“No!”Yes.
“You think that he couldn’t be saying crap because he’s such a nice guy? Why the hell do you think he paid for that song? He wants to humiliate you and make himself look better. Obviously. Jesus.”
My emotions swung back into anger. “Then I’ll sue him for defamation!”
“Really? You’d sue him?”
“I had already thought about a heartbalm tort. It’s a breach of promise lawsuit,” I said. “He had promised to marry me and then he didn’t, so it’s the same thing as if he’d reneged on a sales contract. Except a lot more personal,” I acknowledged.
“You can do that? It sounds like an old-time thing.”
“It is, and I don’t think that I’d actually benefit from either of those actions,” I sighed. “Suing him would only bring more attention to the issue. That’s why it’s a better idea for me to talk to him instead.” Also, that way I would get to see him and I had missed him…oh, no. Was I trying to solve my problems, or was I coming up with excuses to be with my ex? And there was Mr. Flip Phone, looking at me like I was pathetic.
“Who knows if that song is even about me,” I ventured.
“It is. It’s a shitty song, but it’s catchy. He paid a lot to get it produced so quickly.”
“His business must be going better than I thought,” I said. “He never shared much about his finances.” I had argued that we would need to be totally open and transparent about everythingbefore we got married but of course, we had never reached that point.
“The way I see it, you have two choices,” Mr. Flip Phone told me, and then he leaned back in his chair and stopped speaking.
“Yes? What are they?”
“Hold on, I just thought of two more. Ok, choice A,” he said. “You leave town in shame, but that seems unreasonable because I looked at the company you work for and I read your bio on their website. You have a good thing going there, so A is out.”
I nodded in agreement because I wasn’t going to leave my job! That was nutso.
“B. B is the obvious one,” he went on. “You ignore all this stupid, juvenile bullshit because it’s absolutely stupid, juvenile bullshit, but what else would you expect from a hairless monkey butt like that guy? Makes sense.”
“I don’t want to ignore it. I know Dax,” I reminded him. “When he doesn’t get attention, he just demands it louder. We got asked to leave a few restaurants because of that.”
“Sounds like the polite way to say, ‘We got kicked out on our asses,” he noted, and he was correct. My ex had been physically removed from a few establishments and had ended up on the sidewalk. “B is the best way to go. There’s also choice C, which is you hiring someone to kill him.”
“What?” I gasped.
“Maim him, then,” he suggested. “No?”
I was shaking my head and waving my hands, no, no, no. “Is that it? Are you out of suggestions?”
“There’s also choice D. I’m off at two AM.”
“What does that have to do with my final option?” Oh, no. Was this really my final option? It sounded like the title of a movie:Final Option,the Camille Carpenter Story. There wouldn’t be any cute scenes of me cooking with a handsome guy and making a mess, or the two of us kissing with gentle snow falling in the background. Instead, the camera would show me sitting in the employee breakroom of a second-tier night club and expecting a near-stranger to provide the solutions to my life’s issues.
No, I couldn’t cry again.
“I get off at two and I have an idea that I can explain better then,” he clarified. “I can help you with this if you can help me with something in return. What do they say in that old movie? Quid pro quo, Camille.”
And that was it, all he would tell me. I kept asking but he was unwilling to share any additional information and anyway, one of his coworkers came in and told him to get back out on the floor because there was a fight. I followed behind and watched him pick up one grown man in each hand and then remove them both from Château Moderne, without seeming to put in a lot of effort. He resumed his position in front of the velvet rope and I stood in the bathroom hallway for another moment.
Then I made my way over to the bar and sat down, because there was plenty of room. Deb, the woman who’d been screwing myboyfriend, wasn’t here tonight but there were several others who looked very cute—and as I had just heard, he screwed everyone.
“On the house,” the male bartender told me, and put a drink on the bar top next to my purse. “Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be crying alone on a Saturday night.” Then he picked up his phone, saw something there, held up his hands, and took a step back. “Damn, sorry. Sorry,” he repeated, and continued to move away. I turned around, expecting to see Dax glaring because he had always been extremely protective when other guys even said hello to me. Except he hadn’t minded when his friends got a little handsy.
My ex wasn’t there, though, and I only saw Stone, Mr. Flip Phone watching from across the room. He nodded at me and I returned to my drink. Dax had always called me a lightweight—the fact that I was a terrible drinker was in the rap about our relationship, how his job was a fun party but how I had always ruined it with my bad dancing, my inability to hold my liquor, and my general prissiness. They had said it in a way that kind of rhymed, but that was the meaning.
I took a few tiny sips of the liquid and rested my chin in my hand. Dax had complained about the crappy sound system at this club but the speakers kept pumping hard. Thankfully, the DJ didn’t play the song that, according to Stone, was definitely about me…and I believed him. So I had my own diss track. Yes, some of the lines had a kernel of truth, but I hadn’t recognized the total picture of the woman that the lyrics had painted. She was awful—was I that bad? I took more sips and put my head down on my folded arms.
“Hey. Did you pass out from one drink?”
