“Nothing to these guys tonight?”
“That’s right, not one single word. Are you telling your date?” César didn’t answer, but I rolled my eyes. He didn’t have to tell anyone. He would be able to keep going forever like nothing was happening. He’d be able to date Arielle for as long as he wanted, or marry her if she was dumb enough to fall for a ring. I hurried to go, my heels snapping angrily on the pink marble.
But he followed me to the door. “Do you plan to drink at the bar?”
“Jesus and Mary!” I exploded. “Am I under house arrest? I’m going out with some friends, something I haven’t done for the past few months because I’ve been busy hanging my head over the toilet. I’ll do what I want tonight.”
“You’re still pregnant,” he noted.
“I’m aware of that! I can have fun anyway. You should try that with your date, too. Put a sock on the front door if I need to be careful when I come home. If I come home,” I added, because I could see that I was making him mad and I couldn’t help pushing it farther.
“Wait a minute. Where do you plan to sleep tonight, if not here?” He had followed me out into the driveway, and when I skidded a little on a patch of ice, he put his hand around my arm.
“I can sleep wherever I want. I’m already knocked up, so it’s not like I need to worry about that, right?”
“What in the hell are you talking about? Seriously, where are you going to sleep tonight?” His grip tightened a little and my heart sped up.
I yanked away. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you touch me!”
“Camdyn,” he said, “calm down.”
“You calm down!” I backed away carefully, watching him. “Don’t ever put a hand on me again, do you hear me? Never again.” I watched him as I got into my car and I drove away quickly, but still sticking to the stupid speed limit. What had made him think that he could control me? What made him think he could get physical? Ok, he hadn’t really, but I knew where things could lead. I wondered if Arielle, his date, knew about that side of him. I wondered more about Arielle as I drove to the restaurant.
“Camdyn!” the table of my friends called when I got there. I took a deep breath and smiled as I went over to them. Tonight was about having fun, not worrying about anything else.
Julie stood up to give me a hug. “We had a pool going on how late you’d be. I win,” she announced. “I had half an hour.” Money changed hands as I sat down. It was great to see everyone, because it had been so long. I even forgot to be tired and nauseated and angry at César as we all talked and laughed.
A few things were hard, though. I had to make up a lot of lies about family issues and work keeping me occupied so no one got suspicious about why I had been absent from the social circuit. Also, I hadn’t realized how difficult the booze situation would be. Not that I needed to drink to have fun, because I hadn’t been drinking for months—of course, I hadn’t really been having fun, either, I realized. But sitting at this table with bottles of wine steadily disappearing, it was hard to disguise that my glass was always full. Every once in a while, I caught Sonia’s eyes on it and I didn’t want her to start asking why I wasn’t having alcohol anymore.
I waited until they were generally distracted by laughing at another of Pierre’s penis stories before switching my glass with Carson’s almost empty one. The next time I spotted Sonia looking at me, I casually swirled and sniffed Carson’s wine.
“Great vintage,” I announced, smiling at her.
Sonia shrugged and said she didn’t care as long as it worked to get her drunk, and everyone else was mostly at that point already. I quickly put down the glass because the smell was making me sick. After dinner, we split up into cars to go to the Silver Dollar, a downtown bar, and Julie rode with me. “Seriously, it’s been weird without seeing you around, Camdyn. We all missed you so much!” she told me. She pulled down the mirror to check her makeup.
“I missed you guys, too. Like I said, I was so busy with my family and with work.”
“Nicky said she set you up with a really hot guy on New Year’s Eve,” she commented. “Are you seeing him?”
“No, I’m not with anyone right now. No one specific,” I answered vaguely.
She laughed. “Totally a Camdyn move. Why pick just one guy when the world is filled with so many, isn’t that what you say? But that’s good that you’re free, because Derrick wants to hook up with you,” she told me. “We can all pair off tonight.”
“Oh, me with Derrick?” I thought about how he’d acted at dinner, laughing loudly at the penis stories which I hadn’t found funny at all. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Maybe?” Julie asked. She smacked her lips together, spreading the gloss she had applied. “What’s your hesitation?”
“I don’t know,” I said, not able to verbalize a good reason.
“Maybe there will be someone better at the Silver Dollar, right?” She looked out the window. “Why are we going so slow? Everyone else passed us like three miles ago. Are you running out of gas or something?”
“We’ll get there soon,” I said, also annoyed at our lack of progress along the road due to my new, careful driving habits. Julie went on chatting, which helped me to relax again. Why not me and Derrick? There was nothing really wrong with him, besides being a little on the short side, a little on the loud side, a little on the immature side. We’d had fun when we’d been out together before. Sure, Derrick would be good
