Rough and Tumble

Gretchin Wilson was never the kind of girl that people called pretty, so when Danny Hower asked her to the dance, she thought it was a joke, at first.

“Would you go to the dance with me?” the pitiful little thing had asked her. He was shorter than her, first of all--ew--and second of all, he was just… not really the kind of boy that a girl saw herself with.

She was rough-and-tumble: usually wore a leather jacket, with jeans, and an obnoxious t-shirt underneath. No one ever called her pretty, because she wasn’t, not really. Her face was too squarish: no curve, no waifish youth to it. It looked more like the veteran of too many rejections, permanently stuck into an ugly frown, to ever be considered pretty.

Her skin was too pasty and her hair too greasy. She showered but she felt like it didn’t help, sometimes. Gretchin’s teeth were snaggly, too, and she hated that about as much as she hated boys like Danny Hower, because he was way too girly for what he was.

Danny Hower made Gretchin look like Clint Eastwood. That was how feminine he was. He wore a cologne that was too strong and his hair was always gelled back and it was strange how clean his face and his clothes were. His arms were too squiggly and scrawny, too. Gretchin was immediately put off.

When she put it all together, there was no way it could be anything but a joke.

“You’re screwing with me,” she told him.

Danny’s eyes got big and wide, like he couldn’t believe she’d ever consider such a thing. It wouldn’t have been the first time it happened to her, after all.

“What? No way!” he insisted. “You look really good, and you’re really cool. You… have your own unique personality. I think we’d be a really good fit. It’s just one night. Are you already going with someone else, is that why?”

He could make fun of her, but he didn’t have to rub it in. That made the whole thing sting far harder for Gretchin, and she reached forward with her big, bulky arms and shoved him, until his ass hit the floor. They were both sixteen, but she was a good deal bigger than he was. He looked up at her, and though he wasn’t crying, Gretchin swore she could see the slightest glimmer of tears in her eyes.

“Why?” was all he asked her.

She didn’t answer him. She just walked away.

___________________________

Gretchin went to the dance alone. It wasn’t like her body had changed overnight in the past two weeks, but she had bothered her mother into buying her a dress that was half decent, and she spent an hour putting on makeup and doing her hair and everything else. It made her tolerable to look at, or at least she thought so. Gretchin knew that she’d never be beautiful, but maybe if she was tolerable, she’d be able to get with someone she could appreciate and endure. That was something that she could shoot for, she supposed.

When she got there, there were tons of couples, boyfriends with their girlfriends dancing, and they were playing slow songs. It was the end of the school year dance, in the summer of ‘68, and there wasn’t a bad feeling that Gretchin didn’t feel, staring there, watching everyone else.

The dance started at seven and lasted until ten. There were refreshments, food, punch--everything that was pretty expected of a school dance. Rage, envy, bitterness, and a thousand other emotions rushed through while she watched everyone else dance.

No one came up to her. No one approached her. Everyone treated her like a leper, and left her alone.

Gretchin wasn’t sure what made her more angry: the fact that everyone avoided her, or the fact that she’d damned herself to this: because she’d said no to Danny Hower.

She saw Danny there, too. Sitting on the side, alone, just like her. It was enough to make her want to vomit, but there was a part of her that wanted to approach him.

Wise men say

Only fools rush in

But I can’t help falling in love with you

Gretchin walked around the side and crept up near him, but didn’t say anything to reveal herself. She just watched him for a while, while half a hundred couples danced on the floor, soft and slow, to Elvis Presley.

Shall I stay?

Would it be a sin?

If I can’t help falling in love with you?

“You don’t have to stand there like I can’t see you, you know. You can come closer, or say something, or both,” Danny said.

Gretchin felt like a vein on her forehead was about to pop, but for some reason, she did exactly as he asked--and she couldn’t put a finger on why, not for even a second.

Gretchin walked closer to him.

“I--I saw that you were standing here alone, on your own, too,” Gretchin said.

“Yeah. You were the only one I really wanted to go with anyway, to be honest,” he said.

That made Gretchin freeze in her tracks. There was Danny Hower--goddamn Danny Hower--saying that the only one he wanted to go with was, her, Gretchin Wilson, probably the ugliest girl in school.

It sounded like a joke couple. They’d be two people, made fun of separately, who were then hated even more together. Ugly Gretchin and Girly Danny, a couple, together.

Ew. Ew, ew, ew.

No matter how much it made her ew, though, Danny was still really the only one that had paid any attention to her at all. She didn’t like him. Gretchin knew that she didn’t love him. None of those feelings were there, at all, for the girly boy named Danny Glover.

But she’d still dance with him than sit on the side all alone by herself.

“Do you want to?” he asked.

“I guess so,” she said, with a sort of grimace to her face.

Danny took her hand into his own. It was warm, and a lot nicer than she expected it to feel. She’d always been a girl that hadn’t been the prettiest, so her experience with the opposite sex was--limited. That was the word. Limited.

He dragged her onto the dance floor, and she sort of went along with him, in the slowest, mopey sort of way possible.

The songs changed, and it went to something a little lighter and more fast-paced.

Come on, baby,

Let’s do The Twist!

Come on, baby,

Let’s do The Twist!

Take me by my little hand,

And go like this!

They twirled and twisted around on the dance floor, with everyone else. It was a spectacle of lights and handsome boys and pretty dresses, but Gretchin hardly enjoyed any of it. It didn’t really feel like it fit. It didn’t feel real to Gretchin.

It felt fake, like a fantasy, or a dream. Something in her head that she could imagine, maybe even pretend that she liked it for a little while, if she was lucky, but ultimately--it didn’t really seem to scratch that particular itch in her.

Gretchin danced with him for the rest of the song. It lasted around three minutes, and then it was over. Gently--which surprised even her--Gretchin pulled Danny to the side and just stood there with him for a minute.

“That was okay,” was what she said to him.

“I had fun. I know you don’t really like me, but thanks for letting me dance with you anyway. At least that way, the night isn’t a total waste, I guess,” Danny said. He picked at his white undershirt and his black tuxedo. He looked better in it than usual, Grechin allowed--but he still wasn’t for her.

Something rose up in her, right then, and it felt like she was going to vomit. She knew that she actually wouldn’t, but the disgust that was exploding inside of her was similar enough to nausea to not really be able to tell the difference. It felt easy to lie to herself in that moment, and tell herself that she both wanted and needed to leave.

Even if a small part of her actually wanted to stay.

“I think I need to go home,” she told him, and she rushed out of the dance.

People laughed at her, but it didn’t sting, for some reason. What felt the worst was watching Danny’s blue eyes on her as she raced out of the dance. He watched her like he was never going to see her again, and there was a sadness there that stabbed into Gretchin’s heart.

You really are a bitch, that sadness said. Look at him. At least he danced with you. No one else was offering. You were just going to sit there on the sidelines like a spinster all night, at the rate that you were going. Could there be anything more humiliating?

Gretchin just kept running. She didn’t even bother to answer.

She got home and refused to talk to her parents. They took it well, surprisingly, and Gretchin knew that they probably thought she’d just had a rough night, and had gotten stood up or a boy or a girl had been mean to her or whatever. It was a deeper, stronger issue than that, but they didn’t need to know.

It wasn’t their business.

_______________________________________

If anyone asked Gretchin what high school was like, she’d probably answer, ‘it was a blur,’ because it had been. That night was one of the only clear memories that stood out, and of course, it had to be a negative one, but the rest of high school was mediocre, boring, uninteresting, and most importantly, forgettable.

It was so forgettable that it felt like she’d jumped forward in time when she was standing up there at graduation, holding up her diploma. Her parents cheered for her. Mary Wilson and George Wilson. They were hard working folk, and they were happy that she’d graduated, of course.

Everything at graduation was fine. It was the drive home when it started.

“So, are you thinking about going to college? You know, we have a little bit of spare money, we might be able to help you. It could be good for you,” her mother said.

Gretchin didn’t know what was worse: the idea that her mother thought she’d actually do well in college, or that she was so blind that she didn’t even know her own daughter. Gretchin supposed the two were connected.

“I’m not really interested in any of that. I think I’d rather go get a job and start working,” Gretchin told her.

“Are you sure? It could be a good opportunity for you,” her father said. Great. Now Dad was getting into it.

“I’m really sure, Dad. School felt like it lasted forever, in some ways. I’m done with it. Besides, I really don’t have anything I want to get into when it comes to going to college. You should really only go there if you have a specific job that requires it,” Gretchin said.

Her mother frowned and Gretchin let out a groan. She knew what was coming when she saw that frown.

“People go to college for more than just learning how to do a specific job. You can be cultured, you know, learn about different subjects, explore the world, widen your understanding.”

Gretchin wondered how much her mother really understood about her. In Gretchin’s mind, the amount was rapidly approaching zero.

She wasn’t interested in any of that.

“It’s--I don’t want it. I just don’t want to do it, okay?” Gretchin said.

“That’s fine. That’s totally fine, sweetheart. You do have to do something, though, especially now that you’re done with school. At least get some kind of job. Maybe your father and I can help you with that,” her mother said to her.

Gretchin didn’t say anything to either of them for the rest of the car ride home. A part of it made her angry for some reason, and it didn’t feel like it made sense. She didn’t really have a reason to be angry.

Everything after that was calm--for a long time.

Then, four years later, she saw Danny again.

______________________________________

Gretchin’s life hadn’t gone well since high-school, not really. She’d eventually had to move out of her parent’s house after a series of arguments. Gretchin wasn’t even sure what she wanted to do with her life, but she despised the different paths that people tried to put down for her.

She didn’t want to be a stay-at-home-mother and a homemaker, forever second to a man, always cleaning up after him like he was her child, forever chained and locked to such a life. She had no real interest in a career, either--it didn’t seem as if it was worth it. Whether it was in the office or somewhere else, Gretchin hated work, and didn’t at all enjoy the idea that she was going to have to do it.

She found other ways to get by.

The years as an adult had roughed her up a bit and toughened her. Seven years, almost, of living on her own and finding ways to make money and make ends meet. Seven years of loneliness, too: still a virgin, which both comforted her and terrified her in different ways.

The most important one, and the one that hurt her the most, though, was as simple as five words: seven years of being alone.

She’d changed her style. She used to try to dress at least somewhat respectably, but about a year after she started living on her own, she learned that people were never going to respect a single woman like her, living on her own, doing her own thing. She started wearing only jeans and dressing in simple jackets. She hardly took care of herself. She ate maybe once a day, and spent more of her money on liquor and cigarettes.

She’d gotten all kinds of tattoos: one on her back, a bird; another on her wrist, an image of a knife--and yet another on her stomach, a swirling whirlpool. She enjoyed her tattoos.

Gretchin Wilson, was twenty-three, a virgin, didn’t have a husband, was tattooed like a sailor, and was someone that the town despised and wished would go away. She knew it. She saw it in the way they stared at her, she saw it in how they acted when she came around.

That was what taught Gretchin that, sometimes, it was better to stick with the other outcasts, because at least they understood you, somewhat.

Gretchin made her money by shooting pool and betting on all kinds of things. She cheated, whenever she thought she could get away with it, and had only been caught a couple of times. She’d been in far too many bar fights, and half of them she didn’t remember.

It was then that she met Brett Gutter--and Danny Hower, again, for the first time in five years--again in one night.

She met Brett first, and Danny later.

Brett Gutter was the kind of man that Gretchin always fantasized that she’d be with. He was wild and free, in a lot of ways. She’d heard about him from acquaintances but never met him until that night, in the February of 1973, and if you asked her right then, she would have said that she never met a more perfect man.

Shoot the eight-ball, bounce it off the side. Bounce it again. Land it in the top-right corner pocket. She had six balls left, and Gretchin had none. It was easy.

“Gimme,” Gretchin said, sticking her hand out right in front of Emily Peterson. The woman was a lily-white and too-soft college graduate who thought she could play with the big girls and hang out in the tough bars. She really had no business being here, not when her life was so perfect, but Gretchin wasn’t going to be like the others and tell her to get lost when she could still make a little bit of money off of her.

Emily grumbled, and handed her the ten, and that was the end of that. Emily stalked off to the bar, grouchy and moany, but Gretchin couldn’t care less.

“That was a nice shot,” Gretchin heard a deep voice say.

She turned around, a little slow since she’d had some to drink, and came face-to-face with a massive man. Brett Gutter was six-four and had a build that reminded Gretchin of a tree trunk. His center was just massive, and his legs and arms were like thick, boughy branches that extended outwards in every direction.

He was just big, and Gretchin had always enjoyed height in her men, especially considering that she was 5’9 and much taller than the average woman, generally.

Brett had a hard face with a strong, tight chin that looked like it could break a granite countertop. He had a scar on his face that ran from the right eye all the way down to the middle of his neck. His eyes were blue and his hair was a deep blonde. His skin was very pale.

Gretchin thought that she might be in love.

He was dressed in a big, bulky jacket with tight jeans and a chain in the back of his pocket. In his right hand was a pool stick, and he leaned against the table as he stared at the outcome of the game.

“You’re probably better than any woman I’ve ever seen. You want to play a game?” Brett asked her.

“Sure! I mean-- yeah, but… no money or anything. I kind of make a lot of money from picking the right people to play against,” she said.

Brett laughed at her. It was a cruel, high cackle that reminded Gretchin of the bullies at school that she used to deal with, a long time ago.

“That’s interesting. I won’t take any of your money--not tonight,” he told her, winking.

He racked the balls up and invited her to break first. She got a great break and landed in two solid balls, and went on a streak that lasted another three shots. By the time that Brett even got to shoot, it was eight balls to three, in her favor.

“Wow. You really managed to get yourself a lead,” he said. There wasn’t as much humor in his voice, now, as there had been before. An edge of seriousness had taken its place.

Gretchin didn’t respond right away. Instead, she sat back and watched.

He was an okay player, but he wasn’t that amazing, either, really. He made way too many mistakes that Gretchin noticed. Brett didn’t hold the stick quite right, and he often made little blunders with his positioning that cost him shots. He managed to sink two, but after that, he missed, and Gretchin got another turn to go again.

“Well, it’s a little bit closer now. Let’s see what you can do,” he said to her.

Gretchin angled herself over the table and nudged the five ball in. It sunk down into the pocket. Then she moved around and rested her wrist on the side of the table for just a second.

“Regretting this yet?” she asked.

Brett didn’t say anything, but he wasn’t smiling. If anything, Gretchin thought that he looked a little mad. Screw him. He was the one that had asked her for the game. If he thought that she was going to be an easy win because she was a girl, he was sadly mistaken. She practiced at this game a lot more than he did.

The next shot hit, and sunk into the pocket. She missed the second-to-last shot, and waited for him to take his.

It was a dark bar with a few pool tables in it, but even then, with the music and the smoke and the low light, Gretchin could see him gritting his teeth.

Brett lined up a nice shot on a striped ball, but his hand slipped, and instead the eight ball went into the pocket. His hand gripped the stick so hard that his knuckles were white.

“Good game,” he whispered, after a moment.

“No problem. Want to play another one?” she asked.

“No. No, I’ll be okay. I wouldn’t mind watching you play someone else, though. Maybe I’ll jump back in, in a few games,” he said.

Gretchin couldn’t tell, but she suspected he was mad about it. He looked… not-okay, was how she’d describe it. She was about to say something else, but then she felt a hand pat her on her shoulder.

“Gretchin! Is that you? I could’ve sworn it was you. I haven’t seen you since--what, five or six years ago? Maybe more?” she heard a voice say.

It was familiar, in a way that tickled her spine and invited her brain to try and guess. It was higher-pitched than she thought it would be, but still decidedly male. She could count on one hand the amount of boys she’d known well enough for them to remember her, and there was really only one that sounded like that, when she thought about it.

“Is that--” Gretchin said, turning around.

Danny Hower was there, in the bar. He looked so… different. It was really weird how different he looked, actually, for about a million different reasons. Whether or not it was the change in height, his facial hair, his new haircut, or his physique, Gretchin couldn’t tell, but he looked more like… a man, now, than he ever had been.

“Who’s this guy? Some kind of nerd or something?” Brett said. He laughed at his own joke like it was particularly funny.

Gretchin didn’t respond right away.

“Just an old friend of Gretchin’s. Mind if I talk to her for a little bit?” Danny asked him. His mouth was set in a grim line: not at all like the nervous smile or sad grin that Gretchin was used to seeing from him, when they’d interacted in the past.

Brett just looked at both of them and waved his hand.

Something about that rubbed Gretchin the wrong way. It wasn’t an awful sin, or anything like that, but it was

“I don’t need permission from him. Let’s go talk for a second,” Gretchin said. She grabbed his arm and dragged him away from the table, leaving Brett there to stew.

They got away and sat at the bar.

“What the hell are you doing back in town?” was the first thing that Gretchin asked him.

“Give me something light, something that goes down easy. I like a lot of flavor, too,” Danny told the barkeep, who nodded at him and started looking around. Then Danny let out a sigh and turned back to her.

“For a few reasons, I suppose. I went to college and got a bachelor’s in engineering, just like my Dad. But I’m kind of set up to end up making more money than him. The economy is going crazy right now. Lots of high-paying jobs available,” Danny said. He paused and took a breath.

“I wanted to pay my hometown a visit, and I wanted to see you again, and a few other odds and ends that I need to take care of,” Danny said.

Gretchin just looked at him for a moment. She knew that she wasn’t pretty: not with her square face and her rough skin and her thin hair and her doughy body.

“Why would you want to see me again?” Gretchin eventually asked.

The barkeep slid a drink across the bar to Danny, and he took a few sips of it.

“It’s good,” he told the barkeep, and then turned to her again.

“I never really got over you, to be honest. There was this girl in college,” Danny said, and he waved his hand, “but it kind of ended before it began. It was never… what I wanted, or the way that I wanted it. But now I’m different. I’m going to make money now, and I’m going to be way different than the boy that you knew.”

Gretchin didn’t know where he was going with any of this.

“I--I don’t understand,” she said, her eyes wide.

Danny leaned over, tall, with wide shoulders. His light blue hair was prettier than it had ever been and his blue eyes almost looked teal in the dark light of the bar. There was something in them, but Gretchin couldn’t put a name to it.

“Move with me to New York,” he said, and laid his hand on hers. “I’ve been offered a really good job. You’d be able to do whatever you wanted. I’d help you get a job, go to school, whatever. We’d have a good time. I think we’d do well together.”

Gretchin, in a single instant, was both appalled and confused. She didn’t really have a real interest in moving in with Danny, even if she didn’t hate him as much as she once did. It wasn’t just that, either, though. It was more than that. She was also confused because she didn’t understand how he came to such a decision to ask her that.

“Right. I… don’t want to do that,” Gretchin said, giving him a weak smile. “I think that we’re better as friends, you know? You still don’t hold that silly little crush on me anymore, right? We were teenagers, basically kids. We’re grown-ups now. We have to make new decisions, change our lives, do different things.”

Danny sipped his drink a little bit more.

“Is that why you’re in this bar, still living in the same town, seven years later? I asked around. You don’t have a job, you’re not dating anybody, you’re not in school or in training. From what I hear, you spend most of your time at this bar or around town somewhere else. Is that right?” Danny asked her.

Gretchin said nothing.

“It’s okay if you just want to be my friend, or even just that. But don’t criticize me and say I haven’t grown up when you clearly haven’t,” Danny murmured. “You’re betting for ten bucks in a bar on pool. I heard you pick fights. Are you pretending you’re fifteen? You’re twenty-three now, just like me.”

Gretchin felt her lip twitching, but she couldn’t help it. She saw red. She reached up with her arm and slapped Danny across the face.

“Really?” he asked her. He had a crimson mark all over his face, but his eyes held no tears in them--just disappointment. A few people had reacted to it, including the barkeep, but Danny just raised a hand.

“It’s okay. I’m gone. We just had a little minor disagreement, that’s all. Thanks for the drink,” Danny said. He downed it, left the pay and the tip on the bar, and got up. Then he turned towards Gretchin.

“You only slapped me because you know I’m right. Go back to Brett. Maybe he can give you what you need,” Danny said. He didn’t wait any longer. He turned around and walked away.

Something in Gretchin died right then, and she didn’t understand why, or for what reason. It felt like an aching, rotting thing, twisting inside of her, curling in her heart and setting in like an infection. It didn’t go away, either. It stayed: curling, twisting, rotting.

She heard Brett walk up behind her, and he eased himself into the chair, sitting down with a soft grunt.

“What happened?” Brett asked her.

Gretchin struggled to gather the words to describe the encounter. There were so many she could use, but she’d never fancied herself a liar, and anything that she said felt like it would just prove Danny even more right.

So she said the only thing that she could say.

“He told me something that I didn’t really want to hear,” Gretchin mumbled to him.

“Fuck that guy. Let’s play another game,” Brett told her, and Gretchin followed, though that feeling in her chest stayed: for the rest of that day, and onwards, after that.

___________________________________

It became normal for Brett and her to shoot a game of pool every now and then. For around a month, they’d shoot a game or two a day, and Gretchin would go and take more people’s money that were dumb enough to shoot her a game. Soon enough, though, a lot of the money from locals dried right up. It wasn’t just that everyone knew that she was good at the game: she’d cheated more than once, and people knew that about her, too.

“I saw you hit that cue twice! I saw it!” Hailey Clearwater told her. A pretty, preppy bitch, thin and blonde-haired and blue eyed, from down the street that worked in one of the corner businesses. Now that pretty, preppy bitch was right up in her face, squealing and screaming, and spitting and swearing.

“No way. It was one shot,” Gretchin declared, when she knew it absolutely wasn’t. Her hand had moved at the last second and she’d tipped it, but she tried to jerk the stick forward fast in order to make it look like a single shot. Clearly, it hadn’t worked.

“Yeah, right. Give me that ten. You cheated. If you cheat on a bet, you forfeit your end,” Hailey said, and her hand went for Gretchin’s pocket.

Gretchin leaned back and thrust her fist forward, and slammed it into Hailey’s face. The girl went down in one hit. There had never been a bigger paper tiger, in Gretchin’s opinion. The problem was that when she did that, they both stumbled forward and crashed into a table. People’s drinks and glasses went flying. Glass broke on the floor, and Gretchin had two pissed off men staring at her.

Then the barkeep came forward and stepped between her and them, thankfully. Max had pulled her out of things like this before--

“That’s it,” the barkeep said. Max Greenwell was his name. He was big and tough and was one of the only people Gretchin wouldn’t ever go against: both because he ran the place and he was bigger than her.

Gretchin felt something cold slide down her spine right then, and a part of her insisted that it was fear, but the rest of her was too indignant to pay attention.

“What do you mean?” she asked him.

“I mean, you’re done. You’re out of here. Don’t come back. You’re always betting and taking people’s money and cheating and starting fights. You cause too much trouble here. This isn’t the first time,” Max told her.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Gretchin told him, her eyes wide in disbelief.

Twenty seconds later, with her ass out on the pavement in front of the bar, Gretchin found out that he wasn’t kidding.

She raised up her foot and kicked the brick wall, letting out a screech.

“This is bullshit!” she screamed.

That was how Brett found her, a little while later, just standing outside the bar, smoking a cigarette. He pulled up in his Camaro and parked the car, and then walked right up to her.

“Why aren’t you inside?” Brett asked her.

“Asshole kicked me out. Said I was causing too much trouble. Doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” was what Gretchin told him. She tried her best to be standoffish, but inside her chest, her heart was beating like crazy. She had no idea what she was going to do or where she was going to go. It was driving her mad.

“There’s got to be another place like this we can go. If he doesn’t want your business, give it to the local competitor,” Brett told her, and in that moment, Gretchin really liked that argument. It soothed something inside of her. It almost made her purr and stuck her in the exact sore spot, in the right way, that she’d been wishing.

“No ride, though,” she said, exhaling a ring of smoke.

“I’ll drive you. I don’t have anything to do tonight,” Brett offered her.

Something inside Gretchin told her not to take the offer, but it wasn’t like she was going to do anything else. What was she going to do--go back to her apartment and be lonely, stare at the wall, wonder how she was going to pay the bills?

Fuck that. Fuck that.

“Yeah. Let’s go. Let’s do it. Right now,” she told him.

That was how Gretchin Wilson made the worst mistake of her life, and hopped in Brett Gutter’s car.

Max’s Bar was one of the only real local hangouts in their small town. There were a few others, but it was so small that it was often hard to find an alternative spot to have any fun. They drove around for a little bit, though, and Brett eventually showed her a place called Grater’s Grit which was similar to Max’s place, but a little bigger. It was also thirty minutes out of town, and in fact they weren’t really in the place of her birth at all anymore.

It didn’t exactly bother her, necessarily, but there was something that felt like it was lost when they stepped into Grater’s that she didn’t like. It was a little bigger than she was used to, a little bit too loud, and everyone there was just different. It wasn’t exactly big city life, like Danny had tried to promise her, but it was… not the same.

Brett introduced her to a few people. Gretchin met Ryan Johnson, a tall construction worker with black hair and dark brown eyes, and Paul Newman, a man who was a bit shorter but was the most muscled out of anyone that Gretchin had ever seen besides Brett himself. He was pale and wore jeans and a tank-top.

“These are my two friends, Ryan Johnson and Paul Newman. This is Gretchin Wilson. She’s probably the best girl when it comes to shooting pool around here. She’s beaten me many times,” Brett admitted.

Paul cackled and Ryan cracked a grin.

“Really, Brett? You let a girl whoop your ass?” Ryan asked.

Brett rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders.

“She’ll beat you too, if you play her, I bet. For a little bit of money, maybe,” Brett murmured.

“You play for money, girl? You play for keeps?” Paul asked her.

“I’ve been known to, on occasion,” Gretchin murmured. She drew into herself, covering her breasts with her arms, and staring around the bar. She didn’t look anyone in the eyes.

“Well! I would love to see this amazing female pool player in action,” Ryan said, and right away, Gretchin found an intense dislike for the man festering in her chest.

“Fine,” Gretchin bit out. They led her deeper into the joint and showed her the pool table. The place was filled with alcohol and smoke and the jukebox was playing some of the hottest current hits. Brett went up to it and put a new song on.

Ryan racked the balls up and Gretchin prepared herself. She lit a cigarette and took a puff of it to calm her nerves. She didn’t want to give any of them the reason to look down on her like they were all trying to.

And it's bad, bad Leroy Brown

The baddest man in the whole damned town

Badder than old King Kong

And meaner than a junkyard dog

“I’ll let you break,” Ryan told her.

It was a bad move. Gretchin was great at breaking. So good, in fact, that Ryan barely got to play at all. She made a total of four balls before he ever got to shoot. There was a smirk on her face as she sunk in the fourth shot. She missed the fifth, but just like her first game with Brett, it didn’t matter--the lead was already far too much.

Ryan made two shots, and then Gretchin made another two. Ryan managed to make three after that, but once Gretchin got to go again, that was it.

“Top left corner pocket,” she said, and nudged that eight ball right in there.

Ryan grit his teeth as she beat him. Gretchin was discovering that it was the best feeling: something she really, truly enjoyed.

He handed her a ten-dollar bill in the most grumpy way imaginable.

That was how the night went, for the most part. They shot game after game after game of pool. They drank, they smoked, they talked crap about all of the people around them. They ordered a little bit of cheese fries here and there to keep their appetite down, and kept on at it.

Gretchin had herself a ton of fun with Brett and Ryan and Paul. She didn’t like the other two as much as she liked Brett, but she tolerated them because she was really starting to like Brett, in a lot of ways. He paid for her drinks, and treated her (mostly) like a gentleman, and his intentions seemed very good, for the most part, to Gretchin.

There were little things, here and there. He seemed like he had a temper, and he wasn’t absolutely flawless, like Gretchin thought when she first met him. But, in a way, that made him better: he had mistakes, he had imperfections, he was human, and Gretchin liked that.

They stayed out for quite a while, but eventually, it came time to call it quits.

Ryan and Paul had their own vehicles, so they went home, and Brett and Gretchin went back to his car.

“I had a really great time tonight,” Gretchin admitted.

Brett smiled at her. He still had whatever teenage handsomeness he’d had whenever he was in high school, but it had matured, a bit, and transformed into something more adult and attractive. He had Gretchin’s attention.

“Thanks. I did too. It’s rare to meet a girl like you. You’re tough and wild and you have a fire inside of you that I don’t see in most women that I meet. You might not have everything in your life perfect, but if you think about it, most of us don’t. At least you’re true to who you are,” Brett told her.

What he said made her heart melt, all warm and fuzzy, like the feeling of melting chocolate sliding down your throat and into your belly. It made Gretchin happy, and it relaxed her and made the earlier problems of the night disappear from her head and her heart.

“Do you want to go back to my place?” he asked her.

There wasn’t even a doubt in Gretchin’s mind, in that moment, about what she wanted to do. She nodded to him.

Brett gave her a smile.

What they did together that night at his apartment hurt, and Gretchin wasn’t really sure or not if she truly liked it, but there was an intimacy in it that she’d never felt with anyone else, so there was both a positive and a negative side to it. Brett seemed like he really enjoyed it, and for Gretchin, that was the best part of the whole deal.

Time moved, and Gretchin’s life kept on moving with it.

_____________________________

It felt like it had been forever since she’d met Brett, but in reality, it had been barely more than six months. They’d quickly started dating after they’d met and initially had sex, and Gretchin was far more confident and doing better than she ever had been.

It scared her to think back to the times before she’d met Brett. The way she’d been--she didn’t ever want to be that way, ever again. It felt like less than a full life. It felt like she’d been some kind of ghoul, subsisting by cheating and scamming others, just scrounging out some kind of half-life and barely surviving.

Her behavior had changed somewhat, but the real change was the new social circles she ran in, these days.

Once they’d started dating, everything had gotten different. Brett treated her differently. He was still kind to her, and nice, but he told her things sometimes. If she tried to dress up pretty, and nice, he’d often tell her that it wasn’t her style, and she should put on a pair of jeans, instead. When she tried to order fatty foods at restaurants, he usually allowed it, but sometimes he’d say something.

The largest change of all was all of Brett’s friends that she met. He had so many of them that it felt ridiculous. Most of them were from similar walks of life: food workers, construction workers, gym teachers, sports players, and more. He even knew a guy who used to play for the Denver Broncos, which Gretchin thought was extremely cool even if he was just a player who was a fourth-draft pick and had gotten injured in one season and instantly stopped playing. It was still cool that Brett knew him at all.

Gretchin had even started living with him after three months. She’d eventually taken him over to her apartment, only for him to scoff at what she lived in. It wasn’t the best place, Gretchin knew that, but it didn’t feel like it was so horrible that it wasn’t at all bearable.

Apparently, Brett didn’t agree.

“This place is a dump. You live here?” he asked her.

Something prickled in her chest when he said that.

“I know it’s kind of dirty, but it’s not that bad. It’s a studio apartment. It’s whatever. It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be good enough for you to sleep and eat here and everything else. Nothing more than that,” she told him.

Brett walked up and ran a finger along the wall. The thick dust that clung to his finger made Gretchin feel a little bit embarrassed.

“Even if it’s not that bad, you definitely haven’t cleaned it. I clean more than this and I’m pretty lazy about it,” Brett murmured.

“Sorry,” Gretchin whispered.

Brett let out a sigh and didn’t say anything else. Gretchin showed him around her apartment for a little while. There really wasn’t much to show, honestly, but she wanted to make him feel like there was something of value there.

“I mean, it’s not bad. But you’ve been to my place. It’s better. Why don’t you stay there from now on?” Brett asked her.

A part of her wanted to say no. It was her gut instinct, screaming out.

Gretchin knew that she should have trusted it, too. It was the right thing to do. It really wasn’t what she wanted to do in her head, though.

“Come on. It’ll be fun. It’ll be a lot better than living here. There’s more space and I think we’re doing well together so far,” was what he’d said.

That was another huge mistake that Gretchin Wilson made in her life, though it still wasn’t as bad as getting in his car. Getting in his car had given him the impetus to start their whole relationship in the first place. Moving in with him was the next step, logically, but there was a part of Gretchin that knew it was wrong.

She didn’t listen to it. She rationalized it as her desire for feminine independence, or some kind of anti-social part of her inside, lashing out, demanding to be kept separate. It was for none of those reasons, but Gretchin didn’t know that.

“Alright. We can do that,” Gretchin said.

Just like that, she moved in with him.

Brett was so excited about it that he demanded they do it immediately, and he helped her along the whole way. They took most of her furniture out of the apartment--not that there was much in it, in the first place--and moved it all to Brett’s place. All of her personal things, her clothes, her knicknacks, and everything else: all of it was with Brett now.

Then she moved in. She broke her lease (Brett paid the sum, so she didn’t care) and moved in with him right away. Gretchin found it kind of strange that he was willing to do all of that for her, but then he said something that changed everything.

“I want you to move in because I love you. We can start a new life together. I know that you’re--not the same as other girls,” he muttered, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t work things out. You might not be as adept at romance, but you still have feelings like any other girl. You still have a heart like any other woman. Isn’t that right?”

Gretchin didn’t even know what to say. Swept off her feet wasn’t even accurate, because that would imply that she saw it coming at least a little bit, in her opinion. You could see if someone was trying to knock you down in real life.

What Brett had done had felt invisible, like Cupid shooting an arrow straight for her heart. There was no way to guard or dodge or defend against it. It hit you, and that was it.

That was how Gretchin felt about Brett. That was how fast it felt like everything had happened.

She thought it would be good. Gretchin thought it would be a good thing, that everything would go well, and finally, her real life could begin.

For a while, that held true.