“Are you waiting for someone?” she asks timidly.

“No.”

It wasn’t an invitation by any stretch, but she sits down regardless. Up close, I can see the cracks in her foundation. She’s wearing far too much of it.

“I’m Cara.”

I grunt wordlessly in response.

“So—bad night?” she presses.

What is wrong with women? I ponder idly. They hone in on the most dysfunctional, broken men they can find and then they’re shocked when he leaves them the same way the rest of them did. When his infection spreads. When he reels them down to his level.

“Same here,” she says when I don’t answer. “My friends dragged me out so I’d forget about my ex.” When I still say nothing, she twists in her stool to face me. “Are you heartbroken about something, too?”

I laugh bitterly. “First, I’d need the heart.”

“If that were true, you wouldn’t be drinking so much.” She chews at her lower lip in a way that makes my chest throb painfully. She does it like June does, I realize. “Listen, I don’t need to know your story. I just… think we can make each other feel better for a little while.” As she talks, she places her hand on the crook of my elbow. Her touch is soft and light, feathery—and not even one percent tempting.

“You need to get the fuck away from me,” I snarl. “Now.”

A smarter woman would have listened. A smarter woman would have jumped off the damn bar stool and high-tailed it out of here.

But the lesser June just fixes me with hopeful, desperate eyes.

“You don’t have to—”

Before she can finish her sentence, I follow my instincts and rip my hand away from her. She gasps and pulls her hands up to her chest.

“I told you once already to go,” I spit. “I’m not the kind of man who repeats himself.”

I say it loudly enough that the bartender looks our way. So do the two girls he’s still flirting with. I realize suddenly that I’m slightly unsteady on my feet. How much have I had to drink? One, two, three, four…

Across from me, the poor man’s June is on the verge of tears. She has the hand that was touching me clamped tightly to her chest as if I burned her, and she’s whimpering like a helpless little lamb.

That one little sound seems to break whatever resemblance I thought she’d had to June.

This woman is nothing like mine.

She may be pretty, but June is beautiful. A dancer who lost her legs, but is no less a dancer for it. I wonder if I’ve ever told her that.

“Yo! That’s no fuckin’ way to treat a lady.”

I turn around to find myself face to face with a burly guy in a cut-off shirt and a dark, unkempt beard that hides most of his face. Prison tattoos ripple over his shoulders.

“I’ll treat you worse if you don’t get out of my way,” I sigh, feeling suddenly woozy and exhausted of all this bullshit. The violence and tedium of my life.