Fun

“April…April,” he says, jamming her in the shoulder.  She sits up slowly and looks at him with a blank expression. “Please stop calling me April. I told you my name is Mae.” He chuckles at this in a way that makes you want to give him the Heimlich maneuver. “Hmmph, I knew it was one of the months.” Mae gets out of bed and begins looking around for her clothes. “Hey, do you need me to call you an Uber or something?” he asks. “Wouldn’t want you to do the walk of shame.” He seems amused by this comment. She, however, is not. While buttoning her shirt she steals a quick glance at him. He seemed so charming last night.  “Don’t bother calling me an Uber,” she says, avoiding eye contact. “I would rather do the walk of shame than spend one more minute in your company.” She grabs her purse and walks out the door. She hears him yell “I’ll call you” as the door slam echoes in the stairwell. She rolls her eyes and makes her way toward the street. It’s still early. She grabs her phone to check the time and remembers it died last night. “Shit,” she mutters to herself. Even though she didn’t want that bastard to call her an Uber, she had planned to call one herself. She weighs her options, she could walk back to his place and ask to use the phone, which really would be the walk of shame, or she can walk home like the self-sufficient, indignant person, she is this morning.

She chooses the latter and continues to walk in the direction of her place. After a couple blocks, she comes across a woman in her mid-forties struggling to get a stroller upright and functional. Without hesitation, Mae hurries over and offers the lady a hand. The lady looks at her with fear and a bit of disgust. She turns and goes back inside her house, slams the door, leaving the stroller to fend for itself. It all seemed a little dramatic. Yes, Mae is a stranger and probably doesn’t look the best, but she isn’t scary. Mae walks over to one of the vehicles parked on the street to get a glimpse of her early AM personage. The results of last night are more startling than she thought. She forgives the lady because her makeup is smeared across her face and her hair is sticking up in every direction. She looks like a killer clown, or more acutely, like a killer scarecrow since she is wearing distress jeans and a plaid shirt. Mae tries to tame her hair and get some of the red lipstick off her face. It doesn’t budge. Her new lipstick is doing exactly what it was advertised to do, stay on. What the advertisement doesn’t tell you is that it can easily migrate from your lips to your cheeks, giving you a real Joker vibe. She gives up on both her hair and makeup and continues her walk looking down the whole time. If she looks at her feet, hopefully nobody will see her face. She turns left down a different street and sees a bus stop. She hates buses, but this could be the only real option to get home at a descent hour.

Mae walks over to the sheltered area and looks at the map posted on the scratched safety-glass wall. She barely recognizes it as a map of her own town. She tries to read it for a good five minutes before giving up. She will just have to ask the bus driver about the stops when they arrive. Mae looks around. She sees that the bench in the center is covered in bird poop. Any other day she wouldn’t sit down on it. Homeless people tend to sleep on bus stop benches and urinate whenever the feeling strikes, today she is just too drained to care. She searches for the cleanest spot on the bench and sits down. She should not have gone out yesterday. Until last night, she hadn’t been out drinking in years. She only did it last night because her boyfriend of two years broke up with her for someone who was more ‘fun.’ Naturally, she wanted to be more ‘fun.’ First, she cut her long brown hair and got an edgy bob haircut with red highlights, then she went shopping for new makeup and a trendy outfit. After that, she felt as though she looked more ‘fun.’ Still, it wasn’t enough just to look the part. She decided to take her ‘fun’ look out for a ‘fun’ night.

That was her first mistake. She started drinking right away and all she could think about was her ex-boyfriend. She felt alone and it didn’t help that the live music for the night was a country band with one party song and a bunch of bad love ballads. Seriously, that was all they could play? They were known for their party jam and for selling lots of drinks, or at least that’s what the hot bartender had told her. It made sense now that their band name was, “Bullets and Ballads.” It was a terrible name for a band and yet their music wasn’t too bad. She felt a little awkward sitting at the bar alone and began to play on her phone. She watched a couple of TikTok videos and then scrolled through Instagram and Facebook. Then she started stalking her ex-boyfriend’s social media page. Mistake number two. Her ex had already moved on. He didn’t even bother changing his status to single. He just kept his status as In a relationship and simply changed his profile picture. Now, instead of a cute picture of them together, it is a selfie of him kissing some hoe named Lexy Moss.  She wanted to throw her phone on the ground and stomp on it with her ‘fun’ new boots. That’s when tonight’s asshole and his friends arrived. They sat next to her at the bar and ordered a round of shots to celebrate. She didn’t know what they were celebrating till later.  Apparently, it was his bachelor party.

Mae didn’t find out until after the deed was done. She would like to believe that if she knew, she would have never slept with him.  Yet, if she is honest with herself, she isn’t sure that’s a true statement.  He was handsome and drunk, which was exactly what she thought she needed at the time. His friends were no help either. They didn’t mention that he was getting married and they encouraged their flirting. His friends even videotaped him taking a shot of tequila and then sucking the lime from Mae’s lips. They were not good friends to say the least. Mae and the man-of-the-hour continued drinking and began taking selfies. Mae insisted that they take one of them kissing. She wanted to make that her new profile picture on social media and change her relationship status to It’s complicated or something ‘fun’ like that.  

Yeah, ‘fun.’ Mae really wished she knew the time because she feels like she has been sitting on this bus stop bench for well over thirty minutes. Every time a car drives by she turns her head to hide her face. She pretends she is looking at the giant advertisement. Conveniently enough, it’s an advertisement that reads BetterHelp…Professional therapy made simple. That is probably what she needs and if the battery on her phone was working she would have typed it into her notes. She looks down at the empty tall-boys next to the bench. Maybe the person who drank those saw the advertisement and went to get the help they needed. Doubt it, they were likely too busy having ‘fun.’

“Mae is that you?” asked a male voice.  She doesn’t recognize the voice and she can’t see who it is because her head is turned.  She turned it as soon as she saw the vehicle coming. Though she must not have turned it quick enough because she had been spotted. “Mae?” he says again from his car window. “Are you ok?” She doesn’t answer and she doesn’t want to show her face in order to acknowledge this person. She wants to keep her clown face hidden.

She realizes this is not a possibility when she hears the car door shut and someone walking over to her. She wants to cry. She looks and feels a mess. A gentle hand lays on her shoulder and she reluctantly turns toward the man. To her surprise, it is the good-looking bartender from last night.  She instantly forgets all about her appearance and says, “You remember me?”  He smiles and rocks back on his heels. “Yeah, how could I forget?  We don’t get a lot of book nerds at our dive bar. Especially not pretty ones.” Mae blushes and then remembers what she currently looks like. “Not so pretty now,” she jokes with her heart on her sleeve. “I’m sorry, I’m a mess right now and waiting for the bus to come so I can go home and take a shower. I need to wash last night away. What’s your name bartender guy?” Another little smirk appears on his face. “My name is Asher. Did you go home with that dude last night?” Mae dies and then resurrects herself, “well that was forward, but yes, if you must know.” He doesn’t seem to be judging her or surprised by her answer. He just sits down next to her on a not so clean spot. “Would you believe I know that guy? Don’t feel guilt over what happened either, his fiancé is just as bad. I should know, she’s my ex.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says. “If it makes you feel any better, I wish I’d hadn’t. Also, how did you know I was into books?” He openly laughs this time. It’s a beautiful sound. “Oh well you said many things last night and some were quotes from books. I’ve read some of those same books.”  Mae smiles at this. “And yes, it does make me feel better. My ex, Lexy cheated on me with him and now they both cheat on each other. It’s a match made in heaven.” Mae laughs, “…or hell! …seems there are a lot of cheating Lexys out there. According to social, my recent ex is dating a cheating Lexy Moss.” Asher raises his eyebrow and says, “Moss? Lexy Moss is my ex-girlfriend’s name!” Mae pauses a moment and reflects, “Well, I guess we’ve all slept with Lexy.” Asher’s eyes grow big, and he joins her in laughter.

 “It’s a small world,” he says and then turns very reserved and quiet. “Would it be out of line to ask you to come to my house for breakfast?  Mae bites her lower lip. The want is there but she can’t. It would be wrong to go from one guy’s house to another.  Plus, she is a mess. She gives Asher a sad smile. “I really need to wash my hair.” Asher down right belly laughs at this. “You do know that is what girls say when they don’t want to do something.” Mae is appalled. How did she not know that? “I’m so sorry. As you can see, under the circumstance, I really meant wash my hair. If you give me your number, I will call you after I get cleaned up and we can go have lunch.”

Asher stands up and starts walking to his car then turns back towards her, “Come on, I’m going to take you home and then wait till you are ready to go out, besides, this bus doesn’t run on Saturday.”  Mae doesn’t know what to say or do. It does sound good but being ‘fun’ didn’t turn out well for her last night.

“We learn from failure,” he says in response to her unspoken thought. “Not from success.” Mae sighs and heads for the car. Probably she just had the wrong definition of fun.