Little Secrets(26)

Who would have thought that who you love and who you feel safe with might not be the same person?

The bar is near empty, and she sits alone with her third drink while Sal talks to one of his employees. Marin hasn’t seen her here before, so she must have been hired sometime in the last couple of months, which is how long it’s been since Marin last dropped by. She was a regular up until she started back at work, and usually came in around this time, after lunch but before the happy hour crowd.

Sal’s probably sleeping with her. She’s exactly his type, with her dark hair, her round ass stuffed into too-tight jeans, and a low-cut T-shirt that shows off the benefits of her push-up bra. In a strange way, she reminds Marin of herself when she was younger, before she developed her sense of style. The new server keeps looking over, probably wondering who the hell Marin is, but she doesn’t need to worry. Marin doesn’t steal other women’s men, though part of her enjoys the fact that she can still make other women jealous. In any case, this fling with Sal won’t last more than three months. None of them do. And they won’t stay friends, because it always ends badly. As far as Marin knows, she’s the only ex Sal is still friends with.

Three more amaretto sours appear, and alongside them, a huge bowl of fries doused liberally in fresh garlic, Parmesan, and the slightest hint of truffle oil. She smiles at the row of cocktails. Sal knows she’s determined to get drunk, and if he won’t let her do it here, he knows she’ll do it somewhere else. But he also knows she needs food. The fries are delicious.

“See these?” Sal gestures dramatically to the amaretto sours, lined up neatly beside each other. “When those are done, you’re done, got it?” He settles onto the barstool beside her.

She nods. When she finishes these drinks, he’ll have to peel her off the floor, which is exactly what she wants. But the free drinks come with a price. They mean she has to talk.

“So what do you want to do?” Sal plucks a fry from the bowl. “Other than drink, that is. When’s the last time you slept? You need Ambien? I’ve got some in the back. Lorazepam, too. And good old-fashioned cannabis works wonders. I got some edibles that look like gummy bears—”

“I’m exhausted, I know I look like shit. Stop offering me drugs.”

He jabs her lightly on the arm. “On your worst day, you don’t look like shit. Is today your worst day?”

“No.” She doesn’t even need to think about it. Her worst day was four hundred eighty-six days ago. Nothing before, or after, even comes close. Not until the day she gets that call telling her the exact thing she doesn’t want to hear.

“Then buckle up, buttercup,” Sal says, and she snort-laughs, which is the reaction he’s hoping for.

“I should leave him.” She can’t meet his gaze when she speaks these words.

“Yes, you should.” He doesn’t even blink, and the shame washes over her like dirty bathwater. “Does Derek know you know?”

She shakes her head. It’s easier to have this conversation not looking at Sal, so she focuses on the TV again, where someone wearing a red uniform just got knocked down by someone wearing a white uniform and is crying foul about it.

“How’d you find out?”

“Castro told me. She was following a lead. Discovered it accidentally.”

Sal almost chokes on a fry. “The PI? She’s still investigating?”

“I told you that.”

“No, you didn’t. You said you hired her for a month, a year ago. You haven’t mentioned her since, so I assumed … Holy shit…”

“Why does this bother you so much?”

“It doesn’t bother me,” he says. “It worries me. I feel you’re…”

“What? Say it.”

He looks away, chewing on his bottom lip. She takes his chin and turns his face back toward her.

“Say it,” she says.

“It’s like you’re in exactly the same place you were when Sebastian went missing.” She takes her hand away, and he holds her gaze. “You haven’t moved forward. You’re … stuck.”

“You sound like my therapist.” The fourth cocktail is hitting her, and her tongue is loosening. “Am I going to have to break up with you, too?”

“You stopped seeing Dr. Chen?”

“Not officially yet. But he also keeps saying I’m stuck.”

“What does Derek think about that?”

“Since when do you care what Derek thinks?”

“I normally don’t. But you didn’t see him last year, Mar. After the … after the scare.”

She’s learning that nobody ever likes to use the word suicide. People will use every other term they can think of to avoid saying that word. They’ll say, that time you tried to hurt yourself. Or, back when you were in a bad place.

She tried to kill herself. She can admit it—why can’t anyone else?

“I’d never seen him so scared.” Sal is chewing on a fry, and it’s like he’s talking to himself more than to her. A small bit of garlic rests on his lip, and she reaches forward, flicks it away. “He thought he was going to lose you. He was a fucking wreck. You didn’t tell him you stopped therapy, did you?”

“In fairness, today’s the first time I canceled on Dr. Chen without rescheduling. I may go back. I don’t know yet.”