My Dark Vanessa(17)

“Vanessa?” Ira touches my shoulder, startles me as though I’ve forgotten he’s there. “You ok?”

I nod and give a thin smile, grab an empty chair.

When the server comes around and starts to rattle off recommendations, I interrupt. “This is too overwhelming. Just bring me whatever and I’ll like it.” I mean it as a joke, but it comes out harsh; Ira gives the server a look, like I’m sorry for her.

“We could have gone somewhere else,” he says to me.

“This is fine.”

“It seems like you hate it here.”

“I hate everywhere.”

The server brings the beers—some dark, wine-smelling thing in a goblet for Ira and, for me, a can of Miller Lite.

“Do you want a glass,” the server asks, “or can you manage?”

“Oh, I can manage.” I smile and point to the can, my best attempt at charming. The server just turns to the next table.

Ira gives me a long look. “Are you doing ok? Tell me the truth.”

I shrug, take a drink. “Sure.”

“I saw the Facebook post.”

With my fingernail, I flick the pull tab on the beer. Click-click-click. “What Facebook post?”

He frowns. “The one about Strane. Have you really not seen it? Last I checked, it’s been shared something like two thousand times.”

“Oh, right. That.” It’s actually up to almost three thousand shares, though the activity has died down. I take another swallow, flip through the beer menu.

Softly, Ira says, “I’ve been worrying about you.”

“You shouldn’t. I’m fine.”

“Have you talked to him since it came out?”

I smack the menu shut. “Nope.”

Ira studies me. “Really?”

“Really.”

He asks if I think Strane will be fired and I lift my shoulders between swallows. How should I know? He asks if I’ve thought about reaching out to Taylor and I don’t answer, just flick the pull tab, the click-click-click now a boing-boing-boing echo through the half-empty can.

“I know how hard this must be for you,” he says, “but it could be an opportunity, right? To make peace with it and move on.”

I force myself to breathe through the thought. “Make peace and move on” sounds like jumping off a cliff, sounds like dying.

“Can we talk about something else?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says. “Of course.”

He asks me about work, if I’m still looking for a new job. He tells me he found an apartment up on Munjoy Hill and my heart jumps, a delusional moment of thinking he’s going to ask me to move in with him. It’s a great place, he says, really big. The kitchen can fit a table; the bedroom has an ocean view. I wait, expecting him to invite me over at least, but he only lifts his glass.

“Must be expensive if it’s that nice,” I say. “How are you managing that?”

Ira presses his lips together as he swallows. “I lucked out.”

I assume we’ll keep drinking—that’s what he and I usually do, drink and drink until one of us gets brave enough to ask, “Are you coming home with me or what?”—but before I can order another beer, Ira gives the server his credit card, signaling the end of the night. It feels like a slap.

As we step out of the bar and into the cold, he asks if I’m still seeing Ruby and I’m grateful that, at least for this question, I don’t have to lie to give him the answer he wants.

“I’m so glad to hear that,” Ira says. “That really is the best thing for you.”

I try to smile, but I don’t like how he says “the best thing for you.” It brings up too much—memories of him saying the way I romanticized abuse was troubling, almost as troubling as the fact that I still kept in touch with the man who abused me. From the very beginning Ira said I needed help. After six months together, he gave me a list of therapists he’d researched himself, begged me to try. When I refused, he said if I loved him, I would try, and I said if he loved me, he would leave it alone. After a year, he tried to turn it into an ultimatum, either I go to therapy or we break up. Not even that moved me; he was the one who caved. So when I started seeing Ruby, even if I was going only because of my dad, Ira still acted triumphant. Whatever it takes to get you in there, Vanessa, he’d said.

“So what does Ruby think of everything?” he asks.

“What do you mean?”

“The Facebook post, what he did to that girl . . .”

“Oh. We don’t really talk about that stuff.” My eyes follow the brick pattern in the sidewalk under the streetlights, the fog rolling in off the water.

For two blocks, Ira doesn’t say anything. When we reach Congress Street, where I turn left and he turns right, my chest aches from wanting to ask him to come home with me even though I’m nowhere near drunk enough, even though spending a half hour with him has already made me hate myself. I just need to be touched.

Ira says, “You haven’t told her.”

“I’ve told her.”

He tilts his head, squints. “Really. You’ve told your therapist that the man who abused you when you were a kid was publicly accused of abuse by someone else and that’s not something you two talk about? Come on.”