There’s Shayla flitting past as a young girl: eight, maybe nine years old. Darkness beyond the window, autumn outside, but the aura of some summer day drifting around her. Laughter plays across her cheeks and eyes. Her blond hair is in ringlets.
Shayla first catches sight of her younger self at the far wall of the sprawling condo that belongs to one of the account managers—an all-staff soiree, everyone invited. Candlelight in the corners, a saxophone on the stereo, coworkers and friends of coworkers shifting into small circles as Friday evening shimmies free from the week. Then out of nowhere, there’s the girl, this vision of the girl Shayla once was. Young Shayla eases between those clusters of beer bottles and wine glasses and cocktail coupes. Young Shayla slips behind the doll-faced receptionist, who’s traded her sensible office wear for a low-cut black dress and who’s right now tipping her head coquettishly toward one of the junior partners. Somewhere near the window, Young Shayla darts completely out of view—a white dress vanishing.
Shayla—Shayla today—rubs her eyes, blinks out the blurriness. She did see this, didn’t she?
Conversations echo numbly on all sides, words and voices doubling somehow, and the shadows near the wall have begun to deepen and blur.
Fuck. She’s already had too much to drink.
But before she can turn down another, Elaine, her new friend at the office, new best friend, has taken her hand and begun guiding her toward the kitchen and a butcher’s block thick with wine and liquor bottles.
* * * *
Here’s Shayla today: midthirties and feeling older, recently divorced, newly childless in a way, fresh on the market again—even if that again makes her feel not entirely fresh at all.
Here’s what Shayla used to call her Cinderella story: love at first touch at a crowded frat party, Richard (boyfriend-to-be, husband-to-be, ex-husband-to-be) with that shock of red hair and that devilish grin, beaming with confidence, ripe to be someone’s prince. He’d been a business major—summer internship on Wall Street, a job promised after graduation, a career path paved with gold. BMOC, his reputation preceding him. Shayla had been a communications major, not sure she’d made the right choice, student loans piling up, no prospects yet, no place to go except tonight’s party and tomorrow’s and next weekend’s and—and then Richard put his hand on her waist as he passed her at the Kappa Sig house, the slightest sparks at the small of her back, shivers accelerating up her spine, and she turned toward that red hair and that grin and into the swirl of his cologne and knew at once where she wanted to go.
Rags to riches. Cinderella and her prince. A courtship and engagement. A wedding, a honeymoon, a happily ever after.
And when the honeymoon was over? After the happily ever after?
“Do we have to be late every time, Shayla? Do you have any idea how much these clients are worth? How much they’re worth to me? Can you not just put on a smile for a couple of hours?”
“Didn’t you tell me you wanted a family too, Shayla? And if not now, then when?”
“Ever think of taking up an exercise program, Shayla? Ever want to work off that baby weight?”
“What kind of example does that attitude set for our daughter?”
“Can’t you have dinner ready on time? Can’t you keep this mess of a house presentable? Can’t you understand that a man has needs?”
“What do you do all day anyway—besides letting yourself fall apart? Are you listening to me, Shayla? Shayla?”
Happily ever after meant perfect wife, perfect family. Who could live up to that?
* * * *
Shayla stumbles in the heels she’s borrowed from Elaine. She’s wearing one of Elaine’s dresses as well—an ill fit.
“You can’t wear that,” Elaine had blurted out about Shayla’s own dress earlier, Shayla mere seconds through Elaine’s door.
“It felt sleek.” Shayla smoothed her hands along her hips. “It felt stylish.” Wasn’t that the way with little black dresses?
“It’s last season’s style.” Elaine picked at a small fray, dismissed the dress as mousy, as motherly. “Haven’t you seen the poster back at the office? Marketing is a contest for people’s attention. And this”—a gesture toward the dress, or toward Shayla herself?—“is gonna need some attention.”
Fixing Shayla up was the first step toward fixing her up with someone. This is something Elaine has said more than once. A new you—another of Elaine’s phrases. But Shayla has learned it the hard way: you can never really get away from yourself.
“Try this little fit and flare instead.” Elaine handed across a tropical print, too much white for Shayla’s taste, and she didn’t like the halter top, but Elaine insisted. “It’ll show a little cleavage. And you want to bet who’ll appreciate that?” A knowing look, an eyebrow raised.
Dylan, she meant, Dylan from the office, but Shayla was thinking instead about her ex-husband—how he’d nagged that she hadn’t been taking care of herself anymore, that she hadn’t been taking care of him.
So Shayla had suited up in Elaine’s dress and let Elaine freshen her makeup, camouflaging the crow’s-feet and the dark circles, hiding the puffiness from where she’d been crying before in her own apartment.
“Your decision if a glass is half-empty or half-full,” Elaine said a few minutes later, and it took Shayla a moment to recognize that she wasn’t talking specifically about the bottle of Tanqueray in her hand. “I know you miss seeing your kid. It’s heartbreaking, I know—I mean, I can imagine. Divorce is never easy. But think about it this way. You don’t have to find a babysitter tonight. You don’t have to get home at a certain time. You’re footloose, fancy-free.”
“The evening’s young,” Shayla said. “And so are we”—something Richard used to say back when they were.
“Exactly.” Elaine topped the glasses with a couple of splashes of tonic. “A little pre-gaming?” She held a glass toward Shayla. “A little liquid courage?”
Footloose, Shayla thought. Fancy-free. She felt the foundation on her cheeks tighten as she forced a smile.
She took the glass.
* * * *
A drink at the end of a long day, that’s how it had started back in her marriage—just to ease her nerves. Then two drinks. Then why not one midafternoon? Or even with lunch? And after the separation, who was there to care when she started?
Life of the party.
Party for one.
The officer who pulled her over—he’d cared. “Have you been drinking, ma’am?” and “A little early in the day, isn’t it?” and peering past her, “That your daughter in the car with you?”
Care maybe, but not sympathy, not understanding, no matter how clearly Shayla tried to explain. No, I only had one drink. No, I certainly wouldn’t get behind the wheel if I’d had too much. No, I would never put my daughter at risk, never ever, no, no, no.
No sympathy from her husband either or from the judge at the hearing or from the other judge, further down the line, at the custody challenge. And the lawyer’s bills mounting in the meantime, and her with no job to pay for them.
Rags to riches to rags to…what next?
Shayla has set a deadline, Cinderella in reverse. Some magic by midnight tonight, or else she’ll draw this story to a close herself.
* * * *
Keeping her balance behind Elaine, Shayla latches onto the real reason Elaine is dragging her toward the kitchen. Behind those bottles of Maker’s Mark and Plymouth and Grey Goose huddled together on the butcher block, Dylan is playing bartender—Dylan the destination, not the drinks themselves.
Shayla adjusts her halter top. She hugs her purse against her side, the weight of it steadying her.
Dylan catches sight of her as he clasps the cap on a cocktail shaker. He raises it over his shoulder—biceps bulging against the sleeves of his black polo as he swings it back and forth in a slow motion that’s almost dizzying. His hair is slicked back, his face partly in shadow, a halo around his head, a radiance, a… Shayla ferrets around in her mind for the word. How drunk is she that she can’t find it? Can’t even see straight? Then Dylan turns toward the light. Half a grin tugs at the corner of his lips.
Dylan is (Shayla understands this) a younger version of her ex-husband. A different career—marketing instead of investment—and nothing similar about them physically, Richard’s red hair to Dylan’s blond, Richard’s stockiness to Dylan’s leaner athleticism. But the confidence, the ambition, the potential. Dylan will be junior partner before long. Everyone feels sure of it, just like the man that the doll-faced receptionist had been chatting up before. Dylan has potential. He has possibilities ahead of him.
Possibilities for Shayla too—at a time when she needs them most. She is still amazed that Dylan approached her in the break room one morning soon after she started work, asked how she liked the job, where she was from, glanced down at her bare ring finger. He friended her on Facebook that same night, sent her a couple of instant messages. Interest, flirtation. More?
“Glad you made it.” Dylan leans toward her, but even so, she can hardly hear him above the music and the chatter and the laughter. “Get a glass.”
He grabs one himself before she can, thrusts it into her hand, and tips the cocktail shaker toward her—but just as he starts to pour, Shayla catches another glimpse of Young Shayla with her head tilted to one side, curiosity in her expression. Shayla tilts with her, leaning, listing, and some of the clear liquid sloshes from the glass onto the floor.
“Party foul,” someone calls out, Shayla can’t see who. She’s searching instead for the girl, gone again, seems like, fading away into the blur.
* * * *
Parties—and Shayla has seen her share—have a sound, a throb and thrum, echoes and undercurrents. All of them the same, she thinks, no matter the little details.
Grunge bands and Miller High Life at high school keggers, electronica in college and everyone tossing back shots of tequila, and then the jazz streaming out of the speakers here and everyone leaning into their craft cocktails. There was a world of difference between playing beer pong with Billy Prescott before they hooked up in the bathroom (everything so much easier then, wasn’t it?) and clinking champagne glasses with Richard at their wedding reception, but in each moment she’d felt like she’d never been happier (the new ring glistening as she raised her toast, not yet weighing her down). And then…what exactly does the night ahead promise with Dylan?
But the voices are the same, that’s what she means, and the people somehow, and then Shayla herself here in the middle.
Always someone being too loud, like the man shouting behind her at this very moment, creative director at the agency, even louder drunk than not. Other voices always piling against you too, gripes and grumbles about one unhappiness or another (love, family, work), or whispers in some cozy corner and little fireworks of flirtation. Then some burst of laughter on the other side of the room, or a yelp when this person bumps into that one (always alcohol sloshing somewhere). Or a cold silence, the lonely girl left unexpectedly adrift along the edges.
There’s a rhythm, some variation of that same rhythm party after party. Sometimes in the middle of a room, Shayla closes her eyes and listens for the patterns—steady, relentless, pulsing, jangling. Sometimes she hears the beat inside her own head, like her pulse is trying to become one with it.
“You okay?” Dylan says, and Shayla realizes she’s closed her eyes just now, that she’s been standing very, very still.
“Sorry.” She needs a moment to get her bearings.
* * * *
For Shayla today, everything is new: the admin job at Turner & Blount and even having a job at all, the one-bedroom apartment that feels bigger and emptier than its 750 square feet, the fact of being suddenly single, suddenly free to do whatever she wants, like whatever she’s doing with Dylan tonight, her hand clasped in his.
Here are some other things that are new for Shayla: checking messages on Match.com and swiping through Tinder (or being swiped past herself—she doesn’t like to think about it, feels too old for Tinder, understands it was desperation driving her that way). Even Facebook has become unfamiliar territory. Months ago it was a wall of moms sharing stories about their kids, parenting tips, recipes. These days it’s a place for meeting and matchmaking, hopes and (she’s already felt this) heartbreak. She’s been chatting with Dylan these last few weeks, something sparking to life there, she feels sure, even if his IMs sometimes stop out of nowhere, leaving the apartment feeling even larger.
Here’s more that’s new: condoms in her purse—the first time in many years, and a weight of anxieties with them. Whatever her faults, her husband could never accuse her of cheating. She’s not used to thinking about protection.
She carries another kind of protection as well—a gun she bought soon after moving into her new place. Single woman living alone, putting herself out on the market again, walking herself home late at night, not as nice a neighborhood as her home with Richard. The weight of it gives her strength, confidence.
She told Richard after she bought it—trying to stir up some sympathy (she would admit that), to get him to sigh and say, “Come home, Shay.” But Richard offered only dismissal, disdain. “Protection?” he said, a bitter laugh. “Only danger to you is yourself.”
Sometimes, in the quiet of some midnight, the quiet of that lonely apartment, Dylan’s IMs gone quiet, Shayla has understood that Richard was right.
She has held the gun to her head, she’s held it in her mouth. Seconds have passed, then minutes, before she tucked it into her nightstand drawer, tucked herself alone in that bed, a nightcap easing her into sleep.
* * * *
Has Shayla maneuvered Dylan to this corner? Or has he maneuvered her? Honestly, she doesn’t feel steady enough to have managed any of this so smoothly, so quickly.
“I’ve been thinking,” she tells Dylan, hearing the slur in her own voice, the stumble: think—ing. “All those flirty messages of yours.” She shakes her head, wags a finger at him. “Do you chat like this with all the girls?”
“Women, you mean?” As Shayla nods, she feels her eyelids drooping, then jolts awake. Was he making a joke about her age? “All the time,” he says. “Sometimes I can barely keep track of which woman’s in which chat window.”
Shayla adjusts her halter top, remembering the poster about competing for people’s attention, remembering what Elaine had said—Elaine there on the other side of the room, laughing at something, a haze of action and noise between them. “You just need to find the right one, the one who’ll take care of you.”
Dylan leans in. Shayla can smell his cologne. “And are you the woman who’s gonna take care of me?”
They are close. Things are cozy. Again: who cornered who?
“Haven’t you noticed how our names fit together?” Shayla holds a finger up, writes her name in the air. “The ‘yla’—right there in the middle.” She nods. It really is a coincidence, she thinks, profound even. “I was doodling our names one night, couldn’t help but notice.”
He squints at her. “How old are you again?”
She waits for a smile, can’t tell if it’s a serious question or just more flirtation. Finally, she shrugs, waves a hand nonchalantly, like she doesn’t care one way or another—and there’s Young Shayla hovering again, dancing to the music but not dancing with anyone. She’s alone, a world away, world of her own, as people drift around her—through her? Shayla can’t tell, doesn’t care. She’s puzzled by something else, because she’s not sure now that this girl looks entirely like her. A resemblance there, certainly, but something different, something off. Her but not her.
Shayla turns back to Dylan. “Do you know what my mother told me? I think it was when I was about ten years old.”
“What?”
“She said—and I remember her tucking my hair behind my ear as she said it—she said, ‘You’re such a beautiful girl, Shayla, you’ll charm all the boys, have your pick of them, a girl as pretty as you.’”
“And was she right?” Dylan reaches up himself and tucks a bit of Shayla’s hair behind her ear. When his fingers graze against her, she feels the ground shift slightly, her legs losing their grip on the floor.
“Always some boy or another chasing after me.” Don’t seem too available, this is something Elaine told her earlier, but Shayla can’t resist trying out a seductive grin. “Did you know I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue?” The corners of her mouth ache.
Dylan laughs. “Haven’t heard that line since high school,” he says. “If only we had a cherry stem for you to prove your skills, but… ”
Their eyes meet, and Shayla is reminded of the way Billy Prescott stared at her when she won beer pong and he had to chug down that last Miller High Life. “The champagne of beers,” he’d said, tipping a toast her way. He hadn’t broken eye contact, just watched her around the rim of that red plastic cup, playfulness and challenge and desire.
“You’re a very interesting woman, Shayla,” Dylan says.
“You should find out.” She gives what she hopes is a come-hither look.
“When are you going to let me find out?”
Young Shayla—or whoever the girl is—has stopped dancing. She’s watching them again, the same curiosity from before and…judgment? disapproval? displeasure? Shayla can’t find the right shade of meaning, and she’s struggling with another question: How many years’ difference between her age and Dylan’s? How many years’ difference between Dylan’s and that young girl’s there? Where do the years go?
Shayla’s head lolls. She tries to shake it, shake away some of the fog inside, shake off the young girl still standing there, still watching.
Finally, Shayla just takes Dylan by the hand and leads him away.
* * * *
Here is Shayla’s deal with herself tonight, how this Cinderella story might come to an end, how she might finally put behind her the husband who doesn’t care, the daughter she lost, the future that seems so bleak:
The gun is in her purse.
If Prince Charming here doesn’t come around by midnight, she’s going to put it against her head or in her mouth once more.
And this time, she’s not going to hesitate.
* * * *
Here’s Shayla in the bathroom, Dylan pressing her against the sink—a pedestal sink, no counter to prop herself up on—the porcelain cold against her rump, panties around her legs, just below her knees.
Did Dylan lure her in here? Taking advantage of the drunk girl? No, she did the leading, she remembers this, the weight of him behind her as she weaved and wobbled through the crowded apartment, even if she doesn’t remember planning to lead him here, to this. It must have been on her mind, though—thinking of Billy Prescott earlier, that sly grin of his all those years ago, how she’d won him.
“You meant what you said about taking care of me,” Dylan said when she slipped her dress up around her waist, eased one of those condoms from her purse. Noise through the door, the party outside, and Shayla knew how…out of step? crazy? ridiculous?…what she was doing here was. This was what you did at a high school party or at some frat house, not at some account manager’s house. But you did have to get the other person’s attention, that was the job, wasn’t it? And she had Dylan’s, surely she did.
“No time like the present,” she said—hearing the slurring deeper this time, sloppier.
Her glass stands empty beside her purse on the back of the toilet. She’d downed the rest of her drink before they began.
She closes her eyes and then opens them again, tries to focus on Dylan, searches for that halo around him here under these lights, but it’s just hard cheekbones and his cologne sharp against her and his five-o’clock shadow scraping against her cheeks and neck. One arm presses down on her shoulder, one hand cups her ass, and he’s picking up speed inside her, and yet somehow he feels further away than ever, or maybe she’s the one who’s far away, not here at all, as if she’s watching this from above, from some great distance away, the rhythm he’s building that she can’t catch up to, the pounding that she feels and doesn’t feel.
A pounding on the door too, and then an open door and a burst of music and the guy from the mailroom, wide-eyed, red-faced, grinning. “Hey, hey” and “I didn’t—” and someone beyond shouting “Get a room.” Sudden music, sudden laughter, all eyes on them, on her she recognizes, but Dylan doesn’t slow down except to slam that door.
Shayla tries to focus on the moment, feels herself flattening out, disappearing as Dylan finishes.
He grunts in her ear, an explosion of little grunts. Somewhere below there are other explosions, a fury of fireworks, she knows, but these feel far away as well.
* * * *
Here’s Shayla readjusting her dress afterward, glancing at the reflection of Dylan behind her, zipping up his pants, not looking her way. She remembers Billy Prescott all those years ago, her whispering into his ear “I love you I love you I love you” and—
While the door was open, Shayla caught another glimpse of Young Shayla, young whoever she is. She doesn’t know how much the girl saw, what she must have been thinking. Curiosity? Condemnation?
Shayla adjusts herself in the mirror. Dylan is half circling in place behind her. She wants him to turn her around, to kiss her.
He takes a deep breath, glances nervously at the door, doesn’t glance her way—a different Dylan under the fluorescent glare, stark and somber.
“Ready?”
Time to return to the party.
Time for another drink.
* * * *
“Did you seriously get caught in the bathroom with Dylan?” Elaine is as wide-eyed as the guy from the mailroom. “My god, everyone’s talking about it. Can you just imagine Monday morning?” Elaine is giggling. She’s holding a drink, and then it’s in Shayla’s hand. The one that Dylan said he was going to get her? She can’t see him from the corner Elaine has pulled them into, can’t make out any of the faces at all.
“It was like Billy,” she says.
“Billy?” Someone laughs nearby, and Shayla wonders if they’re laughing at her. “I thought your husband’s name was Richard.”
“It is. Billy was before. But it’s not going to be like Billy.” Because…
Because, staring at Dylan’s reflection in the bathroom, Shayla remembered what happened with Billy Prescott the weekend after they’d hooked up, the other girl he’d ended up with, and Shayla simply moving on, except it hadn’t been that simple, she knew. Had she ever even spoken to Billy after that? She’d written him, yes, that’s it. “Do you know how much I…? Do you know how much… Do you know how… Do you…?” She can’t remember if she ever sent it.
Elaine rests the tips of her fingers on each of Shayla’s cheeks, turns her head so they’re face to face. “Who’s Billy?”
“It’s not going to be like Richard either,” she says, and then, “But where’d he go? Dylan?”
Elaine shrugs. “Over there somewhere. He’s catching merry hell for you and him in the bathroom, I gotta tell you.”
Shayla waves her hand. This has become her gesture, she’s suddenly self-conscious about it, suddenly deeply curious about it. What does it mean? She’s waving that it doesn’t matter to her. She’s waving that the other person shouldn’t care. She’s waving that she doesn’t know herself what she means, can’t articulate, can’t recall.
“Is it midnight yet?” Shayla asks. “But I guess it doesn’t matter anymore does it, because my prince, he already came, didn’t he?” And then she laughs at the image, the words, her prince coming, giggles like she can’t stop.
Elaine tilts her head the way the young girl did, squints at Shayla.
“Honey, you are drunk,” Elaine says, laughing along with her, because this is how parties go.
* * * *
But where has Elaine gone now? And shouldn’t Dylan be back with that drink? Be here with her? And whose elbow is this Shayla is standing next to? She concentrates on the elbow to steady herself, resisting the urge to rest her hand against it. Words blip past. Who’s talking? What are they talking about? Shayla nods occasionally, she’s paying attention, she is. She can sense the sidelong glances at her, the furrowed brows, the smirks. The elbow bends, a shoulder turning, blocking. She’s losing her balance.
She needs to sit down, that’s all it is. She needs to stop swaying, stop the room from swaying. She eases around a couple of people—from the accounting department she thinks, or no, maybe these two aren’t from the office at all but just friends of friends? She reaches the sofa, steadies herself, slumps.
The young girl is sitting beside her. They glance at one another, then with a start, Shayla turns away, stares ahead into the room, seeing, not seeing.
She thinks she recognizes the girl more clearly, but…
How could her daughter have grown so much in the months since Shayla last saw her? This girl seems years older. But isn’t that the same curve of cheekbone that Shayla knows so well? And those eyes, just a shade off from Shayla’s own, the color that made Shayla feel each time like she was looking at herself in some special mirror, the past reflected back into the present.
What is her daughter doing here?
“Mia?” Shayla says her daughter’s name softly, then again louder. “Mia.” The girl’s head bobs up and down as if to the music, but Shayla notices that the rhythm is off, the nodding out of beat. One of those ringlets has fallen slack. She doesn’t seem to hear Shayla.
Shayla reaches out to smooth the girl’s hair back in place, then stops. The girl seems so beautiful, so fragile, and Shayla is reminded again of her mother tucking her own hair back, of Dylan making that same move, of that prediction, that promise, of charming all the boys.
Shayla remembers tucking Mia’s hair back the same way another time, another day when she was overwhelmed by how beautiful her daughter was—a tea party they were having at the time. “Sit with me, Mama. I’ll pour your tea.” And Shayla smiled and said, “I brought my own,” and the two of them toasted one another, an empty wooden teacup in her daughter’s hand and a half-drunk gimlet in Shayla’s, and Shayla was filled with happiness, thinking even then, this is the way it should be, life as a party, a constant stream of them, smiles and happiness and warmth, because if it wasn’t, then why would life be worth living anyway?
And then Richard had walked in on that tea party, his face flushing red—anger? shame?—and even though he spoke only one small word this time—her name—it had said enough.
* * * *
Here’s Shayla opening her eyes. Has she fallen asleep on the sofa? How long has she slept?
The young girl beside her—her daughter, herself, whoever—is gone. Shayla can’t find her out there or Elaine either, and Dylan hasn’t returned—and won’t, she recognizes. Came, yes, but won’t come back. No giggles.
Time for her to go too, she thinks—and then she remembers her plan, her commitment to herself, presses her hand against her purse, feels the weight there again, grounding her own weightlessness. Time to go, but is it really time? Has her midnight arrived?
Shayla stands, tries to get her balance. Crowds of faces, distorted, elongated, that same throb and thrum, a wall of sound, deafening now, but a wall between her and the sound too, and Shayla dodging through the edges of it, an emptiness deep inside her that the noise won’t reach.
She can’t focus enough to see exactly where she’s going, much less find a clock, but she’s squeezing behind people, between people. “Hey, watch it!” “Are you okay?” “I don’t think she’s okay.”
Noise, noise, noise, everywhere, pulsing and pushing and shoving, jostling her, jolting her—and how big can this condo be anyway?
The kitchen, the kitchen will have a clock, don’t they always? She heads toward the butcher block, picks up a glass of wine from the corner—a muffled “Hey, that’s mine” behind her—and sees the clock, a black cat with a dial in its belly, its pupils darting back and forth, its tail swinging. She stares at the dial, can’t tell which is the big hand and which the small, they’re so similar.
Both are past the 11.
Close enough.
She studies the glass in her hand, then tips back the wine. Last call.
She’ll go home, back to the small apartment. She’ll lay herself in the bed where she’s sat alone with this gun on other nights. She won’t hesitate, she won’t—she tells herself this as she sets down the empty glass, focuses on making a straight line toward the door. But people are blocking her way, and she’s staggering—this is the only word—despite herself.
And then she catches sight of Dylan, and he catches sight of her, and is that a blush? He turns away quickly, turns red-faced toward the woman he’s been talking with.
The doll-faced receptionist. She’s captured his attention now, and Shayla feels her own face redden at the sight of the other woman’s sly, knowing smirk.
* * * *
Here’s Shayla deciding that she won’t wait until she gets home after all. She’ll do it here.
Here’s the end of the Cinderella story Shayla no longer believes in: No Prince Charming, no glass slipper, but just some shutting down of the storm of expectations and humiliations, of anger and regret, just some laying of those regrets at Richard’s own doorstep, so he can see what he’s done, finally feel sorry for her like he should’ve before.
And Dylan will see too, she thinks, as she forces her way toward him, up close and personal. He won’t be able to look away like he had afterward in the bathroom, like he’s still doing, trying to duck into the shadows. Red-faced definitely, shamed about Shayla or about being caught here with his doll-faced friend, and her flushed and flustered. Red-faced just like Richard always was, and Shayla flushed and flustered herself, and fumbling still in her purse, fumbling to make sense of any of this, Richard, and Billy, and Dylan. Because how could you get inside someone like that, inside her head, inside her body, and then take yourself so far away and…
And then the gun is finally in her hand. It’s firing even before she has her hand firmly around it. It’s like fireworks going off around her, closer this time, real this time, red and white and hot and bursting through all that noise, that throb and thrum, that silence.
* * * *
The party is winding down, Shayla can feel it.
People making sudden exits, rush rush rush, like a clock has indeed struck somewhere, maybe midnight arrived after all and Shayla simply didn’t hear the chimes.
Shayla has been here before, overstaying her welcome, that desperate feeling you get when you’re the last one leaving the party, and when did the hosts turn the music off and the lights on? She missed the signals. It happens.
But no, that’s not it. The party isn’t over. Still, something has changed. Many people have left, but others are still standing around, a blur of them almost in a circle around her—backing away? Leaning toward? Watching her. Maybe pointing. Someone grabbed at her arm, tugged at her, did something—what, she can’t really tell.
She’s been here before too—the drunk girl, life of the party. And then a quick turn, struggling to laugh along with everyone laughing at her. Slurring that laughter, spilling some drink on herself more often than not. Falling into someone or over someone. Blipping out. Blacking out. And then trying to forget it all come Monday morning. Shrug it off, move on.
She has indeed spilled something on herself. Red wine maybe? But hasn’t she been drinking clear drinks? That was a lesson she’d learned before. Clear liquor, white wine, anything that wouldn’t stain when she started to slur or spill or slip. But there it was, red all over her—you couldn’t argue with the evidence.
She should’ve kept on the black dress she’d planned to wear.
She’ll apologize to Elaine about spilling wine on her dress, that’s what she tells herself, but she can’t see her in that blur of faces. She tries to clear her brain to think about what she’s going to say to Dylan about how he treated her, the things she wrote to Billy Prescott, the things she should’ve said to Richard and didn’t, but Dylan has passed out himself from so much alcohol and there’s that slutty receptionist draped across him and a couple of people trying to help them up. Fat chance. Dylan had been matching her drink for drink, hadn’t he?
And then there’s that young girl over in the corner, the lonely girl in the white dress, forgotten, at the edge of it all, her head in her hands, whoever she is.
Shayla shrugs, raises her hands palms up, whatever.
Shayla’s footloose again, fancy-free, and come Monday, everyone else will have forgotten about all this too, everyone will have moved on—or at least be too polite to mention it.
Glass half full—that was the attitude—and like magic, there’s a glass beside her.
She lifts it, examines it. She raises it the way she’d raised her glass to Richard at the tea party, raises it to the faces around her and to the person coming toward her, arms outstretched.
A toast to Monday and then to next week’s better party, to all tomorrow’s parties.
Glass half full, Shayla guzzles it down in a single gulp.
Art Taylor is the author of the collection The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense and of On the Road with Del & Louise: A Novel in Stories, winner of the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. He won the 2019 Edgar Award for Best Short Story for “English 398: Fiction Workshop,” published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and his short fiction has also won the Agatha, Anthony, Derringer, and Macavity Awards. He is an associate professor of English at George Mason University. Visit him online at arttaylorwriter.com.