Random (Going the Distance) by Lark O'Neal Read Free Book Online

sends me flying sideways, right into a pile of people and chairs at the next table. I feel hands around me, bracing me and I think they’re helping me until I feel a hand on my breast, another on my ass. There’s a roar in my ears, and I push at the hands, dragging one away, but then another grabs me harder. I fling my elbow as hard as I can into the body behind me, then struggle to my feet. A guy, football player type, stupid forehead, reaches for me again and I don’t even hesitate. I kick him hard. Not quite the balls but close enough to count.
    Rick and Jake are still at it, thudding fists and grunting. There’s blood.
    My face is throbbing. My left ear is deaf. My right breast has been mauled, and there’s beer all over my good jeans. Rick and Jack are locked in a wrestling hold, neither able to do anything, and the bouncer comes up. “All right, break it up.”
    The manager is right behind him. “You assholes! You’re fucking fired. Get out of here.”
    Rick flings his hair out of his face and gives me the evil eye, like this is somehow my fault. He shakes his head, wipes his mouth and walks away.
    For one long second I stand there, watching him go. Jake spits on the floor by my foot. “Cunt,” he says. “See what you’ve done?”
    Everything in my body buzzes, from the top of my scalp to my toes. Looking at the broken glass and the turned-over table, tasting blood in my mouth, I think Is this the life I want?
    The answer is easy. I walk out.
    * * *
    I stand outside for a few minutes, trying to calm my brain long enough to figure out what to do.
    Mom! What would you do?
    It’s stupid that I talk to her still. She’s been gone almost five years, but it helps. Even if it’s my imagination, even if it’s not really her voice I hear but just my own head helping me out, it works.
    Her answers are usually really simple. Same this time. Go home, she says.
    It’s a pretty good walk, maybe a couple miles or a little more, but I’ve walked farther when the guys in the band got too rowdy or drunk. Henry used to make sure I had cab fare, but I’m not about to spend any of my last cash on that when I have two perfectly good feet.
    I walk through a mostly residential neighborhood, looking weird, I’m sure, to the kids out in their yards playing ball. Light still hangs on the western horizon, a bright yellow line following the jagged edge of the mountains, and streetlights have started coming on. It surprises me. In the club, dancing and drinking, it felt much later. It’s probably not even ten o’clock yet.
    At first my brain is full of noise, the fight, the insults, the grabby hands—I’m so sick of guys who think they can do whatever they want to girls!—the look on Rick’s face, which made me furious. How could he blame me for his stupid fight with his bastard of a friend? I didn’t deserve any of it. Not the name-calling, the blows, the groping, that mean, mad look from my boyfriend.
    I think of another pair of eyes, looking at me as if I were daybreak or lost treasure, eyes looking directly, deeply into mine as if I might know the secret to living forever or the mysteries of the universe.
    After ten or fifteen minutes the cool air and the quiet of the streets start to make me feel better. The houses around here are little cracker boxes—a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, all arranged in a square. They have picture windows, and some have left their curtains open. I look in without shame, seeing cluttered tables and televisions and pictures on the walls. People. Families.
    Into that quiet comes something else. A real question, maybe in my mom’s voice. What kind of life do you want?
    And I really don’t have any idea. I only know it’s not this one. I’m sick of bars and noise at night. I’m sick of drinking, which I don’t love that much.
    I’m sick of Rick, too.
    It gives me a hollow feeling in my gut, but I’ve known it for a while. I don’t feel anything for him most of the time. If I do