The bartender glanced her way occasionally, as if gauging whether to decline her of yet another round. Her glass was nearly empty, the ice melting into a puddle at the bottom, the amber liquid diluted but still potent enough to blur the edges of the world.
She had come here to forget, though she wasn’t quite sure what. Maybe it was the ache she carried around, the constant hum of self-doubt that lived in the pit of her stomach. Maybe it was the fight they had two weeks ago, his words still circling her mind like a storm she couldn’t escape. He hadn’t yelled, hadn’t even raised his voice, but the disappointment in his eyes had been sharper than anything he could have said. She knew it wasn’t him she was running from, it was herself.
The bar is spinning. Or maybe it’s just her. She’s drunk—very drunk. Her phone sits on the sticky counter, face down. Because she knows no one’s waiting for her, no messages would light up the screen, just reminders that it’s BLACK FRIDAY, that there are NEW ARRIVALS, and that she could be getting up to $60 OFF! She could drive home, but she won’t. Not like this. Not like now.
She just wants to be someone else. Someone who fits. A girl who can laugh and know she looks beautiful doing it. A girl who chases after hot guys, lets herself get carried away, and gets her heart shattered in a poetic, enviable way like they do it in the movies.
But he’d never do that to her. Break her heart, she means. He’s not the kind of guy who would. He’s too good, too perfect, too grounded and sensible. He tells her he loves her because she’s smart, because she’s fun, because they understand each other. And she believes him. At least, she used to.
He’s not going to cheat on her with someone else, someone better. He wouldn’t, and he doesn’t even need to. He didn’t fall for her because she was beautiful, because she’s not. He didn’t care about her messy hair, her awkward smile, her too-big laugh. He didn’t care about her too-much or her not-enough. He says she’s enough. But sometimes she wonders if that’s a kindness more than a truth.
She wants to be pretty, and everyone says that doesn’t matter. They say it like it’s supposed to mean something. But it matters to her, in this deep, gnawing way she can’t turn off. Everyone else seems so right in their own skin—like their faces belong to them, like their bodies fit them. And she feels like nothing about her fits. Everything is too much—too big, too wrong, too fat. Even when she laughs, she hates it. She hates the way her face stretches, the way her joy looks reflected, stretched, and disfigured in a funny mirror.
She thinks about happy moments sometimes—she’s had happy moments too, times when she laughed and laughed and laughed so hard it hurt—and she wants to cry. It stings to watch herself from a distance, her shrill laughter ringing in her ears. She wants to cry, not because she doesn’t love him, but because she’s terrified he’ll see through her someday. That she’ll never stop feeling like this, like something broken. And he’ll finally realize he deserves something whole.
The bar crowd is thinning now, the faint chill of the night air sneaking in every time the door opens and closes. She doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting there, but her legs feel unsteady when she finally stands. The bartender watches her closely as she gathers her things, her phone slipping into her bag with a small thud.
She steps outside, the cold biting her cheeks and clearing her head just enough to make her regret the last drink. The streetlights cast long shadows on the pavement, and she wonders, briefly, if this is what loneliness looks like—something that stretches and bends but never quite disappears.