The Last Call

The neon sign buzzed overhead—COWBOY'S PARADISE—its flickering red reflection drowning in the puddle where I spilled my drink. I pressed my palm against the cool glass, tracing the condensation like it might somehow anchor me to this moment, to him, to anything real.

My iPhone lay face down on the bar, screen lighting up every few minutes with his name. I'd stopped checking after the third missed call. The bartender kept pouring water into my whiskey glass, trying to be kind, not understanding that the dilution was the point. The mechanical bull in the corner had finally gone silent, its last rider—a kid in a snap-button shirt—having stumbled off toward the parking lot.

"He's not coming back, is he?" The bartender's voice was gentle, the way you'd talk to a spooked animal.

The cable news mounted above the bottles showed another reporter standing in hurricane floodwaters, warning people to evacuate. I'd spent three years waiting for Daniel to leave his wife, watching from the sidelines like those residents who swear they'll ride it out, until the water rises past their doors.

"He said he'd tell her tonight."

The bull market crashed. Literally—on the screen, red numbers tumbling downward. Someone somewhere was losing everything. The irony wasn't lost on me.

I'd been so careful, so methodical, like the way I'd built my investment portfolio: high risk, potential for catastrophic loss. I'd bet everything on a man who'd already shown his hand. Now I was drowning in shallow water, watching someone else's disaster unfold instead of facing my own.

The bartender slid a napkin toward me. "Sometimes you have to walk away before you're forced to run."

I left the iPhone on the counter, left Daniel's messages unanswered, left myself behind in that bar with the silent mechanical bull and the watered whiskey and the television warning of storms I couldn't outrun anymore. Some disasters, you choose. The rest just arrive with the rain.