Page 95 of Joker

Lexi is okay.

She’s with the kids. Safe. Happy. Entirely unconcerned with where I am. That should feel strange. Instead, it feels like a gift.

So I let myself take another drink. Then another. Not too many at first. Just enough to feel my shoulders start to come down. Just enough for the room to soften around the edges and stop feeling like something I need to assess every second.

People talk to me. I talk back. Someone laughs at something I say, and for once I don’t hear strain in my own voice when I answer. It’s subtle. But it’s there.

A little loosening. A little warmth. A little dangerous. Because this is what happens when you finally feel safe enough to let your guard slip. You don’t always know where to stop.

I know that.

And still, when Mac presses another drink into my hand and tells me the first two didn’t count because I was “still making your hostage face,” I take it.

That’s on me.

Alcohol doesn’t make me wild. It doesn’t make me someone else. It just turns down the volume on all the things I’m usually carrying.

The exits stop feeling quite so urgent. The noise stops scraping over my nerves quite as sharply.

When Emma laughs and tugs me into the edge of the dance space for one song, I actually let her. I am not dancing well. No one is dancing well.

That appears to be part of the point.

Kya joins in halfway through, laughing when one of the brothers nearly takes out a chair trying to spin his woman and failing catastrophically. Someone whistles. Someone else heckles. The whole room feels warm and alive and messy in a way that should be too much and somehow isn’t.

For the first time in a very long time, I stop holding every piece of myself in a fist. And that’s dangerous. Because the problem with dropping your shoulders is that sometimes your body forgets how exposed that leaves you.

It starts with the song. Not the whole song. Just the opening bars.

A low guitar line and the first few lyrics sung in a voice too smooth and too familiar, and suddenly I’m not in the clubhouse anymore.

I’m in my old kitchen.

Cal’s hand around the back of my neck.

That same song playing from his phone while he smiles like he’s in love with me and squeezes just a little too hard when I tell him I’m busy.

The memory hits fast and mean. Not enough to fully drag me under. Enough to knock me sideways internally.

I freeze for half a beat. Then force myself to move again. Keep smiling. Keep breathing. Keep acting normal. No one notices.

I tell myself I’m fine. I’m not.

Before I can recover, Mac catches my wrist lightly to pull me away from the edge of the dance space before one of the brothers backs into me.

The touch is harmless. Casual. Warm. My body doesn’t care.

The second fingers close around my wrist, memory crashes harder.

Cal in a hallway.

Cal by the front door.

Cal catching me mid-step because he didn’t like the look on my face.

My skin goes cold.

I jerk instinctively, not enough to make a scene, but enough that Mac’s expression changes immediately.