I hadn’t seen her in a long time, so we made a date to catch up at a new bar in north Austin.

We grew up together raising hell, but we both settled down after her rehab, and my new admittance to university.  Not that she was worse off,  I had spent my time in rehab as well,  just not as recent.  I think because we had started at such an early age, we were both already exhausted of the shit colors drugs had brought to our lives.  Like I said, it had been a long time since we had seen each other, about 3 years to be exact.

It was early around 5:30 p.m. when we met at the bar.

She was sitting there just as beautiful as always, grinning at me with that familiar, mischievous grin when I walked through the door.  I noticed two guys in suits next to her that gave me the kind of look that warranted us moving further from their area.

Giving her a big hug, I whispered , “You want to sit down here?”

I suggested the seats furthest down the bar from the covetous men.  She agreed, while glancing at them salaciously. She was always a sucker for the worst types of men, way more than myself. I shook my head at them.

I once pulled her out of a bathroom with a needle sticking out of her foot while getting groped by two junkies, but thats another story.  I guess track marks are easier to hide when they are on your feet.  I wouldn’t know.

She looked good in her newfound sobriety plumpness, with her freshly cut blond hair and clear blue eyes.

I spun her around on my finger tips, “You look good, I missed you.”

She smiled, bowed, and adjusted herself in her seat, “Why thank you!”

She swirled her straw around with her tongue and took a sip of her drink, “Mel, I’m getting married.”

Not a suprise to me, I rolled my eyes, “To who?”

“A guy I met in rehab from California.”

“Jesus Evie.  That sounds like a brilliant fucking idea.”

She laughed, “I know, I know.  Fuck it, he asked me, and I said yes.  You know me, I love love, and I’m terrible at saying no.”  She laughed and crossed her legs, flashing another smile at the men across the bar.  They ate it up and when they shifted their eyes to me, I said ‘fuck you’ with my mine.

“Evie, A good sober fuck isn’t always love honey, or even marriage worthy.”

Evie was always textbook manic, rash in her decisions.  Her highs were as high as highs get, and lows as low as you can pretend to imagine.

Breaking the men’s stares at Evie with another ‘fuck you’ look, I indulged, “Well then tell me all about this lucky guy.” I knew she would never listen to any objections. She rarely did, in fact, she enjoyed doing the opposite of what others wanted, especially those she loved.

I don’t know which one us had the most sense growing up, but she was definitely more risky than I was, ready for death if she was having a good enough time.  I was usually the one that stopped things from getting completely out of control, which was a high threshold for me to face during those days.

She smirked, enjoying me humoring her latest endeavor, “He’s sweet and good enough.  Ex-heroin addict.”

“Sounds like a match made in hell.  How are your parents?”

Not that they would be too thrilled of our rendezvous.  Especially, after we drained her dad’s business bank account by forging checks to an elderly teller in a small town, but again, that’s another story.

“My parents are good, excited about the wedding and my sobriety.  Moving into a smaller place.  What about you?  How’s your mom?”

The men across the bar laughed, sending chills down my entire being, and spouted,  “Sobriety eh? Looks like that is working out for you.”

I wanted to smash a bottle over their heads and instead, I ignored their comment, ‘like a lady,’ and continued, “My mom is doing better, she just recently had a hysterectomy, so I was down in McAllen taking care of her for a couple of weeks.”

Evie looked confused, “What’s a hysterectomy?”

“Well, it’s when they remove the uterus due to fibroids causing heaving bleeding.  She was bleeding for months without telling anyone, she could’ve died if she’d continued to bleed much longer.”

I noticed a look of disgust in one of the guys faces as I spoke of my mom’s uterus and bleeding, he shook his head, “Come on ladies this isn’t exactly the type of bar talk we want to hear.  What are y’all doing later?”

I swallowed the heat rising through my throat to my head and snapped my head around, “And what the fuck makes you think I give a shit about what you think of our private conversation?  Mind your own fucking business!”

He began to walk closer towards us, “No!  Stay in your little area.  Leave us alone, we aren’t interested in fucking either of you, so back the fuck off.”

Evie, poised, let me talk and continued to finish her drink, tilting it at the bartender for another.  I could tell she was feeling my heat and waiting for her moment to do something, possibly worse, than what I resisted in my mind.  Old habits die hard.  I waved my hand over her face to break her thoughts, “Just chill, you don’t need anything else on your record at this point.”  She nodded at me gripping her drink so tightly the ice began to melt.

The man stopped and walked back to his seat, “What makes you think either of us would want to fuck some up tight bitches like you anyways?”

Evie, got up, walked over to the man, hiked her leg on his stool, slipped a knife out of her boot and slid it right between his legs, while licking his ear.  It took him a minute for him to look past the ear licking, and once he noticed the blade grazing his balls, he froze and his friend sheepishly took a couple steps to the side.  Smart move mother fucker.

I shifted my attention to the bartender, “You make it a habit of letting men harass women like this in your bar?”

The bartender shrugged and laughed it off, while pretending to clean a glass.  This piece of shit.

I walked over to Evie and pinched her under the bar signaling her to get up.  She didn’t, and whispered in his ear loud enough so I could hear, “No Mel, I want to feel him piss himself first and then we may go.”

She was in it, so I shrugged and faced the bartender, “Well I can tell you,  we will never come back to your shit bar.  You don’t even have the balls to protect your own female customers from assholes like these…Actually, it seems my friend here is preoccupying one of your precious patron’s balls at this very moment. Due to your lacking, she might give them to you if you ask nice enough. Although, they certainly don’t seem worth much, but you know, beggars cant be fucking choosers.”

Knife still tucked under the poor saps sac, I slid Evie’s drink to her, which she slammed, while making close eye contact with me.  The bartender still said nothing.  I grabbed an empty beer bottle from the bar and looked at Evie while squeezing her hand.  She nodded and I immediately threw the bottle against the back mirror of the bar, shattering it to pieces.  I laughed and finished my drink while the bartender yelled something I didn’t give a shit to hear.

Evie, knife tightly wedged in the scrotum, threw her head against the man’s nose, his blood immediately spewing over the two of them.  She wiped the blood from her arm with her tongue and lapped it all over his face.  She spit blood on his friend with accuracy and spewed out, “’The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts. While the stupid ones are full of confidence.'”

I whispered, “Run,” as we walked calmly, hand in hand towards the door.