I rolled my wrist, spinning my glass so I could watch the ice cubes slide around the rim, seemingly forever. Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison was playing from the dusty jukebox in the corner beside the pool cues. The old machine, peppered with rust, still spit out a good tune. Taking the final swig of my drink, I slammed the empty glass down and reached for my friend Jack once again.

Brimming with thick, brown ichor, I lifted the glass to my lips and drank, letting the whiskey flood and spill over the corners of my mouth and down my neck, the warmth permeating throughout my entire body. Looking down at my stained shirt, I saw two of me, and sat against the bar top, leaning back on my elbows to try to inhale some sobriety. The yellow lights were so dim I could barely see my own skin, but for that I was grateful. It was hard to look people in the eyes nowadays, especially myself.

Brown Eyed Girl finished, and the room was washed with silence. This part was the worst. The part where your thoughts hit you like an angry tidal wave, obliterating any sense of stability you thought you had and leaving you lost in the mess of whatever’s left. Her smile. Their disgust. Her hand on my face. Their glares on my back. The sweet and sickly smell of lager being absorbed into the wood floors began to make me sick, and I ran to the washroom to rest my face on the cold, icy porcelain. I lay there for a while, counting every single square blue tile on the floor. My phone rang a few times, a frantic bleating that coupled with the flashing of my mother’s name. When the voicemail started, I could hear her soft, sad voice, pleading. I guess this was the fourth family dinner I had missed. And gotten intoxicated for. I kept telling Katie they were cancelled, but she stopped believing me.


“You’re embarrassed of me,” she accused, hurt eclipsing her face.

“Stop saying that, you know it’s not true.” I reached out, trying to wrap a strand of her bouncy chocolate hair around my finger.

She slapped my hand away, narrowing her dark brown eyes, “You have to tell them, Eleanor, this isn’t fair to me.” She choked on her words, and I wrapped my arms around her before she could run from me. Brushing her flushed cheeks with the pads of my thumbs, I took my time looking at each detail of her face: the curve of her bottom lip, the freckle under her left eye, the sloping arch of her nose. I opened my mouth and closed it again. I couldn’t find the words. She unlaced my fingers from the back of her neck and walked out of the house.

Getting off the bathroom floor, I walked back to the bar, played Brown Eyed Girl once more and poured another drink.