Vodka-Scented Love
The bar smells like regret and cleaning fluid. A faint mildew tang hovers just under the lemony surface of whatever industrial cleanser they've been using since the Reagan administration. On the jukebox—a real, working jukebox that somehow survived time and irony—Stevie Nicks is singing, and Charlotte is on her third vodka soda, though she's only counting the first two.
"It's not that I don't love him," she says, swirling the straw like she's mixing cement. "It's that he's...he's like a sweater, you know? Warm, comfortable, but...it pills. He's pilled. Emotionally." Her voice breaks, just a little, at the end, and she covers it by sucking loudly on the straw. The ice rattles in the glass.
Across from her, Liz is doing her best to play therapist but keeps slipping into referee. "Right. So you dumped him. To, uh...what, avoid dry-cleaning?"
Charlotte shoots her a look—a blend of wounded and affronted, like a cat falling off a windowsill. "I dumped him because he's boring. And emotionally pilled."
Liz smirks and takes a sip of her beer, which is cheap and unapologetic. It smells faintly metallic, like wet nickels. "You said that already."
"Well, it's true." Charlotte's voice climbs in volume, the way it always does when she's circling a point she doesn't want to land on. "He was *suffocating* me, Liz. Like...like when you wake up in the middle of the night, and the blanket's wrapped around your neck, and for a second you think, 'This is it, I'm being murdered by my own bedding.' You know?"
Liz doesn't know, but she nods anyway because that's her role tonight: the nodding friend. The sober-ish one. "Totally."
Charlotte leans back, her head tilting toward the stained ceiling tiles as if she's appealing to a higher power—or just the fluorescent light flickering above their table. "God, I can't believe I wasted two years on him. Two *years.* That's, like, a master's degree in mediocrity."
Liz coughs into her beer to stifle a laugh, but Charlotte's too far gone to notice. She's launched into a tirade now, her words sharp and sloppy, like broken glass in a velvet bag.
"He never even liked my friends. Or my taste in music. He said my favorite band was 'overrated.' Overrated! Can you believe that? Like, who hurt him? Was it his mom? It was definitely his mom. And his face—"
Liz's eyebrows shoot up. "Careful."
"—his stupid *face.*" Charlotte slams her glass down for emphasis. "Always so...earnest. Like a golden retriever trying to understand quantum physics."
Liz is watching this unravel like a slow-motion car crash—equal parts horrifying and mesmerizing. "So why do you still have his number saved as 'My Love'?"
That stops Charlotte mid-rant. She stares at Liz, her mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for air. "I...don't," she says, but it's more of a question than a statement.
Liz raises her eyebrows and gestures toward Charlotte's phone, which is lighting up on the sticky table with a notification from Instagram—one of those vague, soul-sucking posts about happiness being a choice.
Charlotte grabs the phone, her fingers fumbling with the screen. "I'll delete it right now," she announces, but instead of navigating to the contacts, her thumb hovers over his name. It's right there at the top of her recent calls, bold and accusatory.
She stares at it for a long moment, the bar noise fading into a soft, ambient buzz. The music changes to something upbeat that doesn't fit the mood at all. Her thumb twitches.
Liz's voice cuts through, low and wary. "Charlotte. Don't."
But Charlotte's already hit the call button, her face twisted into a mix of defiance and desperation. The ringing is deafening, each buzz a countdown to impact.
"Liz," she whispers, her eyes wide and glassy. "What if he doesn't pick up?"
"He will," Liz mutters, pinching the bridge of her nose.
And then—click. His voice, low and groggy, crackles through the receiver.
"Hey," Charlotte breathes, suddenly soft and fragile, like she might shatter under her own weight. "It's me."
Liz groans and buries her face in her hands as Charlotte launches into a monologue—half apology, half declaration, all chaos. "I just...I miss you, okay? I miss the way you make pancakes on Sundays and the way you laugh at dumb movies and—and I think I might love you. No, I definitely love you. I've always loved you. Even when you were boring and pilled and wrong about music."
There's a long pause, the kind that feels like it could swallow the world.
Finally, his voice comes through, soft and cautious. "Are you...drunk?"
Charlotte blinks, her mind momentarily blank, like someone pulled the plug on her brain. "No," she says, far too loudly. "Maybe."
Liz, watching this train wreck in real-time, snatches the phone and hangs up.
"What the hell?" Charlotte yelps, her voice rising an octave.
"You're welcome," Liz deadpans, tossing the phone across the table like it's a live grenade.
Charlotte slumps back in her chair, her anger fizzling out as quickly as it flared. For a moment, she just sits there, staring at her empty glass, her face a mosaic of regret and residual vodka.
"I really do love him," she mumbles, almost to herself.
Liz sighs, flagging down the bartender for another round. "I know, babe. But let's wait until morning before we start trying to prove it."