attack?
“Seamus, are you okay?”
I look up and have to squint through the bright sunshine to make out the worried, sapphire-colored eyes staring down at me. It’s Faith. I nod. I don’t know if I mean it, but I’m nodding instinctively trying to calm her. Her expression is concern and fear. And it’s then that I feel the rough concrete of the steps against my palms. I’ve fallen, in my panic or just as a result of my useless legs I don’t know, but I’ve fallen. “I’m okay,” I reassure her.
She places her hand on my back and whispers, as if to soften the message she’s about to deliver. “You fell. You’re bleeding. Let me help you up to your apartment.”
“I don’t need any help!” It’s loud. And defensive. And condemning. Followed by a much quieter, “I don’t need any help.” A declaration that starts off annoyed…and finishes up embarrassed. When I look into her startled eyes, I expect disgust and hurt, but what I see is empathy and acceptance.
She pats my back once before she grasps my forearm in her hands and prompts me to stand with her help. “We all need help. Human-ing is hard to do all by yourself,” she whispers when my ear comes level with her mouth.
Inside my apartment, I want to apologize, but I head to the bathroom to wash up my bleeding knee instead. I feel like a jackass.
She’s standing in the same spot near the front door when I return. I thought she’d be long gone. Because she’s still standing here, I’m anticipating a motivational talk or a homily, so when she says, “Let’s drink,” I’m surprised.
I glance at the clock on the DVD player—eight forty-five. “It’s a little early to start drinking, don’t you think?”
She shrugs. “Nope. I worked all night. I go to bed in a few hours, consider it a nightcap.” I don’t know what she does for a living, but she doesn’t look like she just got off work. Her dreadlocks are pulled back in a thick, low ponytail and she’s wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, not to mention that when she helped me on the stairs, she smelled like soap, clean and freshly showered.
I miss my kids like hell, and I hate my ex-wife with a passion and I can’t see beyond that, so despite my mind screaming at me to dole out the obligatory rejection, I say, “Fuck it all, let’s drink.”
The smile that unfolds on her face is the most wickedly approving smile I’ve ever seen. I have a comrade. “Hell yes, Seamus! I knew there was a little bit of rebel in you.”
Within two minutes she’s run down to her apartment and returned with a bottle of cheap vodka and cheaper scotch.
We sit side by side on the couch, and I hand her a Pokémon plastic tumbler. She eyes it approvingly. “Pikachu was always my favorite.”
“It’s your lucky day then. Sorry, I don’t have a lot of grown up glassware.”
“No worries. It all goes down the same.” She points to the bottles on the coffee table. “Pick your poison.”
“Vodka. Scotch is for geriatric men.”
She barks out a laugh and it loosens something inside me—tension and anger. “I happen to love scotch.”
“How is that possible? You’re not a sixty-five-year-old man.”
“Quite right, a peen and age are not required to enjoy a glass of scotch,” she says it with a straight face, which makes it funnier.
“A child’s tumbler of scotch, you mean?”
She winks. “That’s what I meant.”
I pour scotch for her and vodka for me. We toast, “Cheers.” Hers is heartfelt, mine is heartless.
We follow it up closely with two more.
And then I follow it up with another.
We sit as it dilutes our blood and our judgment.
“What do you do?” I ask. It comes out slowly, and I’m already slurring. I don’t drink often, and when I do it’s usually one beer. I’m verging on sloppy. I’m still processing everything, but it’s cloudy.
She smiles, and her jeweled eyes look sleepy, droopy from the scotch. “Hmm?” she questions.
“What do you do? You said you worked all night.”
“I work at a strip club.” She raises her eyebrows when she says it, not as a seductive gesture, it’s just an explanation. She’s sharing information and waiting for me to judge her.
And normally I would judge her. I would judge the hell out of her. But, instead I ask, “You’re a stripper?” The haziness has me curious.
She nods.
“Why?”
She shrugs. “Why not?”
“Touché. But you’re a beautiful, smart, young woman. You could do