Page 7 of Another Last Call
So, she would’ve probably known I was sneaking around to have sex, just like she used to. We never talked about it, save for her drilling it in my head to always be careful.
“Do what you need to do. I’m not a moron,” she would say. “But always use a condom. And don’t fuck tourists.”
I’d only disregarded her advice twice. Not about the condom. I wasn’t that stupid. But as for tourists, well.
The first one didn’t count as a tourist, since we’d been friends since we were kids. He might have been a summer kid, but he… he was different. And I’d known damn well that it would be the last time I saw him, so it wasn’t like I was disillusioned or anything.
The second one, though…
Five
Maggie
He’dbeenreasonablygood-lookingfor a man nearing fifty, at least in the eyes of a twenty-year-old girl who waited tables in a tourist town.
And he’d been… well, kind. He’d said sweet things to me. He’d made promises.
“Let me take care of you. Let me buy you things. Let me treat you like a princess.”
So I’d let him come upstairs to my apartment one night, and then another night, and then so often that I wasn’t sure how he kept it a secret from the wife I knew was waiting for him at his fancy lake house on the other side of town.
The sex was okay. I’d expected it to be better, but that part of our arrangement wasn’t about me. He bought me little presents, jewelry and lingerie mostly. New wine glasses after I served him a cheap red out of a coffee cup I’d stolen from a car dealership. Stupid little things that I didn’tneed, per se, but that made my quiet little life feel just a bit more special.
And really, the relationship—if one could call it that—wasn’t bad. He treated me well. He was respectful towards me and complimented me all the time. I would never have invited him upstairs if he talked to me the way most of the men did. And, yeah, part of it was hot. The taboo of it, the sneaking around. I had a secret—a grown-up kind of secret—and at a time when I didn’t have many friends because they were all leaving or had already left town, I had him.
I felt a little bad for his wife. But I told myself that it wasn’t my problem. His marriage washisproblem and that he knew what he was doing. And I believed it, too. As much as I looked back on it years later and wished I could say I hadn’t been the other woman, or at least that I’d had a good reason for it, I couldn’t.
I had to own up to what I did, which was ruin that woman’s marriage. Sure, if it wasn’t me, it would’ve been someone else. And I’d never, fuckingnever, do something like that again.
But I owned my fuckups, and that was one of them.
It ended when she stormed into The Sea Glass one day when summer was almost over. I was working and she was trailed by the very pale, very terrified man I’d been sleeping with. My stomach had dropped as the consequences of my actions flashed in front of me, but she didn’t so much as glance in my direction when she entered. Instead, she slammed her hands on the bar in front of my mom and told her that some whore of a waitress who worked here was fucking her husband and demanded to know who it was.
Mom had scoffed. “Neither me nor any of my girls are fucking your husband.”
She motioned to three women aside from herself that were working: another server named Vickie who was in her thirties with short-cropped hair and a long-term girlfriend, Annie, the tall Cree prep chef who had been my surrogate grandma since I’d been born, and me.
His wife’s eyes fell on each of us, resting on me the longest. I looked back at her blankly, hoping no one could see my heart pounding through my skin.
“It’s this one,” she declared. “You’ve been fucking my husband, haven’t you?”
“Bold of you to come in here and accuse mydaughterof sleeping with your husband,” Mom said. “Look at her. She’s young enough to beyourdaughter and then some. How dare you?”
The man had gone even more pale, if that was possible. His wife didn’t notice, but I think my mom did. The woman left in tears, no longer accusing anyone in the bar of fucking her husband but despondent at the idea that she wouldn’t be able to find out who it was.
After closing that night, I had brought the cash drawer for my mom to count in the office. Sitting behind the desk, she looked up at me.
“Maggie, you know I’ll defend you to the death. But I have to know. Were you sleeping with that woman’s husband?”
I rarely lied to my mom, but I couldn’t meet her eyes and answer that question honestly.
“No, Mom,” I said.
I don’t think she believed me, but she let me have my dignity. “Okay, hon. Just remember. Always use a condom—”
“—and don’t fuck tourists,” I finished, nodding. “I know. I promise.”
And I’d kept that promise. After destroying that marriage, I hadn’t fucked anyone. No tourists. None of the locals who were left.
