about that.

“‘Don’t wear pants. I never married a man!’”

Then we both burst out laughing; he didn’t want to think of himself as being gay, just practicing it outside of her home or sitting at home watching it on the Net.

She opens the door for me and says, “Well something’s made you change into a hot momma overnight, and I’m going to get it out of you before the night’s done.”

I smile as my eyes dart across the bar. There are a few couples and a couple of men who probably think that we want to be picked up for the night. I ignore them as I move to the other side of the bar. Away from them and so we don’t end up looking their way and giving them the wrong message.

“Well, I do have a confession to make…”

Carla’s eagerly waiting for me to speak, but I know that it's not time to tell her about Jason. It's only a summer thing and Carla and I came out to have a good time. There's a time and place for everything and standing in a bar isn't the best time to tell her about Jason and I.

Carla shakes her head. “Drinks first.”

Then she waves to the bartender.

“Can we have a couple of tequilas? And then a couple of cosmopolitans?”

The bartender raises an eyebrow and asks, “Should I just bring them together? Saves you calling me all the time.”

Then he moves and Carla purses her lips together, and I think about the fact that our night has gone from one disaster to another, but I’m not going to let the bartender’s comment ruin it.

“I’m seeing someone,” I say quietly feeling uneasy about discussing this with Carla.

“Wow!” Carla claps her hands together, and it seems to wake up the people that are at the bar because they all turn their attention to us. Especially the rude bartender who swiftly comes over with our tequilas.

“Ladies, you’re a lively pair tonight, and I haven’t even given you your tequilas yet.”

He hands them over to us with the salt and as we agree to take the shot and then the cosmopolitan comes, I start to get braver. I start talking, a bit too much.

“No, it’s a lie. I’m not just seeing someone. I think that I’m falling in love!”

“Woo-hoo!” Carla shouts out, and then I nod my head and say, “He’s so into me. But then maybe a little too much, because he’s younger. Much younger…”

She laughs. “Age ain’t nothing like a number. Follow your heart and for once in your life have some fun. You’ve had a crappy eighteen years of being with someone who doesn’t want to be with you. Just go with the flow. Seriously, if I knew being with a younger man could make me look as good as you are at the moment, I would have done it a long time ago.”

I smile at her words; I do feel different. More alive, I never knew until Jason and I started seeing each other that I’d been dead until now.

“Now let’s get another round of drinks. There are two men that look as if they’re going to buy them for us.”

I shake my head. “But I’m a taken woman.”

She winks, “You are. But I’m not.”