Hailey and I exchanged a look, both of our eyes raised, but if the guys noticed, they didn’t care. Satan headed to an empty spot at the bar, came back with four shot glasses of what looked like gin, and placed them in front of us.
On the one hand, I knew that a night like tonight had to involve alcohol. Especially if this was the context where I was going to hang with Corey again, it was almost a guarantee shots would be involved somewhere. That was doubly true if I planned on dancing at any point.
But on the other hand, I was starting to get that anxiety from feeling closer to someone. The fear that I was letting someone in near me that I wasn’t ready for—it was real. And it wasn’t like I actively thought, “Oh, no, I’m becoming like Mom and Dad.” Anxiety didn’t always work that way. Rather, it was just a feeling of being too compressed, of too much happening too soon, of—
“Bottoms up, everyone,” Sam said.
Feeling no choice in the matter, I took my shot and swallowed it. I then pushed Corey aside, telling him I had to use the bathroom, and made a beeline past the growing dance floor and other drunken patrons. When I got inside, I just stood in front of the mirror and tried to calm my breathing.
Far easier said than done, of course. If humans could defeat anxiety with simple breathing, anxiety wouldn’t exist.
“Melissa?”
I looked over to see Hailey standing there, her hands folded together, her shoulders slumped, her eyes concerned. She knew, even if I tried to lie.
“Are we really doing this?” I said. “Are we really getting drunk with those guys?”
I paused for a second.
“Am I really doing this?” I corrected. “I know you’re good with Sam and happy to do whatever.”
“Not if you’re stressed or having trouble,” Hailey said. “What’s going on? Do you want to talk about it?”
For half a second, my instincts said no. I had no desire to talk about it. I just wanted to go home, tell Corey maybe next time, and have our night end like that. Was that so fucking hard?
But…
I couldn’t be my parents. I couldn’t dodge tough conversations anymore. And if I wanted to get better at that, I had damn well better practice with the person that would be the most forgiving with me. My only living family.
“It just feels like the beginning of how we last ended, maybe not exactly but that damn anxiety,” I said. “I know if we keep drinking, things will happen, and if things happen…”
“Do you want things to happen?”
I took in a breath and just decided to say whatever truth came to mind first.
“I don’t know.”
I really didn’t. I couldn’t so easily dismiss the thought and just say, “Nah, there’s no way I want to do anything with him,” not after the coffee date we’d had. By the same token, I wasn’t itching to get my pants off so he could slide inside of me. But which one was I leaning toward?
I was too stressed at the moment to know the answer.
“And when you didn’t know last time, what happened?”
I started pushing him away because I didn’t want to be close. I acted like a bitch. And while Corey certainly way overreacted, I pushed him into a spot where he could overreact.
“The answer wound up being no.”
Hailey came over and hugged me. It was a tender moment, but I felt a bit ridiculous getting hugged in the middle of a bar that was probably thirty minutes away from turning into a quasi-nightclub.
“I think you should talk to Corey,” she said. “Tell him how you feel. If you two talk, maybe you’ll come to common ground. At least say you’re feeling nervous.”
Yeah, but…
At a bar and club like this?
After just one “date,” if you could even call it that?
While he and his friend, my sister’s boyfriend, had some obvious tension and simmering anger between them?
