At the very, very, end of the article a small picture of the three of us was placed in the bottom right corner. Mark, who had been reading the article over my shoulder swore and pulled it out of my hands. He ripped it in half and then again. He stormed over to the trash and threw it in the bin with a ferocity that made even me calm down.
I reached out to him, moving to put my hand on his shoulder.
“Baby, it’s not that bad. So what? This doesn’t change anything. We knew the article was going to be bad,” I tried to comfort him.
“We should sue. Can we do that?” He demanded. Ethan shook his head.
“I mean, you can. But they have the right to print whatever they want. It would just lose you money in the end. You know how much crap they’ve printed about me over the years? I stopped looking.”
By the time noon came around the band’s phones were ringing constantly. After a while everyone just put them on silent and decided to go rehearse. Must be nice, I thought. At least they had a way to release their emotions. What could I do other than stew over how awful this was?
I sat in the studio with them for a bit until Ethan came in and sat down next to me. He leaned over and cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted at me over the music.
“You want to get out of here for a bit?” Oddly enough, I did.
I followed him out and got in his car.
“Where are we going?” He looked over and gave me a sly smile.
“Just this little club I know about. You’ll like it. Trust Me.” Despite never really being alone with Ethan, I decided to do as he said, trust him. We drove for almost an hour. We didn’t talk much. He asked me what I wanted to listen to.
“Can we listen to some 90’s music? Like pop?”
He laughed and changed it to the station I had requested.
“Does your rockstar husband know you like this stuff?” He asked me as I moved my shoulders to “Groove Is In The Heart”. I shook my head furiously and looked at him with fake horror.
“No! And you can never tell him.”
He laughed and made a cross on his chest.
“Cross my heart.”
Finally, he pulled into a large parking lot with a small building in the center of it. The building looked very out of place. The parking lot looked brand new, while the club looked ancient. Stepping out I saw a small sign hanging above the door. Sam’s Bar. Despite the small size, there were about twenty cars here. I looked at my watch. It was barely five.
“What is this?” He didn’t answer me.
“Come on, see for yourself.” I followed him and looked around.
The room was dark, my eyes had to adjust. Inside the room was about 20 small circle tables. In the far back was a small stage, while on the far right was the bar. The room was quickly filling up with patrons. Ethan turned to me and smiled.
“Go pick a table. I’m going to sign us up. Do you want something to drink? You might need it.”
I hesitated but finally asked for a vodka tonic.
I found a table in the middle of the room. There wasn’t many options left. I looked around at the people around me. Everyone was excited, laughing and talking quickly. Light music was playing, helping the ambience. Ethan found me in the midst and hurried over with my drink and his water in hand.
“Drink up. I’m gonna go first, and you just wait for your name.” I stared at him strangely, but he revealed nothing. About fifteen minutes later the lights began flashing and the room fell quiet.
“Miracle Moore,” A voice called over the speakers. The crowd began cheering excitedly as a tiny redhead popped up out of her seat and headed to the stage. She looked around and reached for the microphone.
“Hello,” she said nervously, looking around the room. People said hello back and they urged her to speak. She closed her eyes, opened her mouth, and exploded.
“My mom always told me that I was too skinny. I had my dad’s nose. My hair was too course. No wonder boys didn’t like me, I was too smart. I needed to stop reading so much and put on some lipstick.
She pushed me to get lip injections, and after I graduated, she gave me a gift certificate for breast implants. She had ingrained in the thoughts that I could never be loved the way I was.
I got pregnant at nineteen and she couldn’t understand how it happened. “How could you do this to yourself? Is this what you want to teach your child?” She screamed at me.No. It wasn’t,” she paused and people clapped. Bringing the mic back up to her lips she was completely emotionless.
