Can't Bear to Run - Lynn Red Page 0,3

me to make a triumphant return to Finnegan’s karaoke night. At first, I’d turned her down because, well, Dan “needed” me.

It didn’t take me a half-second after hanging up with Dan to call her back.

“Dan’s gonna be late tonight,” I said. “Pick me up at six?”

“Hell yes!” Karen almost shouted. I had to take the phone away from my ear to protect my hearing. “Oh man, this is gonna be awesome. It’s just us – Matt ended up having to take a trip to New York for some reason. He told me, but let’s be honest – who really listens when their spouse tells them what kind of business trip they’re taking?”

She laughed in a bellowing, almost breathless way.

It hit me at right that second that I hadn’t heard anyone laugh like that in... well, in about the two years since I’d really gone out of the house. I faked that I was busy, or that I was just tired, but the truth was, Dan wouldn’t let me out of the place. If he came home and I was gone, he raged out and I couldn’t ever tell what he was going to do.

He’d never hit me, not really, but the way he shouted and carried on, I never knew when it was going to hit that next peak. So like so many people do, I just... swallowed it. I took what he had to give, and never asked questions or complained. But, what the hell, he wasn’t going to be home until way after ten, apparently, so what would it hurt?

After all, I convinced myself, he wasn’t a bad guy – funny thinking about that now – he was just protective. Let me tell you though, it’d be a good six months before I learned what “protective” really was, and it don’t have a thing in the world to do with jealously controlling someone you pretend to love.

But I’ll get there.

Anyway, dressing that night was similar to what a prisoner getting a weekend reprieve must feel like. I slipped into one of my favorite dresses – high waist, big, poofy skirt, black and white swirls – and smoothed the top down against my stomach. It’s been a long time, girl, I thought as I adjusted things in the mirror. Way, way too long.

A car pulled up and a door slammed shut outside, near the curb. Even if I tend to make gloriously bad decisions from time to time, I do have the gift of really good senses. I’m the sorta girl who can tell you how much cilantro is in a taco, or exactly how good the vodka in a martini actually is.

She got a new car, I thought. The slamming sound was heavier than Karen’s old – and I mean old – Pontiac. I finished brushing my teeth, flashed a winning smile in the mirror to make sure there wasn’t any spinach stuck there, and shut off the light.

As I went to open the bathroom door and make my way outside, a clinching feeling, deep inside, stopped me in my tracks. I flicked the light back on and looked at the mirror again, really studying my face.

There were lines in the corners of my eyes, and a few gray hairs speckled here and there throughout the mass of dark brown. All things considered, I looked pretty good for thirty-two. Or at least, for what I’d always thought thirty-two looked like. My eyes had a little puffiness underneath them, but that was easy to explain away by my habit of not going to sleep until well after I should, and always waking up before I wanted to wake.

“You’re pretty,” I told myself, in a way that didn’t sound like an affirmation, it was just an observation. A cold, detached note of fact. “You deserve better than to be a prisoner.” That part was affirmation. It’s one of those things – you tell yourself stuff like that all the time – but just the act of having to think it means that you’re still trapped. As I stared, that old familiar face that wasn’t familiar at all, floated in front of my eyes. Just another one of life’s funny circles, I guess.

After another long stare at myself, I guess I’d come to the conclusion that regardless of my current situation, my friend was banging on the door and I was going to see her for the first time in two years.

It was honestly like nothing changed. We took a cab