The Choice (a Painful Past)

112

I followed her over to the table, where Bryon was already sitting. He was chatting to a pretty waitress that was standing next to the table. I immediately looked at Denise, thinking that she was going to be upset.

He was smiling at the girl and laughing at something that she had said.

"There's my beautiful woman now." He exclaimed, as Denise walked around to the other side of the table and sat down. "Now, she can tell you what she's feeling like tonight, because I'm not sure and I don't want to mess it up."

The waitress laughed again, and looked at Denise, with her pen ready.

"Why don't you guys have the little tablet things that we can order on ourselves? It just seems like it would save you some steps." Denise asked, smiling at the girl.

"They're too cheap to do that here." The girl joked. "Seriously though, it's not something I'm interested in. I like taking the orders myself, because I feel like I can connect just a little bit more with the customers." She shrugged her shoulders, then held her hand to one side of her mouth, like she was whispering. "It helps with tips, too."

Denise and Bryon laughed, so I tried to join in. It sounded fake to my own ears though, so I was glad that it was kind of loud in here. It wasn't that I didn't like the waitress. She seemed nice enough.

I just had a bad feeling about the way that she and Bryon had been talking. Denise didn't seem to care though. That made me wonder if it was all in my head because of how often Will had cheated on me.

Most people in relationships probably didn't have to go through that all the time.

"And what can I get for you?" The waitress asked, turning her eyes to me and smiling.

"Oh, um, I don't know." I stammered, looking at the small menu of drinks that was sitting on the table.

I didn't drink enough to know what I liked, besides the basic Screwdriver, with orange juice and vodka.

"She'll have a Tequila Sunrise." Denise spoke up, as she caught my eye. "That sound okay with you?"

"Uh, tequila?" I mumbled. "I don't know."

She cracked a grin and shook her head, since she knew exactly what I was thinking. The last time that I had tequila, I had gotten extremely sick. I had also had really cheap tequila mixed with smoking a couple of blunts and drinking other liquors, so that probably didn't help.

It put me off of tequila though.

"This is not that crap that you had the last time. This is higher end, and you won't be mixing it with everything else. I still can't believe you did that." She replied.

"I wasn't thinking clearly that night." I replied, looking back down at the table. "Yeah, the sunrise thing. That sounds fine. Thank you."

"Okay, just let me know if you don't like it, and we can replace it with something else." The waitress replied.

I looked up and gave her a grateful smile.

"Thanks." I responded.

"No problem. Okay, I'll be right back with your drinks." She said, before she walked away.

I finally took the time to look around the club and see how much it had changed since I had been there with Will. We had only come twice, and that was just because his friends wanted to meet up. I had thought that we were coming for a nice, fun evening together.

I didn't know it at the time, but the end goal was for him to score some very strong narcotics from a dealer that he knew.

That fight stood out in my mind, because it was one of the very few times that I had wanted to physically fight him. I remembered sitting at a table, waiting for him to get back from the bathroom. He had been gone for a long time, so I went looking for him, to make sure that nothing had happened.

I had found him at the end of the long hallway, where the bathrooms were, talking to some guy that I hadn't seen before. They hadn't noticed me yet, so I started walking towards them. I was halfway down the hallway, when I saw Will pass the man some money, and the man passed him a baggie full of little blue pills.

I automatically got pissed, because Will and I had just had a conversation about how he was going to stop doing drugs, so that we could start working on making a decent life for ourselves and Ben.

"What the fuck are you doing?" I asked, when I got close enough for them to notice me.

"Oh hey, Callie!" He exclaimed, as he hurriedly shoved the baggie in his pocket. "I told you I'd be right back." The unknown man, that he had just bought drugs from, patted Will on the arm, waved, then walked around me, back down the hallway, until he was out of sight. "Come on, let's go have some fun." Will said, taking my hand in his.

"No." I replied, snatching my hand away. "You were buying pills. You promised that you were going to quit this time, Will. For us. You promised. I won't keep doing this with you! I can't!"

He huffed out a breath and rolled his eyes. "It's not what you think. These are for pain, for my arm. You know that I broke my elbow a little while back. The doctors only gave me a couple of weeks of pain pills, but I'm still in pain. You know that. I'm only going to take them when I'm hurting. I promise. Can you stop acting crazy now, so that we can have a little fun? We rarely get to go out, and now you're trying to ruin it! I thought you wanted to do things like this!"

I bit my lip, as the war inside of my head started.

Was I overreacting? His elbow was fractured a short while ago, and I knew that it still swelled sometimes, and it caused him pain. If the doctors wouldn't give him anything else for it, maybe this was the only solution.

I wasn't sure that he could just take them when he was hurting though. I should probably give him the benefit of the doubt though. I really did want to have fun that night.

I didn't want to mess it up.

"I don't know." I mumbled, as I twisted my rings anxiously.

"You don't know if you want to have fun tonight? Then why did we even come?" He asked, raising his voice some.

I felt myself start to shut down, so that I could deal with his negative reaction.