1
EIGHTEEN MONTHS EARLIER
“Hey sexy.”A kid in a backwards ballcap who looked like the product of a frat party mated with a J.Crew catalogue slid onto the neighboring barstool seconds after Jenna Thomas sat down. “What can I get you to drink?” he asked, leaning into her personal space with the undiluted confidence of a Kennedy flashing his Patek Philippe Nautilus watch, which screamed trust fund baby.
She flinched, wishing she’d picked literally anyotherpub in Boston. O’Grady’s was a hole-in-the-wall that she thought would have an implied immunity to twenty-something-year-oldrichcollege kids living off their allowances or inheritances, but luck, it seemed, had deserted her today with a particular vengeance.
Jenna glared at him, sending a loud and clear message. “Nothing, thanks.”
Today may just go down as the worst day of her life. She’d spent the past two hours sitting at her estranged mother’s bedside in a county hospice listening to a sad attempt at making amends. The half-hearted apologywheezed through labored breaths that rattled like rice in a maraca, Jenna's hand twitched, wanting so badly to pull away, as her mother clutched her pinky, telling her if she had known better, she would have done better by her. "I forgive you," Jenna whispered, the lie burning her throat as relief, pain, and decades of unresolved anger warred in her chest. Minutes later, her mother was gone.
She left the hospice numb and sat in her car. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there before an email alert on her phone for a renewal of spy software she’d put on her husband’s devices a year earlier popped the numbness bubble she’d been floating in. She stared at the notification in disbelief that twelve months had passed, so much had happened, it hadcompletelyslipped her mind that she’d even installed the software.
A year ago, almost to the day, she’d gotten the call from the very hospice she was parked outside of that her mother was terminally ill. That same day she’d also received a call from the police that her twelve-year-old daughter had shoplifted with friends. Her daughter’s behavior and her mom’s illness had kept her so busy the past year she’d totally forgotten the suspicions she’d had about her husband.
Thankfully, her memory lapse didn’t hinder her from pulling up the reports the service had gathered during the time she’d been distracted and that’s exactly what she did. She logged in and was able to see all the cloned information of his phone and computer for the past year. To say her suspicions were justified would be an understatement. It turned out James, her husband of seven years, had been having an affair with Bree, her best friend of thirty years, for the better part of four years.
Acting on pure animal instinct, she drove to hisdowntown accounting firm to confront him, only to find out he wasn’t there. Thursday at one p.m. he wasn’t there? She tried his phone, and it went straight to voicemail. She considered going back to work. She owned two very successful salons, but there was just no way she could face her staff or clients, so she did something she never had before. She went home in the middle of the day. When she got there and saw his car in the driveway, she knew he wasn’t alone. She entered through the back door, which didn’t creak like the front. Walked up the back staircase and found her husband balls deep in Bree, using the sex swingshe’dbought to spice up their marriage, whichhe’dnever wanted to use.
To their credit, both had the decency to scramble and try to untangle themselves, which only proved to make the situation worse. It was sort of comedic. If you took the emotion out of it, she could have been watching an SNL skit.
Jenna turned, walked back down the steps, and out to her car, finding herself only distantly affected. It was as if her emotional core had been sucked out of her the moment her mother’s heart monitor flatlined, and everything after was just a slide show of other people’s drama. Her body was there, and so was her mind, but as far as feeling…she didn’t know. Floating, maybe. Or sinking.
James raced out onto the driveway barefoot, no shirt, wearing only his pants, screaming for her to come back. She drove away without sparing him a glance, ignored the panicked calls and texts, and stopped at the first dark, anonymous place she found. O’Grady’s was a dive, all sticky floors and wood paneling where the varnish had sweated off decades ago. A dark mahogany bar ran nearly the length with a trio of green-shaded lamps with goldaccents hanging above. The only other light came from the neon signs that read: O’Grady’s Pub, Guinness, Killian’s, Jameson, Murphy’s, Bailey’s, and Notre Dame Fighting Irish, littering the walls.
Which is how she found herself in her current predicament.
Frat boy lingered, not taking the hint, not reading the cues, not even pretending to be subtle about his up-and-down survey of her body.
“Come on, let me buy you a drink, beautiful,” he persisted. And why wouldn’t he? The entitled prick probably never had to take no for an answer in his life. He looked as if he belonged in a Calvin Klein ad and was rich. “The bartender’s just changing a keg, what should I tell him when he gets back? Cosmo? Lemon Drop? Margarita?”
“No,” she stated firmly, leaving no room for second-guessing or misinterpreting her response.
For just once in her life, she wanted to be invisible. She’d inherited her mom’s petite stature at 5’2”, long blonde hair, large blue eyes, D cup, and classic 36-24-36 hourglass shape. It didn’t help that she also had a sweetheart-shaped face and genetics that got her carded, to this day, even when she tried to buy cold medicine at the age of 34. Most of her life she’d felt like chum in the water in an ocean of predators. She’d thrown on an oversized zip-up hoodie and picked this Irish hole-in-the-wall pub to drown her sorrows, and specificallynotget hit on by rich-boy Justin Bieber look-alikes.
He hovered. He persisted. He moved closer. “Okay then, let me guess your name. I’m good at this. You look like a Kaylee. Or maybe a Shannon. Yeah, you got a Shannon vibe.”
Jenna continued to ignore him, but that only seemed tofuel him more. She could hear his friends in the back of the bar, by the darts, hyping him up and cheering him on, which she knew was only going to make him more determined. She resigned herself to the fact that this would have to be dealt with. She had her line, if he crossed it, he would find out what it was.
“Okay, fine, if you don’t want a drink and you don’t want to tell me your name, what are you studying in school? You’re a med student. No law. No, something in STEM. I just know you have beauty and brains.”
She continued staring at the drinks list, ignoring him completely. But he was not giving up despite her doing absolutely zero to encourage him.
“C’mon, baby girl, you look like you need a friend tonight. Let me be that friend for you.” He lifted his arm, brushed the hair off her shoulder, and his knuckles grazed her neck.
That was it. That was the line. There wasno touchingallowed without consent.
She turned towards him and sweetly,sugary sweetly, asked, “Can I kick you in the balls?”
“What?” He blinked, clearly confused because she’d spoken so nicely. Then the words registered, and his eyes doubled in size. “What the fuck? No!”
His attempt to turn away was futile because she’d already grabbed his shoulders and was bringing her knee up between his legs. Hard.
“Aghhh.” He doubled over grabbing his crotch and fell to the side, crumbling onto the countertop.
“That was a free lesson that: ‘No’is a full sentence,” she spoke calmly, turning back to the bar as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a man coming through western-style swinging service doors from the back.
“Is everything okay here?” The bartender’s voice waslow and resonant, it hummed through her like distant thunder. There was an effortless authority to it that drew attention without needing to be loud.
