“The most beautiful stories always start with wreckage.”
-Jack London
Before I left the house, I grabbed my purse and checked for the essentials: lip gloss, ID, debit card, a pack of gum, and my cell phone. Then I threw in my mace. The tiny keychain mace was given to me by my grandmother years ago and I doubted it was still effective, but I felt like taking it was the responsible thing to do. I didn’t know this Wren and needed to err on the side of caution as much as possible. I’d also just binge-watched copious amounts of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and was convinced my life would end after a parking lot abduction. My mind was my own worst enemy. Before getting out of my car to walk inside the bar where we’d agreed to meet, I took a pen from my purse.
Be chill.
Definitely needed to remind myself of this because I wasn’t feeling chill at all.
Taking a seat at the bar, I ordered a Jack and Ginger and an order of fries. Already on edge from the entire When are we meeting? debacle, I wagered drinking on an empty stomach wouldn’t prove beneficial for me. Ten to meet for dinner seemed so late to me.
It was late, wasn’t it?
Or was I old?
When the bartender slid me my drink, I gave him a friendly smile in thanks before taking a long sip.
“That good, huh?” the man sitting on the barstool beside me asked.
Cutting my eyes to him, I tilted my head in question. He was watching me, intently, his bloodshot eyes fixed on me, his mouth turned up in a crooked smile. Totally not creepy. NOT. “I’m sorry?”
“You made a little moan when you took that sip,” he explained.
I stared at him blankly for a moment. Had I moaned? That was embarrassing. “Oh, yeah. It is,” I mumbled after a moment.
“Name’s Billy,” he informed me as he held a hand out. I took it, not wanting to be rude.
“Hannah.”
“That’s a pretty name. You here alone?”
I tensed. He was hitting on me.
“Actually, I’m meeting someone,” I confessed earning an aha expression from him. And just to make sure he’d leave me in peace, I added, “I barely made it out tonight. Four kids…” I sighed in fake exhaustion. “It’s hard to get a sitter.”
His brows furrowed. “You have four kids?”
“Yep,” I lied. “One, three, seven, and eleven.”
“Oh.”
I almost blew my cover by rolling my eyes, but luckily stopped myself in time. He was stunned. Good. Suddenly my pretty name and face weren’t as appealing. “Well, good for you.”
Swiveling on his stool, he turned away from me and began speaking with the person sitting next to him. I shook my head and sipped my drink again. Predictable. I hadn’t wanted to speak with him anyway. My trick had worked. And though I knew it would play out like it did, it was still disappointing and took a little more of my faith in the male sex away, which was frightening since I didn’t have much left at this point anyway.
As I sipped my drink and nibbled at my fries, my paranoia took over, and I could feel the stares of the other bar patrons upon me, judging me, wondering why a woman was sitting at a bar by herself on a Friday night. I was wondering that as well. Three Jack and Gingers later, I was buzzed and more anxious—not the best combo. I’d hoped alcohol would ease my frustrations and reservations, but that plan had failed. Usually I was a happy drinker, alcohol seemed to help melt away my inhibitions, my insecurities, and made me…fun, easy going. But I was still on edge. It was as if the harder I tried to relax the tenser I got. My phone chimed with a text from Wren. So he did know how to use a phone…
Wren: GPS says I’m twenty minutes away.
Me: Okay. I’m here, at the bar. Black top. Pink scarf.
Wren: Are you going to be nice?
I snorted a laugh earning a concerned look from the bartender. I enjoyed the banter and decided to reply with something snarky.
Me: No. Now stop texting me. I heard it’s dangerous to text and drive.
Apparently, it was safe for him to text now, just not earlier when I was asking him for a time.
Wren: Be nice.
Placing my phone on the bar, I sat back in my seat and polished off the remainder of my drink. Were we just flirting, or was he being a smartass? Personally, I was being a smartass…but I guess I was flirting, too. The bartender slid me another drink, a look of pity capturing his features. He thought I was being stood up. Or maybe he thought I was a loser, a lonesome woman at a bar drinking her woes away.
“Thanks,” I told him as I raised my glass in toast.
Twenty minutes turned into thirty, I got drunker and began reciting in my head the verbal thrashing I planned to give Wren whenever he finally did arrive, if he arrived, when…
“Nice place you picked here.”
My head snapped up and…there he was as I lived and breathed. Wren. His expression looked as grisly as I felt; apparently, I wasn’t the only one fearing this night was a huge waste of time. At least we had that in common. I had to chuckle a little with that thought. What in the hell were we doing?
“What’s so funny?” He snorted as he pulled out the stool next to me and sat down, keeping his body facing me. I was still chuckling as I took a moment to inspect him. He was wearing glasses, Clark Kent style, and his dark hair was stylishly messy atop his head. It had that look of no effort put into it, though I knew it did. His beard was fuller than it had been in his photos on the app, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to run my fingers through it. Of course he had to be even more handsome than I’d expected.
“Nothing,” I muttered, shaking my head, peeling my eyes away from him. Of course he didn’t like the place I picked. Why would he? That might have made the whole meeting-for-the-first-time somewhat easier. Rus’s wasn’t the finest establishment around, but the staff had always been friendly and it was close to my house so I liked it. The barstools were slightly worn and the floor was littered in broken peanut shells, but I liked low-key. Wren apparently did not. But I wasn’t going to push it with him. “If you don’t like this place we can go somewhere else.”
“No,” he sighed dramatically. “That’s okay. If we stay here and it’s awful, I can just blame it on you.” He was staring at the bar when I moved my eyes to him. His mouth was half-quirked as he inspected the liquor bottles that lined the back of the bar trying to decide on his drink order. He was being facetious. Pressing my lips together, I fought a grin. I didn’t want to laugh at him—laughter releases tension and lowers anxiety. It’s a highly sophisticated social signaling system that helps people bond. I wasn’t sure I wanted to bond with Wren…I mean, I had just been mentally practicing the witty and cutthroat diatribe I was going to serve him when he arrived. Now I was laughing at him?
When the handsome bartender jutted his chin to Wren, Wren said, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
Turning his attention back to me, he tilted his head, his eyes seemingly scanning my face, reading me. I stared back at him, my whiskey infused buzz stiffening my backbone, refusing to look away. Was he assessing my beauty? Did he think I was beautiful? Was I enough? I told myself I wouldn’t care if he thought so or not, but deep down in that dark place where shallowness pools, I did. I was comfortable with my looks. I’d dare even call myself pretty. Not gorgeous, but pretty. However, I wagered my definition of “pretty” differed greatly from his.
I waited, focusing my attention on controlling my breathing so as not to look jarred by his intense gaze. Yet I questioned everything. Was he going to say something? Anything?
Nope.
Not a word.
Then…he reached one large hand toward me.
I reared back slightly, surprised, causing him to hesitate for only the smallest fraction of a second before he continued. Gripping my pink scarf, he gently pulled at it, the fabric brushing softly against my skin as he unraveled it from my neck. It didn’t, for even the slightest moment, cross my mind to stop him, or ask him why he was doing this. I feared speaking, or even moving, would spook him; stop the moment, and I was enthralled with the idea of what would happen next. Once he’d removed it from my neck, he held it in both hands before raising it to his face and inhaling, his eyes closing briefly.
“You smell really fucking good,” he murmured as he lowered it.
Blankly, I stared at him, slowly releasing a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. My body strummed like a live wire, reacting to a man who hadn’t even touched me. But hadn’t he? Physically, no, not in any way, even when he’d taken the scarf his hand hadn’t even brushed against me, yet I felt like, somehow, he’d caressed me.
When he wrapped my scarf around his neck and held it to his face again, smelling it, I finally managed to rasp, “Thank you.”
“I think pink is my color,” he mused. I curved my mouth into a slight smile. What a difference a few minutes made.
Fumbling for a moment, unsure of how to behave after that seemingly harmless yet intense moment, I shimmied, scooting up in my seat.
“So…” I let out another long breath. I needed to move us forward…away from whatever just happened. I didn’t care that he still had my scarf around his neck. “You work for the government.” He’d mentioned this in our chats, but hadn’t gone into any detail. It seemed like the perfect place to start a conversation.
“I do.”
I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.
So I pressed on. “What exactly do you do?”
He shrugged. “I’m a dolphin trainer.”
I rolled my eyes.
“What?” he asked, exasperated. “I am.”
“You could just say you don’t want to talk about it,” I grumbled before slurping the remainder of my drink, not caring how obnoxious it sounded. We were back to square one. Damn, he was frustrating.
Threading his fingers together in front of him, one elbow resting on the bar, the other on the back of his chair, he smirked at me. How was he so relaxed?
“Did you know the Russians trained dolphins to find mines in the sea?”
I deflated, my shoulders dropping with his words. Was this really the story he was going with? He went on and five minutes later, I knew for certain, it was in fact the story he was going with. Wren explained in detail how the Navy had used dolphins and sea lions since the 1960s, but Soviet dolphins were trained to kill and were used to plant explosive devices on enemy ships.
When he was done, I sat there, staring at him, feeling numb. Maybe the whiskey aided in this feeling, but Wren was the main culprit. It was a creative story, I’d give him that, and as a writer, I could appreciate it, had he not avoided answering a real question with a real answer. That nagged me. Why was he avoiding answering?
“Sounds like an exciting job.”
“It is,” he agreed. Oh, boy… Slipping the scarf from his neck, he draped it over my head. I froze, unsure of what he was doing, again too curious to stop him. He wasn’t hurting me or assaulting me sexually so I let him continue. “Have you ever worn a hijab?”
I quirked my mouth, looking at him like he was nuts. I knew what a hijab was. A hijab is a veil traditionally worn by Muslim women in the presence of adult males outside of their immediate family, which usually covered the head and chest. I couldn’t say I was well versed on Muslim traditions, but I did know this. I knew, not because he had told me, but because I’d guessed from some of the photos on his profile, that he had spent time in the Middle East as a Marine. But what it had to do with me was beyond me. So while it was odd that he was wrapping me in a hijab in a small town bar on a Friday night, I also found it fascinating. I wanted to see where he was going with it. Maybe he wasn’t giving me answers to questions, but he was showing me something about himself unknowingly. “Uh, I can’t say that I have.”
Scooting toward me, he busied himself moving the fabric around my head and placing it so. When he was done, he leaned back.
“I can see the appeal in it.” He bobbed his head once or twice.
I didn’t respond. Was he saying he liked the idea that women had to hide their faces in public? If this was a woman’s choice, I supported that, but I loathed the idea that a man would just think a woman should do this.
Apparently, he saw the wild flicker of insult in my eyes and he held his hand up. “No. I don’t think women should have to wear one,” he clarified. “I just mean the surprise of it, what’s underneath, the way your eyes stand out right now. It’s…captivating.”
He was a skilled master in the ways of yo-yoing. Everything he said had me back and forth; his hand drifting, controlling me like a slender spool of string tied to his adept finger, pulling me in close then faraway again, up and down. One minute he’d say something that would have me ready to strangle him, letting me down, and the next…he’d get deep, raising my hope.
Holding his phone up, he said, “I need a picture of this.
He was an oddball. I laughed a little as he snapped the shot, thinking how ridiculous it was that he’d want a photo of me in a hijab. Of course, I was the one just sitting there wearing it after he’d dressed me in it like a doll.
As I pulled the scarf from my head, he gazed at his screen before turning it to me. It was a good picture; the scarf was a bright color that showcased my brown eyes well. Pointing at the screen, he indicated an area of skin showing on my chest.
“You see that little bit of skin right there?” he asked. The yo-yo swung up. His dark gaze moved back to mine, a sullen frown capturing his features. “That right there could get you maimed in some places over there. They cut off women’s hands and noses for that.” And the damn yo-yo dropped. Seriously…what the hell?
His mouth flattened as he placed his phone on the bar. Watching him for a moment, I tapped my finger against my glass, fighting myself. I loved dissecting people, and the more intrigued I was with them, the more intense I came off. It had taken me many years to learn to stop seeking and wait; listen. Most of the time if I was patient, I’d get the answers I sought. But it was hard. I was impatient. I was a sucker for complicated people, and I didn’t know much about Wren, but I could feel complicated rolling off him in waves. He was abrasive; he used sarcasm and humor to maneuver his way around a conversation with any topic that made him remotely uncomfortable; and he had an issue with committing, even to something as simple as what time we were meeting. He was the classic stay away from this guy man if I’d ever seen one. Yet there was a softness to him and a confidence I envied.
“So what is it you really do?” I pressed. I needed him to answer this, not because it mattered, really, but because I needed to know if he could. I’d had enough lies to last me a lifetime. I wanted honesty in the worst way. Was this date a joke to him? Would he not tell me anything simply because I asked?
He huffed, widening his eyes to add to the drama. “I told you, I’m a dolphin trainer.”
Shaking my head, I waved to get the bartender’s attention. When he acknowledged me, I announced loudly, “Check please.”
As I dug in my bag, Wren snorted. “You’re leaving?”
“Yeah. I am.” My words were clipped and lacked the depth of my frustration, but I was attempting to get out of there without getting angry or making a scene. One lie turned into two, then three, and snowballed in size, and the next thing you knew it was a damn liar’s shit show. No, thanks. The part of me that still wanted to know him more was working my nerves. He intrigued me, which scared me. Being drawn to the complicated was expensive in many ways, and I wasn’t sure I had enough of anything to pay the price. The man couldn’t even answer a question. A normal What do you do for a living? question that anyone on a first date would ask was too difficult for this guy. It was ridiculous. He was ridiculous. He was a bit of a riddle, and though I was a sucker for unlocking mystery, I knew I needed to haul ass away from him. I was too…lost in my own life to let myself get caught up in his.
When I tossed my card on the bar, the bartender quickly grabbed it. “Security,” Wren relented.
I flashed my gaze to him. “What?”
“I’m contracted by the government to train people in high-level security.”
It was something. Closing my eyes, I inhaled a steady breath. He actually answered the question. Finally. But why did it take something as extreme as me leaving to get the answer? “I don’t even care.” I snorted a laugh. Holding my hand up, I added, “I don’t know what your deal is, but this whole night has been a joke. I don’t have time for…this…” I motioned my hand around as I searched for an appropriate word, but when I couldn’t find one, I settled with, “bullshit.”
“Why do you care so much about what I do?”
The bartender slid my receipt to sign along with my card, his stare darting between me and Wren, assessing if there was a situation he needed to keep an eye on. I gave him a half smirk in an attempt to let him know, despite how heated things seemed to be, it was nothing to worry about. I plunked my purse on the stool as I signed. “I don’t care,” I informed Wren as I whipped the pen with loud scratching sounds as I wrote. “You could be a ditch digger for all I care. I just don’t see why you wouldn’t talk about it.”
“Because I didn’t want to,” he snapped.
Shoving my card in my purse, not bothering to return it to my wallet, I held my hands up and gave another short laugh. “I don’t have time for games, Wren.”
“Neither do I.”
Funny, because that seemed to be all he was playing.
“Look, no hard feelings here. I just…can’t.”
“Can’t what?” He held a hand out in question.
Shaking my head, I fisted my hand at my side. “Can’t deal with another man wasting my time,” I blurted. “I don’t need another man to figure out. I’m done with liars, and users, and…” motioning my hand at him, “men who suffer from apparent commitment phobia.” With that, I walked out, lowering my head when I realized everyone at the bar had been watching our farewell and they probably all thought I was a lunatic. As I hurried out, I tripped just outside the door and dropped my purse, the contents spilling everywhere on the sidewalk. Did I mention the night had been an epic failure? Dropping to my knees, I quickly grabbed everything, chucking it in my bag, praying no one from inside saw me trip. This was humiliating. The mace was the last item I picked up, and I groaned when I realized it was leaking. There was a trashcan nearby so I carried the tiny dripping bottle over and tossed it, shaking my hands to dry them as I headed for my car.
What a nightmare that had been. Jeez. Was this the dating world now? Was this what I had to look forward to? The thought, for some reason, hit me hard; a wave of hopelessness slammed into me, making my chest tighten, causing me to tear up. Sad, desperate thoughts ricocheted through my mind like: I’ll never find love again. Swiping at my face to wipe away a rogue tear, I cleared my throat and braced my back. “You will not cry, Hannah,” I scolded myself. I would not be that woman. I would not feel sorry for myself.
I was almost to my car when my vision blurred, my left eye burning. I rubbed at it, which only made it worse and made both eyes water more. Unable to see, I stopped and leaned against a car to brace myself while lifting my shirt and dabbing at my eyes. I didn’t want to use my scarf because I knew my eyeliner would stain it. What the hell was going on?
“Damn,” I groaned when the burning sensation worsened. I couldn’t see and my eyeballs felt like they were rolling in my sockets.
What was happening to me?
“Oh my God,” I cried.
The mace.
I’d just rubbed mace in my eyes and blinded myself in a dark parking lot in the middle of the night. This couldn’t be happening to me. Dropping down, I sat on the concrete leaning my back against the car. I attempted to stop using my hands and tried using one arm to clean my face as I dug in my purse for my cell. When I found it, I realized I couldn’t call anyone because I couldn’t see the screen to dial. My heart pounded in my chest, my body flamed with heat as I wondered if I could just rip my eyes out and end this misery. I was that desperate. Would it be that bad if I did?