Long after the divorce papers had been signed, nearly 14 months since her now ex-husband Bobby moved out for good and about two full years since she gave up any hope of salvaging her 21 year marriage, 39 year old Debra Jessup didn't fully come to grips with the fact that she was single until one cruel, innocuous moment at work.
A hairdresser by trade, Debra spent six days a week, ten hours a day surrounded by women, many of whom friends and long time acquaintances, listening to them talk about their own constant dysfunction. Debra's failed marriage didn't really sink until one afternoon when one of the ladies was talking about something stupid her Husband had did and Debra had to catch herself before the words, "Oh... Bobby use to do that all the time", leapt from her mouth.
The past tense of that word, 'use', kicked the normally talkative and friendly woman in the gut, forcing her to accept the fact that she had no one in her life, for over a year now, to compare with during the constant flow of day to day drama all the other women found to discuss about the men in their lives.
Compounding the gnawing wound to her self confidence that not having a man was causing her, Debra was also beginning to feel the first stages on an 'empty nest syndrome" setting in. Her Daughter, Jamie, was beginning her second year at college and that was tough enough on its own, but with her youngest child, her son David, now 17 and spending much more time running with his friends and chasing his hormones, Debra couldn't remember the last time she spent a meaningful amount of time with either of her children.
About the only thing Debra had to feel good about was that she got to keep her house in the divorce settlement. About three years earlier, she had saved up enough money to refurbish part of her basement and turn it into a salon where she could work independently from home. And business was very good.
With a home that was paid for, her newly found single status and a career that was taking off, Debra should have been flying high, savoring all the things she couldn't while married. It was a perfect opportunity to re-live her teenage years while she was still young enough to enjoy it.
But putting those thoughts into action proved to be difficult. Debra was always a big dreamer but habitually lacked the spark to put those thoughts into action. She had grown up the middle of three sisters and had always been the homebody trying to make good. Never one to 'rock the boat', Debra didn't mind the juicy gossip that constantly floated around the salon, she just hated the thought of ever being the topic of any of it.
In some ways, that was one of the reasons Bobby had began to stray in their marriage. He had wanted to try several things to sort of spice up their two decade long relationship, but Debra was always too fearful and self conscious to try anything too risqué in such a small, conservative and lippy Alabama town.
Now that she was single, while the thought of 're-kindling' her youth was appealing on a certain level, Debra couldn't help getting a little choked up about it considering her Father had died when she was 14 and her Mother dealt with it by becoming a promiscuous drunk. So in many ways, Debra never got to fully experience being a teenager, forced into maturity way sooner than any kid should have to, she met Bobby when she was 16, married him when she was 17 and hoped he would take her away from the family life that was crumbling around her.
In a twisted way, now without a Husband herself, the last thing Debra wanted to do was become what her Mother had after her Father died. And that prevented Debra from enjoying many of the things that were now open to her.
Debra had been hanging with her circle of friends since high school. For the past year she had been faced with a strange juxtaposition considering all her friends had gotten married since high school and now all but one of them had been divorced, at least once. For the longest time, Debra took a lot of internal joy watching others' relationships wither while hers, although not perfect, continued to thrive. With the failure of her own marriage and the blow to her self esteem that came with it however, suddenly Debra was less in inclined to take such satisfaction in her abilities as a woman.
Despite the best attempts of her friends to fix her up and play matchmaker, Debra simply didn't or wouldn't allow herself to make a connection with the men she met. The prettiest of the group by far, Debra was constantly being approached by guys when she was out, especially when they discovered she was now single. Rail thin and still a size 4, the last time Debra had been to the doctor she had weighed two pounds less than she did when she was 18. Her figure, dark golden tan combined with her chatty personality and 80's styled big brown hair made her quite a magnet for any man in the room. And once anyone engaged in conversation with Debra, they easily became transfixed by her toothy smile and gentile Southern manner.
Still there was something distant about her. While she freely chatted up most anyone in a social setting, showing an amazing amount of breadth to her personality, very few people had ever been able to wade into the depths of her psyche, and going through her divorce only hastened that cold concealment of feeling.
So as she sat at one of the booths at Mickey's Bar and Grill with three of her friends, enjoying a few beers on a lazy Wednesday night, Debra rolled her eyes slightly as she scanned the room, seeing most of the usual crowd scattered around the smoky room. Taking a drag from her cigarette however, Debra felt her blood go cold when the face of a stranger at the bar locked eyes with her.
"What's wrong Debra?" her friend Deloris asked, noticing the glazed expression on Debra's suddenly mute face.
"N... Nothing," she mouthed before ripping her gaze away from the slightly older man at the bar.
* * * * *
Grant Barrett was preparing to magically make his fourth shot of scotch of the evening disappear. Even though he had asked himself after downing each one what the Hell he was doing sitting at a bar in a small and rustic Alabama town, surrounded by nothing but cigarette smoke and women half his age, by the time the hearty sauce soothed his palate, he realized he had answered his own question.
"None of these country girls will give you the time of day... you dumb sonofabtich,' Grant half drunkenly laughed to himself. "No harm in looking though. "
With two divorces, two children he was still paying child support for and a third, his oldest daughter who was now at college, Grant remembered quickly what the scotch was for.
At 52, If it hadn't been for the financial crunch he was under and a desire to start anew after a difficult and lingering midlife crisis, Grant would have never accepted the 'promotion' to leave his home in Knoxville to run his company's new distribution center outside Montgomery.
After being a slave to his job for the first six months there, with no social life to speak of, Grant finally decided to give a night out on the town a halfhearted try.
With the way too loud strains of the country music blaring from the jukebox and a hundred burning Marlboros sautéing his eyes, Grant scanned the room between drinks, trying to find a familiar or interested face. Almost to the point of giving up and leaving before he was a little too drunk to drive home, he was equally as stunned and silent when he locked gazes with the pretty brunette that was sitting on the other side of the dance floor, in a booth, with several of her friends.
* * * * *
At a loss over what to do, in an act almost as cliché as the bar room surroundings he was in, Grant sent a round of drinks to the table where the smiling woman was sitting. When Debra and her three friends waved back their appreciation, Grant took a deep breath and lugged himself off the barstool, hoping against hope that he wouldn't embarrass himself too badly when he went over to talk to the girls.
Apprehensive, as any man would be approaching a table full of chattering women all by himself, in the end Grant was surprised by how well things had turned out. Sharing a drink with the four women, Grant then invited Debra out on the dance floor where they stayed for three songs.
Thirty minutes after Debra and Grant met, they said their polite goodbyes and exchanged phone numbers with promises to get back in touch.
"So what do you think?" Betty immediately asked Debra when they returned to the car as the other two women coyly measured Debra's giddy mood.
"I don't know Betty... he seems nice enough," she started to reply before Deloris interrupted.
"I could tell from his accent... he ain't from 'round here... I don't know if I'd trust him or not," the drunkest of the four, and also the one who was inevitably jealous when one of her friends had better luck than she did, warned.
