Rebel North by J.B. Salsbury

Ten

Gabriella

“I’m sorry. I feel like a dick,” Evan says again from across the dinner table. “I didn’t think you’d want to get so dressed up.” He eyes my chest, then quickly darts his gaze away.

“Stop apologizing. You only see me in scrubs. For all you know, I don’t even own a dress.” I push around the potato skin on my plate, picking at it with my fork.

The bar full of sports fans erupts in cheers as some team scores on one of the thirty flatscreens hanging above our heads.

Evan’s attention is on the screen just over my head, and he shouts his excitement around a cheek full of fried mozzarella.

“I should’ve asked where we’d be going,” I say and glare at a table of men who haven’t been able to stop staring at me since they got here. At first, they were staring at my legs and grinning. But after they got a better look, they’ve been fixated on my face. I pull my hair over my shoulder and do my best to hide my scars from their view. “I don’t get opportunities to dress up much anymore, so I like to take advantage.”

“Uh-huh,” he says absently, his attention fully on the game.

“I don’t usually wear skirts because….”

“Yeah…” He drinks his beer, still looking just over my head.

“…it’s much harder to hide my dick.”

“Totally,” he says.

I sigh long and hard and sip the cheap wine Evan ordered for me off the happy hour menu.

This date has been a disaster. I had more fun stepping on glass with Kingston. While Evan has been preoccupied with the game, I’ve been going over the way I left things with Kingston. I may have been too hard on him for suggesting I expose my scar rather than hide it. If only he were here, he could see firsthand the gawking stares, unguarded sneers, and visible bristling. He’d understand if he could see the way other people look at me. Not everyone can ignore it like he does.

When Kingston looks at me, I forget about my scar. It’s as if he doesn’t even see it. He doesn’t avoid looking at me or my face, but he never fixates. Not once.

“I gotta take a piss,” Evan says and slides out of the booth.

“Must be halftime,” I mutter to myself when I see the mass departure of bar patrons to the restrooms and the uptick in conversation.

I check the time, surprised to see we’ve only been here for forty-five minutes. What’s the expected length of time a date should last? An hour? Can I excuse myself, say I’m tired, and leave now—

“Hey there.”

I look up from my phone to see one of the men from the table that’s been staring, standing near Evan’s empty seat. “You lost?”

He chuckles and motions with a half-empty pint of warm beer to his table, where his four friends all have their stools turned to face us. “My friends and I have a question.”

“Small penis size.”

“What?” His teasing smile falls a little.

“Oh, is the question not why you’re single?”

“Funny.” His glazed-over eyes flash with an evil glint. “Actually, we were wondering what happened to your face.”

The four men at his table all laugh, amazed that their little messenger here actually had the balls to ask.

“What happened to yours?”

“No, seriously,” he says with a slight slur. “We’re thinking it’s either a car accident, you walked through a glass window, or plastic surgery gone wrong.”

“I’m a little disappointed by your creativity, boys.” I sip my wine and force the vinegar-tasting sludge down my throat.

“Come on, we got money riding on it.”

“Who wins if you’re all wrong?”

“No one.”

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but these scars aren’t from any of those things.”

“No? So what happened?” He leans in a little, clearly interested.

“I was attacked.”

His expression falls, and I sense that a spear of regret has penetrated the drunken fog.

“My boyfriend here?” I motion to Evan’s empty seat. “Real possessive type.” I lean in and whisper. “He stabbed a man for asking me for directions. I tried to break it up, and I took a knife to the face.”

He swallows hard. “No shit?”

Evan is over six feet tall, and in street clothes, he looks like a tough dude. Nothing like the big ole teddy bear he resembles in his pale blue scrubs.

I turn around, look in both directions, and act paranoid. “Look, if I were you, I’d—oh! The bathrooms are over there.” I shove a finger in the direction of the restrooms right as Evan gets back to the table.

“Hey,” Evan says.

The man jumps.

“What’s going on here?” Evan faces the guy.

He shrinks back on himself and takes a step back.

I lean around Evan’s body and mouth run.

“I was just leaving.” He scurries back to his table.

“Bye! It was nice chatting with you!” I give him and his friends a little finger wave.

Evan eyes the guy until he’s back in his seat with his buddies and then slips into the booth. “He bothering you?”

“Nope. He just wanted to ask about the appetizer platter. Guess he has irritable bowel syndrome and wanted to see how much gluten was involved.”

His eyes are back on the television, and rather than sit here and talk to his chin, I get on my phone and order an Uber.

Thirty minutes away.

Great.

That’s how long it will take me to force down the rest of my wine.

“Areyou sure you don’t want to come in?” Evan pleads with me from the open door of the Uber that’s parked outside his apartment complex. “We could watch a movie. Or just talk.”

The guy had an hour and a half sitting across from me at dinner, and now he wants to talk?

Men are so transparent.

Once I announced that I was ready to go home, we split the bill, and he tried to hold my hand on the walk out to the street. He put his arm around me in the backseat of the car and even pressed his lips to the side of my head. Now that we’re here dropping him off, he seems surprised that I’m not ready to fall on my back with my legs open.

“I’m sure.” More sure than I’ve ever been about anything. “I’m going home, Evan.”

I don’t thank him for the date because what the hell would I be thanking him for? I paid for food I didn’t even eat and stared at his throat all night while he watched television. Not my idea of foreplay.

Hell, I was more turned on by Kingston doctoring up my bloody foot!

“See you at work,” I say and lean over to close the door. “Please go,” I ask the driver.

Evan looks like a wounded bear while he waits, standing on the sidewalk, as we pull away.

“Good call,” the female driver says while meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Could he be any more obvious about wanting to get laid?”

“Right?” I laugh, but inside, my chest aches.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out Evan’s end game here.

He’s lonely, horny, and because I don’t have a horde of men begging to date me, he thought I’d be an easy lay.

I can’t blame him for thinking I’d be easy. I long for the skin-on-skin connection that a sexual relationship brings, the intimacy, the pleasure of another person. I may not be the most desirable woman, but I’m not so desperate to end years of celibacy for a man who values a sports game over me.

I’m not that hard up.

Going on a date with Evan has taught me one thing—I may not be the woman I used to be, but I still have some pride left.