The Night Before(16)

“I know a place,” Jonathan says. He waits for me to walk ahead of him and I feel his hand on the small of my back as he gently guides me into a bar, sending that shiver. But this one is prickly and uncomfortable, replacing the warmth. It’s not the way someone touches someone before they’ve had a decent conversation. Or a drink, at least. Or maybe they do and this is just me not knowing what the fuck I’m doing.…

There’s a table in the back corner, and I sit facing the wall because he takes the other seat, facing the crowd. I’ve been told that’s what a gentleman does. Something about keeping watch—watching our backs. But, really, let’s be honest. We’re at a bar with a whole mess of attractive young people. I can think of other reasons he might want to sit facing the crowd.

Maybe he wants to keep a lookout for women who might recognize him and call his name and chase after us as we scurry to the door.

He leaves to get us drinks and I need one the way a fish needs water.

I used to think that I think too much. That I search for answers when there are no questions, find solutions that have no problems. That I make mountains out of molehills, as my dear mother used to say. My mother and Dick. They both used to say it.

And then I stopped thinking too much and guess what happened. I slammed right into the side of a mountain.

Seriously. Just give me a magic pill to make it all go away.

Or a cocktail, which is exactly what appears before me.

“Thanks,” I say to Jonathan Fields as he sits down. I glance up inconspicuously as I swallow a large portion of my drink, just waiting for his eyes to find someone younger or hotter or sexier. But he doesn’t. He looks at me and only at me.

And suddenly I want to be the woman I think he wants. New me.

“Okay,” he says, leaning back in his chair. He’s comfortable now, not like he was in the car or even at the first bar. It’s like he’s just come home from a long day at the office and kicked off his shoes.

“Let’s start over. I’m so bad with first dates. I never know what to talk about. What to ask about. It’s like walking in a field of land mines.”

And just like that—bull’s-eye. I kick off my shoes as well.

“I know,” I say to him with as much relief as I can possibly display in one facial expression. “It’s so horrible, right?”

He shakes his head with enthusiasm and leans forward. “You know, it’s like the worst of everything, meeting online. If you go out with someone you know from work or someplace, there’s a starting point. A familiarity. And if you meet someone in a bar, then it’s just like flirting and all of that—there’s a rule book for it. Or a handbook—you know what I mean, right?”

“Yes!” I say. “This is my first time doing this. And it’s awful! I mean, not you … That didn’t come out right. You’re not awful. It’s just hard to find a place to start.” It’s just like you said, Jonathan Fields. Only not exactly, because I have never known any of this to be easy. Not. Ever. Not even with Asshole.

I kept the last text message he sent me. The one saying it was over and to never contact him again. I read it sometimes to remind myself about the mountains.

“Okay,” he says again. He likes that word a lot. “So just ask me anything. What do you want to know?”

“Honestly?” I ask.

“Yes. Anything!” He leans back again. He reaches for his beer, and this time his eyes do a quick scan of the room. It’s perfectly normal, I remind myself. He’s facing out. He’s protecting me from wild animals that could pounce at any moment. His eyes do not stop and linger on anyone, but return to me and my question.

“Okay,” I begin, because if Jonathan likes that word, new me likes it too. People are always more comfortable when you acclimate to them, to their style and their language. It’s why people often look like their dogs. I learned this in a psychology class.

“What I really want to know about is your divorce. How you met your wife. Why you got married. What went wrong. Is that too personal? It’s fine if it is. But that is, honestly, what I most want to know.”

This is a lie, of course. What I most want to know is what happened to his BMW, or why he told me he had one when he doesn’t. And even if he did lie to impress me and lure me out, there’s just no way he chose that car without a gun to his head.

And that woman from the first bar calling out his name … and the way we got here, to the harbor …

“Okay.” He begins his answer with his favorite word. “We met in college. Swarthmore. Senior year. But it’s not what you think. We didn’t just stay together and then get married. We actually broke up after graduation. I moved to Boston—that’s where I’m from. Sad to say, I lived with my parents for about a year while I was looking for a job. She came here, or to New York, rather. Then a few years later, when we were about twenty-eight, we reconnected on Facebook!”

He says this like it’s a miracle, so I light up my whole face.

“No way!” I say. It’s a miracle!!!!!

“Yup. And we started talking and then I came to see her and she came up to see me, and then we lived in Boston for a while and then back here. We really thought we would start a family.”

Now he seems sad, so I become a gray sky. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Can I ask what happened?”