THERE WERE FIVE LIQUOR STORES within a twenty-minute drive of my apartment. I tried my best to mix up which one I went to every time. I didn’t want a pattern to develop. I didn’t want to be noticed.
I squeezed in between two obnoxiously large cars in front of Delaney’s package store on Main Street in Barnmont, the next town over. It was my least favorite of the five. There was no parking lot, and they fancied themselves as selling rare wines.
Inside, to the left, there were six impressive rows of wine. I headed to the right. The second aisle was my mecca, vodka. I grabbed a bottle from the bottom shelf, the cheap stuff. I didn’t know any better and I was poor. Plus, I was less likely to hurt myself with a plastic bottle.
I was shuffling off to cash out with my bottle in hand when I saw her and froze. Hunter Willoughby was casually perusing the wine racks, the wine racks that stood between me and the register.
I lunged back into my own aisle. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, especially not her. I moved to the opposite end of my aisle and slid out into the back row of the store, lined with refrigerated beer. I inched along, feigning interest in the variety of lagers until I could see her again.
She was attractive. I wasn’t so delusional that I couldn’t see that. I was pretty too, but somehow not pretty enough. Or not the right kind of pretty for Mark.
I watched her. She would lift a bottle of wine, read the label, then put it back. I didn’t know what she was looking for, but she hadn’t found it yet, not the right vineyard in France or something. She was looking for a most delicious wine to bring over to Mark’s house. He was probably making her dinner, his signature pasta maybe. They would eat and drink until they were full, laughing, exchanging soft touches, building to the moment he would take her in his arms and kiss her. They would both be buzzed from the wine, inhibitions properly subdued. They would make love; then he would ask her to move in, to marry him. They would have four kids and a summer home on the Cape.
I put my bottle of vodka on the ground in front of me and ran out of the store. There were four more places I could get cheap vodka without having a mental breakdown.
I MOVED MY KEYS in my hands like I had lost all motor skills. An act I had done a million times seemed impossible. Pick out car key, put car key in door, think about how shitty and old my car is to have manual locks, open door, drive away, easy. Standing on the side of the road in front of Delaney’s, I might as well have been wearing oven mitts. Was this a panic attack? Or maybe just a normal panic? Where is the line that determines if the panic is attacking?
“Hey, Virginia . . .” A voice penetrated my brain in what I determined could only be a hallucination brought on by the attacking panic. It was the voice of the very person I was panicking about.
Hunter Willoughby stood on the sidewalk adjacent to my car. I clutched my keys, turning them from Mexican jumping beans to sedentary rock. I said nothing. My brain was screaming for me to speak so I didn’t look like a psychopath, but also maybe I was one. I wasn’t feeling particularly well-adjusted in the moment.
“I don’t mean to bother you. I just wanted to say I’m so sorry about Jenny. I know you two weren’t very close, but she was an amazing girl and it’s a real loss.”
The SUBTEXT. I didn’t know her very well? She knew that I didn’t know Jenny very well? Crap, I still hadn’t said anything. I was just standing in the road, not moving, not reacting, which, based on what was going on in my head, was maybe a good thing.
Hunter smiled. I would like to say it was a conniving smile, or that of a supervillain, but it was a kind, generous smile. How dare she?
“Look, this is probably really weird of me to ask, but I was in there looking for a bottle of wine and . . . Do you want to maybe just go grab a drink instead?” she asked.
Well, I did not see that coming. It was so far from the realm of possibility that I was incapable of reacting. What was one more minute of awkward silence while I processed? On the one hand, I wanted to run screaming. But there was the other hand. The other hand that society ingrained in unsuspecting women a long time ago. I wanted to know everything about her, every detail that I could twist to prove that I was better—prettier, smarter, funnier—better.
“I can’t,” I said, making my first healthy choice maybe ever.
“Right, yeah, I get it. It would be weird. Maybe another time. Or not.” She smiled, her awkwardness making her endearing instead of detestable. But she was still THE WORST.
Hunter headed back into Delaney’s, and I was finally able to grasp the right key in my hand.
RIVERVIEW LIQUOR ALLOWED ME to acquire a precious bottle of vodka without incident. I placed the bottle on my makeshift coffee table and took three more steps to the bedroom area of my studio. I pulled a T-shirt, then a pair of sweatpants, from amidst the giant ball of blankets on top of the bed. I flung the blankets back around, knocking the cordless phone off the nightstand. I knocked that stupid thing onto the floor fifty times a day, and half the time I just left it there. I didn’t even want it; it was part of some bundle deal with the Internet and cable. The first week it rang a hundred thousand times, all telemarketers, so I turned off the ringer and left it as a decoration.
Comfortably in my pajamas, I sat down on the couch and started my night. Saturday nights were for drinking—heavy, blackout, throw-up-all-morning drinking. It was the Ambien that really made it special, taking away all my thoughts and memories. It was a pattern I’d fallen into over the years. An homage to my mother maybe. Six days a week, I fought my demons, and one night a week, I took a break. I could take the pills and mix them with alcohol, slowing down everything that made me human—breathing, moving, thinking. It was a cheat day. A system employed by thousands of overweight women all over the world, but I didn’t want brownies; I wanted vodka and pills.
It was the two-week anniversary of Jenny’s murder, and here I was, doing the exact same thing I had done that night. It seemed like things should be different now, but they weren’t. I placed a pill on my tongue and took a shot straight from the bottle to wash it down. I didn’t enjoy the taste of it. I was drinking to feel fantastic, then horrible, then black out. It was in my genes.