I don’t wait around for the snacks and sodas; I head for the parking lot, eager to get out of here as quickly as possible. Now I definitely need to find a new AA group because all that little incident did was make me want to throw back shots. Laurel –seriously? Of all people I could accidentally run into at AA it had to be that bitch!

“Jonathan!” I hear my name being called just as I am exiting the building. It’s Bobby, the former DA.

“Hey,” I say under my breath.

“Look, what’s going on?” he questions. “You seemed pretty ticked tonight.”

This guy is talking like he knows me. “Yeah, well, it’s been a rough week.”

“No, it’s Laurel,” he says, calling me out, “you know her, right? What’s the deal?”

“Beat it, Bobby,” I say.

“Look,” he says, running around me to block me from continuing on my path towards the pink Volkswagen. “I don’t know what’s happened between you two, but whatever it is, it’s no reason to stop coming to AA. You need this.”

“No offense, Bobby, but you don’t fucking know me. You don’t know what I need,” I give him a shove. “Now, please, fuck off before I lay you out in the parking lot.”

He listens, and he heads back inside. “Hey!” I hear Laurel’s voice behind me; she must have passed Bobby on the way out.

I turn and grit my teeth. “Why do you keep popping up everywhere I go?” I snarl.

“Believe me,” she says, “it’s not intentional.”

“Well, I’m going to say the same thing to you that I said to your buddy Bobby –fuck off!” I grab the handle to my car and pull, and the damn handle yanks off. “Son of a bitch!” I scream and throw it, sending it bouncing across the parking lot. I cuss and kick the stupid car in the side until there is this big dent in the driver’s side door.

“Geeze,” Laurel says once I have calmed myself down enough to stop beating up on the stupid car.

I take a deep breath. “I don’t need this. I really don’t need this.”

“Jonathan, listen, maybe you and I need to talk,” she says. “You’re so stressed out, and I can’t help but feeling that I’m partially responsible for that.”

“Oh, really? You sensed that, did you?” I question and then lean back against the car.

She crosses her arms. Her bright blue eyes focus in on me. “I’m really not out to get you, you know? Everything just sort of happened to where it seems that way. I didn’t know who you were that night in the bar, and to be honest –hooking up with a random buy in a bar was sort of an all-time low for me. Then all of a sudden you show up at Alexis’ gym… it was embarrassing. My biggest fear was you’d tell all my friends about it, and they don’t even know I have a drinking problem. And then you actually told them. You actually fucking told them. I was furious.”

“I guess I haven’t made your recovery any easier than you’ve made mine, huh?” I say, and she kind of laughs –it’s an annoyed, sarcastic laugh, but it’s a laugh. “Look, how about I buy you a drink?” I say.

She rolls her eyes, “Seriously, Jonathan?”

“Coffee, Laurel. I meant coffee,” I swear to her, and now she actually laughs –a real, honest laugh. And truthfully, it’s kind of cute. It’s almost flattering.

“Okay,” she says, “I could go for a cup of coffee.”

We head to nearby coffee shop after I have to climb over the passenger’s seat of my car to unlock the driver’s seat; she found this hilarious, of course. She takes her own car, and we meet out front. The coffee shop closes in an hour, so we go and sit out on the patio so that we won’t get kicked out. I’m not really sure what to talk about with her; it’s already sort of uncomfortable, so I figure I can’t make it worse by asking about the PTSD thing. When I do, she stares at me for a minute before answering. “Okay,” she says, “I was a marine.”

Holy damn. “Really?” I question as though I think she’s lying to me.

“Yeah,” she says, “I mean, I’m a woman, so it was a non-combat role. I was a translator for a group of guys who had been tasked with breaking up a local sex trafficking ring outside of Libya.”

“Damn, Laurel, I had no idea,” I say. “What…what happened to you over there? I mean, you said you were in a non-combat role…”

“When shit hits the fan, rules fly out the window,” she says, “My convoy was attacked, and two of our guys went right from the start. I took over one of their positions, and we had to fight our way out of a damn ditch. We lost one of the women we were escorting during the ambush, and one of my fellow marines that had been shot during the initial attack bled out before we could get him back to our base of operations.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it.

“When I got back home, that’s when I started drinking. So I definitely know my trigger. I started doing MMA professionally as a sort of coping thing, but I was still drinking pretty heavily. I joined that AA group, and they convinced me to seek additional counseling,” she takes a long sip of her iced coffee I had bought her.

“You’re pretty amazing,” I say to her.

“Really?” she laughs, “Because I was just a bitch a few hours ago.”

“Oh, you’re still a total bitch, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be impressed.” I’m not sure if that’s a conversational line, but I said it in the flirtiest tone I could manage. She laughs, so I guess that’s a good sign. I’ll avoid using the term bitch in the future anyways just in case. “I got to say, I think it’s pretty awesome that you were a marine, and the whole MMA thing is insane.”

She has a sort of sad smile. “I wish other guys thought that way. Do you have any idea what my dating life has been like? Geeze, my ex couldn’t handle it. I wasn’t girly enough for him; he was intimidated by all of it.”

“He sounds like a pussy,” I say, “I think’s its cool.”

“I call bullshit on that,” she says, “Your ex-wife was as feminine as it gets. Wasn’t she a professional ballerina?”

I laugh too, “Okay, okay, you got me there. Yeah, she was.”

Laurel points over to the parking lot at the pink Volkswagen, “and I’m guessing that was hers too, right?”

“Yeah…” I say, “Okay, you made your point. My ex was a definite girly girl, but that doesn’t mean I don’t find you attractive.” I bite my lip. I didn’t mean to say that.

“Good to know,” she says and stands up. “It’s late, and I’m training early with the girls. Thanks for the coffee, Jonathan… tonight was… informative.” She leaves me sitting there, feeling like a complete dumbass.

Well, work tomorrow should be interesting.