He didn’t reply and looked beyond her to see an old, beaten up, faded Nissan Sentra parked on the street in front of his house. The front wheel was up and over the curb in the grass between the sidewalk and the road.

Christ, in her state, she’d driven there.

She put her hand on his bare chest.

“Arn choo gonna lemme in, da’lin’?” she garbled and Cal looked back at her and fought back another wince.

He stepped away from her touch but grabbed her upper arm and pulled her in. He positioned her outside the swing of the door and closed it. This wasn’t easy. She was small, even smaller now that the drink and drugs had emaciated her body, but she was out of it. Cal had a lot of practice dealing with f**ked up people, earning it in his days as a bouncer. But Bonnie was so far gone, she was like a standing ragdoll.

He pulled her into the kitchen, flipping the switch and the overhead lights came on.

“Damn,” Bonnie complained, her hand flitting up to cover her eyes, “thas bright.”

Cal positioned her by the counter and let her go, reaching to the top of the fridge to nab his phonebook.

She leaned into the counter then used it to hold her up as she slid into him, her hands coming back to his body at his sides.

“Lez hava drink,” she suggested.

“You don’t need a drink,” Cal told her, stepping away from her hands, putting the phonebook on the counter and flipping through it to get to the listings for taxis.

“Always needa drink,” Bonnie mumbled and that was the God’s honest f**king truth. She always needed a f**king drink.

He found the number for a local taxi company and pulled the phone off its charger.

“Whatcha doin’?” she asked, leaning further into him, taking a drunken step forward when her lean pulled her off her feet.

“You’re goin’ home.”

“Aww, Joe. I’m ‘ere for you, baby,” she fell forward further, her face aiming at his chest, her wet mouth slid along his skin and he fought the sick the touch of her mouth churned in his gut. “Give you wha’ choo need,” she murmured.

His stomach curled and he wrapped his fingers around her arm again, pulling her away, setting her at arm’s length. She leaned heavily against the counter and he took another step away, out of shot.

She tipped her head back to look at him, her haggard face sadly confused like she had no idea where she was or how she got there. Then he watched her work at it and finally focus on him.

“Joe,” she whispered.

He heard Bonnie say his name and then, in his head, he heard Violet saying it. Not just when they were f**king, when they were talking or even when she was pissed at him. No matter when Vi said it, it hit him, in his dick, his gut, his chest and it wasn’t in a bad way. He’d thought, until that moment, that it reminded him of Bonnie but looking at his ex-wife, it wasn’t that. Whatever it was, it wasn’t about Bonnie, it was all about Vi.

He stared at Bonnie and saw her hair was long and partially ratted. The natural blonde had been dyed lighter and the dye job was bad, so bad it had a weird tint of green in places. It’d been awhile, though, the roots were showing, lots of them. Her natural color came through but there was gray in it, like she was far older than she was and she was only thirty-eight.

He tried to call up what she used to look like, the girl he’d fallen for but staring down at her, her freakishly thin body; her gaunt face, the purple-blue under her eyes, the yellowish tinge under her skin; the lines around her mouth from smoking too much; and her clothes that were wrinkled, cheap, maybe even secondhand and far from clean, he couldn’t call up the Bonnie who used to be.

All he could see, and in that moment, staring at Bonnie, he could even feel her against his hands, his body, was Vi. Bonnie was short, five foot five. Vi had to be five eight maybe pushing five nine. Bonnie had always been thin but she’d had great tits. Now they were sad and sagging under her worn and faded camisole that showed way too much of her unhealthy skin. Vi, Cal knew from what she told him about when she got pregnant with Kate, was a few years younger than Bonnie but she’d had two kids and still her body was f**king unbelievable, ample ass and tits, tight skin, slightly rounded stomach. Even losing her husband, she hadn’t lost any vibrancy. Vi was a f**king firework compared to the washed out woman he’d married twenty years ago that was standing in his kitchen.

Cal looked at her wondering again, even after years of giving that shit his headspace, after what happened, what she did, he wondered what drew him to her in the first place. What made him ignore all the signs and think he could work his ass off to turn a shit life good for her, for him. As usual, he came up blank.

Violet, right now na**d in his bed, had lost her husband and had some dickhead making her life a misery and she was shoveling her walks, calling her daughters “baby”, taking them to the mall and making them pork chops. Her life had turned to shit but she was cushioning her girls from that, she was giving them a nice home in a town where neighbors threw barbeques and her daughters could catch the eye of the local football hero and listen to crap boy bands in their bedrooms like normal kids never touched by tragedy.

She wasn’t drinking, smoking cigarettes and weed, snorting coke, scoring crack and falling to pieces.

This knowledge hitting him, as usual, he wanted to get shot of Bonnie but this time it was because he wanted to get back to Vi.

“Where do you live?” he asked her.

“Wha’?” she asked, back to confused.

“Bonnie, I’m callin’ a taxi to take you home. Where do you live?”

She stared at him, swaying a bit then she said, “Doan wanna go home.”

“You’re goin’ home.”

She blinked then slid along the counter to him, stopping when he took another step back.

“Joe.”

“Where do you live?”

“Baby.”

“Fuck, woman, tell me where you live.”

He watched as her face worked. She was struggling, she knew the finale already. It was the same every f**king time. Why she played out this scene, he had no clue and he detested it. But he knew she’d go for it, even knowing how it would play out. He knew what was coming.

“Bonnie –”

“Twen’y for a blowjob.”

There it was.

Cal closed his eyes.

“Come on, da’lin’,” she whispered and he opened his eyes to see she was sliding along the counter again, her chin low, looking at him from under her lashes, a total f**king farce.