Elen

I’m so fucking miserable.

I sit on a stool in the corner of the room, leaning on the bar, and stare into my glass, carefully avoiding the eyes of people coming up to order drinks. I don’t want to talk to anyone tonight. Part of me doesn’t want to talk to anyone ever again. I’m tempted to get into my car and drive--through the russet and gold leaves falling from the beech trees lining the streets, out of the city, and just keep driving until I hit the sea.

And I wouldn’t stop there. I’d drive right into the cool depths and let the ocean fill the car, until I was surrounded by darkness, and all the pain went away.

Jeez, I sound pathetic. I’m even irritating myself now. But the thing is, I used to believe my life was blessed. When I was younger, everything I touched seemed to turn to gold. My grandmother died when I was five, and I’ve always felt that she’s been looking after me, like a fairy godmother, making all my dreams come true. Well, where is she now? Has she gone on vacation? Are you on strike, Nan? What have I done to make you desert me?

This isn’t like me. I’m a silver-lining, glass-half-full kind of girl. And, come to think of it, I’m usually better at holding my drink than this.

I pick up my glass and frown at it. This is only my second, isn’t it? I massage my forehead, conscious of the ever-present ache, and remind myself of the migraine medication I took a few hours ago. It did say on the packet to avoid alcohol--it must be increasing the effect of the vodka, and contributing to the depression.

Oh well. Fuck it. I finish off the glass. Even a positive person like me can’t avoid the fact that, this time, my relationship with Dan is over. We’ve not had a ‘spat’. We’re not on a break. We’re done. And it doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself it’s a good thing because I’m free and I don’t have to answer to anyone and there won’t be any more arguments, I’m devastated. He’s not just broken my heart, he’s shattered it into smithereens, and there isn’t enough Super Glue in the world to stick it back together again.

I gesture to the bartender. “Can I have another, please?” He takes my glass and makes me a third Black Russian.

As I pass him my credit card, a man takes the bar stool next to me, and I feel a sudden flicker of unease and vulnerability at the thought that I’m on my own. Nobody knows I’m here tonight. Not my brother, or Harry and Caleb, the other guys I work with. None of my friends know where I am. It’s not even a familiar bar. I deliberately took a taxi to the other side of the city so I wouldn’t bump into anyone I knew.

Then I roll my eyes at my own arrogance. I’m only just on the right side of thirty. I’m wearing sweatpants, a faded tee, and the oldest jacket I own. I’ve scraped my hair into a scruffy bun, and I haven’t applied any makeup. It doesn’t mean I can be flippant about my safety, but I don’t think I’m going to be fighting off the opposite sex tonight.

I glance at the guy who’s just taken the seat next to me. He’s looking at his phone, and it gives me a moment to survey him. Tall, dark-brown hair, long stubble that’s verging on a short beard. He’s wearing jeans and a black jacket over a khaki-colored tee. He has a nice face--not all angles and planes like a model, but good-looking boy-next-door handsome, the kind of guy your mother would love you to bring home.

There’s a russet leaf sitting on his hair that he obviously hasn’t noticed. I study it for a moment, then lower my gaze back to his face to discover him watching me.

“Evening,” he says.

I blink, trying to gather my wits. “Sorry. It’s just… your hair… you have a leaf on the top.” I gesture vaguely at his head. I sound drunk--I know I do.

He raises a hand, finds the leaf, looks at it with a smile, and places it on the bar by his glass. “Thanks.”

“I’m not drunk,” I say. “I’ve taken medication and I think it’s interacting with the vodka.” It takes me three tries to say ‘interacting’.

He looks amused. “Okay.”

I rub my nose. “I don’t know why I felt a need to tell you that.” I wait for him to reply. Dan would say, If the box said to avoid alcohol, why did you start drinking in the first place? I never have to listen to him lecture me again.

And now I want to cry.

The guy next to me takes a mouthful of his drink and twirls the dead leaf in his fingers. “The process that causes leaves to change color is called abscission.”

I stare at him. “Oh. I didn’t know that.”

He shrugs and sips his drink again. Then he picks up his phone and begins to flick across the screen with his thumb.

“Koala bears eat only eucalyptus leaves,” I tell him.

He puts down his phone and turns his attention back to me. His eyes are blue, a dark blue, the color of the sky outside now that the sun has nearly set. “When they leave a cave, bats always turn left.”

That makes me laugh. “I have no way of knowing if that’s true.”

He grins. His front teeth, while being white and straight, have a slight gap in the middle. “I’m not a chiropterologist, so neither do I.”

“Is that what they call someone who studies bats?”

“Yep.”

I sip my drink, secretly impressed. “Are you a trivia buff?”

“Yeah. Kind of a nerdy hobby of mine,” he confesses. “I collect facts like other people collect stamps.”

“Me too.” I wish I didn’t feel quite so woozy. When I’m at my best, I can beat any person they put up against me on quiz night at our local bar. Tonight… maybe not so much. But I can remember a few unusual facts. “A golf ball has three-hundred-and-thirty-six dimples,” I tell him.

He laughs. “In World War Two, metal was so scarce that Oscars were made of wood.”

“I knew that. Leonardo da Vinci invented scissors.”

“The first bomb dropped by the allies in the Second World War killed Berlin’s only elephant.”

“You can’t have two facts about the war straight after each other,” I tell him.

“Says who?”

“I just made it up.”

He smiles. “Okay, dogs can get toupees in Tokyo.”

“They cannot!” I scoff.

“Cross my heart.”

I wrinkle my nose at him. “I never thought I’d meet someone who was as obscure as I am.”

“I’m not obscure,” he clarifies. “I’m perfectly normal. Two arms, two legs and everything.”

“If you say so. I don’t know anyone else who would know that bats tend to turn left.”

“Okay, maybe not so normal.” As he smiles, his gaze brushes down me, soft and light as a feather, from my face to my feet and back up again, where his blue eyes stare into mine, showing a glimmer of interest in spite of my obvious drunken incoherence.

Because it’s so unexpected, it makes me catch my breath. What am I doing? How can I be smiling and flirting with another man? I’m here because I’ve broken up with Dan, the man with whom I was supposed to spend the rest of my life. He was my Mr. Right, and I was his Mrs. Wright, we always joked about it, and I fucked it up. Emotion rolls over me like one of those machines that flattens tarmac, and I tighten my hand on my glass and knock back the rest of the drink in an attempt to control it.

I don’t care about the medication or the migraine. Maybe if I drink enough I’ll pass out, and then I won’t have to deal with this pain anymore. Because I can’t bear it. I loved Dan with all my heart, and now he’s gone.

What the hell am I going to do?