F*ck Marriage(38)

Welcome to F*ck Marriage. We’re going to make it out alive. I promise.





Chapter Nineteen





Satcher texts me before I leave the office for the night. He’s back in the city and asks if I want to meet for drinks to celebrate. I go home to change and meet him at the address he gave me.

“Your mom?” I say as soon as I see him.

“A true warrior. She was baking two hundred cookies for a church bake sale when I left.”

“But how is she in here?” I ask, tapping my head.

Satcher shrugs. “She has that silent suffering thing. I believe it comes with women of that generation.”

I grunt. It’s true. My generation plasters their suffering on social media, but our parents’ generation is quite the opposite.

“All we can do for someone like my mother is show up, that’s her love language. She will deal with what’s happened privately, in her own way.”

I nod.

“What is this place?” I ask, suddenly distracted.

Satcher grins. “It’s a temple of beer worship.”

“Named the Burp Castle?”

“Named the Burp Castle.” He nods seriously while I look around.

The walls are covered in murals of monks. When I look closer, I see the dark humor in the artwork. A ship burns, sinking into the ocean in the background, while in the foreground, a surprised monk floats on a barrel of beer as several of his monk friends are drinking cheerfully on a piece of driftwood nearby.

“No loud talking allowed. Whispering only by order of the brewest monks,” I read the sign and one of the bartenders looks up suddenly and shushes me. Satcher smiles at my expression.

“What the hell?” I say under my breath.

“Shh.” He leans down close to my ear and his breath tickles my lobe.

I pinch the closest piece of his flesh which happens to be his pec. Hard, there’s barely any skin to grab, but he yelps anyway and the bartender glares at us. If we are going to have a conversation in this place it will have to be whispered in each other’s faces. For a fleeting moment I wonder if that was Satcher’s plan, but then I laugh the thought away. Satcher doesn’t have to do sneaky things to get close to a woman; he could have anyone he wanted without the tricks a lesser man would need.

“There’s a table over there.” He juts his chin toward the back of the bar where a group has just stood up to leave.

“I’ll grab it,” I say. “You—” I poke him in the chest “—get the drinks…”

He winks at me and heads toward the bar.



I watch him from where I sit. The self-assured way he moves through the bar, wedging his way into a spot just vacated by two college girls. He lifts one finger and the bartender spots him right away. If I’d gone up to the bar, I’d have stood there for ten minutes before the bartender noticed me. Satcher has a presence. When he walks into a room, people look up wondering if he’s someone important. Within two minutes, he has our drinks and is making his way back to me. I eye the way his shirt sleeves are folded up to his elbows, exposing his tanned forearms. I take the drink he hands me, shaking my head.

“What?” he asks. “You have a look on your face.”

I don’t have to ask him what kind of look. I’m embarrassed. I was checking him out. I play with my necklace, touching the raised ring finger. His eyes move down to look at it and then it hits me.

“You got me this, didn’t you?”

One corner of his mouth lifts. “You used to always wear things like that, do you remember?”

“Yes,” I say. “Before I started dressing like Martha Stewart, apparently…”

We both laugh and then Satcher says, “What the fuck was that about anyway?”

I play with a napkin, folding it into a tiny square and then smoothing it out until he lays his much larger hand on top of mine to still me. I suck down some of my beer and puff out my cheeks, making my eyes big.

“When I started the blog I thought it would work in my benefit to look more mainstream.”

“Mainstream?” he repeats.

“Yeah ... you know, the leather and ripped jeans were unrelatable to my audience so I toned it down a bit.”

“Ugh!” I say when I see the look on his face. “Shut up, Satch. It’s important to be relatable. Boring. Floral print and whatnot…”

“You certainly had the floral print thing down…”

“I hate you,” I say, but there’s not enough conviction in my voice for either of us to believe it.

He laughs and it warms me right down to my toes, which I wriggle in my shoes. I shake my head, pressing back my smile.

“It wasn’t just your look that changed though, was it, Billie?”

“What do you mean?” Though I know exactly what he’s talking about.

He leans forward like he’s going to tell me a secret, and automatically, I bend toward him too.

“Once upon a time, a girl with fishnet stockings, a leather jacket, and black fingernails got high with me and danced on my kitchen table.”

“Until I broke the table ... sorry about that.”

“It was a nice table.” He nods, frowning. “And it died in an honorable way…”