ON MONDAY, THE day after Harry’s house burned down, I made a pretty drastic life change. I was at the grocery store with Amanda when it happened, standing in front of the beer aisle looking at my options. There were all these different microbrews I could get. There were sour beers infused with various fruits, porters aged in bourbon barrels. The alcohol content was really high, meaning I only had to drink one to get a good buzz, two if I wanted to forget that I’d just spent the morning filling out paperwork. They were all tempting. But what did I grab? A case of light beer—my go-to when I didn’t give a shit about what I drank.

Amanda was in another aisle reading the back of a bag of lentil mix.

“Is there a cheeseburger in that bag?” I set the case of beer in the cart.

“We’re on a diet,” Amanda said. She’d been talking about this for a couple of weeks, and I guess today was the day.

“We?”

“You and me. A diet. No more carbs. No more sugar. No more cholesterol.”

“You just sucked all the fun out of eating.”

“You know what’s not going to be fun?” Amanda asked.

“Eating lentil mix.”

“Visiting you in the hospital when you have intestinal cancer from all the processed foods you eat.”

“Processed food? All food is processed.”

“How many bags of Cheez-E Twistz do you think you eat in a given day?”

“I dunno,” I said, knowing full well the only reason I insisted on having a key to the vending machine was so I could get some Cheez-E Twistz.

“Three. You eat three bags a day. I’ve been to your office and counted the empty bags in the trash. We’re going on a diet. Starting with this.”

Amanda lifted the case of beer out of the cart. When we first started going out, the first thing I said to her was that I was too old to change. She told me all she wanted was someone who was reliable. Now she was trying to get me to put my beer back.

“Too much sugar.” She slapped my gut.

I put my hand on the case. “The beer stays.” I wasn’t about to let her mess with my beer. It was the only way I could get through the rest of the day.

“Dennis, the past couple of days have been really challenging for me.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“I need you to support me right now. Just…just put the beer back, okay? Can you do that for me?”

I walked back to the beer aisle, grumbling about how it was my choice if I wanted to drink or not. I eyed the bourbon barrel-aged beer. I knew I shouldn’t push it. I could get a drink on the way home from work tomorrow. So I let the beer sit there.

I looked over my shoulder. Amanda was still counting calories somewhere. I pulled out my phone. I had a text from Jennifer. The first half was just some small talk, saying she’d been talking to this girl we went to high school with, Jane Ringland, about me. That was the normal part. Then the message got all weird—Sarah would say existential. Jennifer started talking about Valentine’s Day and how her family usually goes out and has a family dinner at some place in Chicago, but this year her husband didn’t want to do any of that. He wanted to stay home. I couldn’t blame the guy for not wanting to go out. Valentine’s Day was for young couples who thought spending lots of money one day a year was the best way to tell someone you love them. But the Valentine’s Day stuff wasn’t the important part of the message. The important bit was what she was really saying. Jennifer was really saying her husband wasn’t engaged in their family anymore.

I texted her back, telling her that that sucked and about how Amanda had changed. I said that when we first got together, we had a mutual respect and understanding. I told her about how Amanda was trying to change me into someone I wasn’t and how I felt like the respect we once had was gone. I know it sounded petty, but I wanted Jennifer to feel sorry for me. I wanted her to think I had it just as rough as she did, that we were both in loveless relationships. Then at the end of the message, I told her to say hi to Jane for me.

When I hit send, I imagined Jennifer calling up Jane and telling her that I had a sensitive soul, that I was really hurting. And Jane would say something like, “He sounds tortured. You should totally set up a secret rendezvous at a motel in Chicago.”

I bet Jennifer wouldn’t mind if I bought a case of beer.

The thing about Jane was she used to date my friend Nate Delaney. Nate used to always give me shit when we were kids because I didn’t have a girlfriend in high school. I was a late bloomer. And husky. It’s hard for the fat kid to get a date. But Nate didn’t understand that. In his mind, everyone should have the confidence of the most popular kid in school and ask out whoever they wanted, but that wasn’t me.

We used to go out to the lake in the summer and get drunk, our cars parked in a semi-circle around the campfire. The guys and their girlfriends would sit on their blankets with their arms wrapped around each other as hot embers popped out of the fire and singed holes in the blankets. Jane used to hear Nate say these things to me, call me chickenshit and whatnot, ask if I was into guys. I just ignored him, but Jane would sit there and laugh. I knew she was laughing at me, not at Nate’s jokes. She was laughing at me for not having anyone to sit on a blanket with. Then the couples would peel off, some going into the woods, some into the farmland, others to their cars to make out or do hand stuff. And I was left alone by the fire and a cooler full of beer.

Maybe Jane had changed since then. Maybe she was sitting there listening to Jennifer thinking, Wow, it sounds like he turned into a great guy. It’s a shame about what he’s going through. But more likely, she was saying, “He’s a loser, and this is what happens to losers when they get old; they become old losers.”

Amanda wheeled the cart full of kale and other things I didn’t want to eat down my aisle. I was tempted to throw a box of frozen waffles in with the kohlrabi, bok choy, and broccolini, but I knew Amanda would then spend the next hour talking about trying to prevent me from having triple bypass surgery, so I put my hand on the side of the cart and weaved my fingers between the steel bars until the circulation in my fingers was cut off as we rolled toward the check out.

It was still midday. The grocery store was mostly empty, but there were a few old ladies shopping. The one in front of us turned. When she saw me, her face lit up; I assumed it was because she recognized me from the commercials we ran during all those judge shows.

“I know you,” she said. “I bought my car from you a few years ago.” She was short, had gray hair cut just above her shoulders, and looked like she had fifteen grandkids.

“How are you liking the car?” I asked, turning on the car salesman charm. It was a switch I could flip whenever I wanted. “Still purring like I kitten, I hope.”

She grinned at me with a twinkle in her cataract eye. I imagined it was the same look she gave her grandkids when they pulled bananas and walnuts out of their stockings on Christmas.

“It’s a piece of shit.” She scowled. “Not two months after I got it home, it started acting up on me.”

Everyone in the store had turned to see what I, the sleazy car salesman, was going to do.

“Did you buy it new or pre-owned?” I asked. “If you bought it new, it might still be under warranty.”

“I’m on a fixed income. You think I can afford a new car, Mr. Fancypants? I tried calling the lot where I bought it, and they told me there was nothing they could do. They said I needed to take it to my mechanic. I told my granddaughter about it. She said I should say something on Yelp. I don’t even know what a Yelp is, but when I find out, I’ll say something there.”

There’s nothing worse than an old lady threatening you with the internet.

“Tell you what.” I reached into my pocket for a business card. “Call our shop tomorrow. Tell them you spoke to me about fixing your car, and I’ll have our mechanics take a look at it.”

“Free of charge?” she asked. I had the feeling she got stuff for free just by the virtue of being old and feisty.

“For a valued customer, free of charge.” I could feel the other customers watching us. Some were thinking I was a good guy; others were thinking I owed it to this woman to fix her car; the rest were thinking I’d been caught in a scam. We checked all the cars coming onto our lots. Some ran better than others, but they all ran. I was guessing she did something to fuck it up, but we’d find out soon enough.

“I gotta get something,” I said to Amanda. There was something growing inside me, a pressure building, like someone was stepping on the gas and the brake at the same time. My engine was revving up, but I wasn’t going anywhere. I needed to release one of the pedals before I burned my motor out.

The beer aisle, with all the bottles and cans sitting there, called to me. They weren’t going to judge me or try to turn me into something I wasn’t. They were there to help silence the noise of people wanting their cars fixed for free or trying to get me to eat Swiss chard.

I grabbed a sixer of the bourbon barrel-aged porter. It wasn’t a case, just six beers. Maybe I could sneak it past Amanda. And if not, fuck it. It was my life, my money.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was another text from Jennifer.

She said she was sorry I was going through some stuff. Those weren’t her exact words, just a summary. She also said if I ever wanted to talk, I should call or we could video chat. That was definitely what I’d hoped for, but video chat? Shit. I rubbed my gut, thinking I couldn’t video chat with her looking like this.

Everything inside me screamed to take the six-pack, run home, lock myself in the basement, and drink till I passed out, but I put it back. My hand shook as I did, hovering over the sixer. But I fought the urge to get drunk and shoved my hand in my pocket.

Amanda was waiting for me by the door.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“There was nothing there I needed,” I said, thinking I was going to be eating a lot of lentil mix.