"Gin and tonic on the rocks and a shot of vodka." The bartender immediately whisked away with the woman's drink order.
Kayla wished the hand supporting her head on the bar would conveniently slip and let her forehead slam into it. It would certainly be more socially excusable than walking over to a wall and doing her best impression of a woodpecker. Her fingers pressed against her eyelids.
Her entire life was done. Gone. Over. Just like that, as long as it took for workplace security to escort her to her cubicle to pack up her meager workplace decorations after she was notified of a department-wide layoff. There may have been four or five other people with milk crates and cardboard boxes in the one-way trip down the elevator with her. Or there may haven't been, she didn't pay attention. As far as she was concerned, she walked out of that building alone. Kayla barely remembered it. Her mind blanked and her eyes simply stared.
"Here ya go, honey." The dull
thunk
of the lowball glass and
tink
of the shot glass on the bar's quarter-inch acrylic varnish was her distinct yet unobtrusive reminder of reality.
Kayla pulled her head from her palm and looked up. Three rows of large bottles with every color of spirit and liquor possible filled the back wall.
Still not enough
, she thought as she looked into her own drink.
The woman's prim, tidy, well-fitted ensemble of wide-leg pants and sleeve top under a navy blazer as of one that afternoon had been reduced to a sloppy lackadaisical mess in the several hours she had occupied a seat. The coat was draped across her lap and the top underneath was unbuttoned as much as could be allowed. Her dark brown bangs had fallen across her forehead while the rest of her hair still sat in a black scrunchie-bound ponytail.
"Thanks." A hint of gravel layered over Kayla's voice. Her slender fingers grasped the shot glass and lay still. Translucent nail polish glistened over her cuticles. She didn't want to count how many drinks she'd had today. This wasn't a day for thinking. Or for remembering.
She threw her head back and necked the shot. The bitter changed to burning down her throat as she took a breath and allowed several coughs to escape.
Breathe out afterwards, don't inhale the fumes
, a sympathetic bar patron she had met earlier in the day had told her.
Well, fucked that one up.
Kayla brought her fist to her mouth to mask the fit and she felt beads of moisture form in the corner of her eyes.
Oh God no, not the tears. Anything but the tears. Please.
Her head fell to her crossed arms as her meager, alcohol-addled attempt at composure failed and she wept.
She had it all. Kayla Hill: Executive Vice President. Established in a corner office in her building's fourteenth floor, she had the ear of the C-suite, an ample salary, benefits, everything a high powered city girl could ask for, well before the age of 40 at that. Even a company car. Just last week she had taken the lead on a multi-million-dollar acquisition deal with one of her firm's biggest competitors, something she
knew
would have made her a shoe-in for VP itself. Only one or two rungs down the ladder from the real power players.
Had it actually happened
, she corrected herself. Until she was stabbed in the back and thrown into the street to rot.
Kayla looked up and wiped her tears to try and claw back at least some of her dignity. She couldn't even feel rage or animosity yet as the world began to double. Only a mind-filling, drunken numbness. A sore red had seeped into her gray-green eyes and her pale cheeks were flushed. She didn't want to think about what she looked like and for the first time that night wished that she had chosen a more isolated place at the bar.
Kayla knew she was ordinarily attractive when she wasn't suffering from the physical consequences of drowning her sorrows at a local hole-in-the-wall dive. She would commonly catch male coworkers side-eyeing her as she walked past, and even a few women on occasion despite the overall workplace attitude being extremely professional. Couldn't help it, she supposed. Not that she could blame them, she mused, hearkened back to a collegiate tryst with one of her female friends. Oh, the looks she would give Kayla afterwards.
She was usually proud of it too, given the amount of work she put into creating and maintaining herself. Kayla would would occasionally arch her back in and stick her ass out just a little bit more than the contour of her outfit normally revealed as she would walk through the halls, although she'd never admit to it. What's wrong with having both competence and sexiness?
Now though, Kayla wanted nothing more than to be passed over, ignored and left alone, a sobbing, inebriated and disheveled mess at a no-name bar in the middle of Chicago grieving in solitude.
Until her eyes turned to the untouched gin and tonic sitting in front of her, the image doubling, combining and doubling again. Her eyes followed the outline of the glass and followed the green lime wedge anchored on the rim gently curving upwards. She closed her eyes and thought back to her college days. Everything was so simple. No responsibilities other than class, tests and dodging hangovers with Gatorade and some hair of the dog the next morning. No expenses, no career to manage, no politics other than cross-hall banter, gossip and discovering who was sleeping with whom.
The ice cubes clinked together as the woman gently laid her hand across the glass; the cool wet condensation crept between her fingers. She recalled countless nights of Seagram's and the cheapest bulk tonic water she could find starting from her late teens. Lime-coated fire fueled parties until the sun came up; dance music pounded through cheap, shitty secondhand speakers in ramshackle apartments. Nameless, sweaty silhouettes of bodies pressed against hers on dance floors that were here one year, gone the next and reopened under new management the year afterwards. Sometimes she made it to bed with one of them, sometimes not. Sometimes she didn't remember for sure.
Kayla Hill picked up her drink and sipped. She would never forget Renee Sanders.
Renee lived two doors down from her in Kayla's sophomore year of college. She was somewhat shorter than Kayla at around 5'4 with bouncy red hair in a bob, with an hourglass figure complimenting a very generous ass and chest, even through the sweatshirt and loose-fitting jeans she was always fond of.
It wasn't Renee's body that stood out to her through, at least not initially. She had never really identified as being sexually attracted to women, even though she knew several of her friends possessed such inclinations. Not that she had needed to in order to appreciate it of course-everyone knows when puberty has been kind to someone regardless.