Woman Walks into a Bar by Rowan Coleman Page A

I loved him and I loved that moment we were sharing, with the sun on our skin and our arms around each other. I wanted it to happen.
    So I said yes.
    The sex part was over almost before it started, and I don’t remember much about it, except that there was a plastic bottle top sticking into the small of my back and every time Luke moved his head the glare of the sun made me close my eyes. But it didn’t matter because the sex wasn’t important to me. What was so special and what I don’t think I have ever felt since, not even when I was happy with Adam, was feeling truly cherished.
    Afterwards he rolled off me and pulled me into his arms so that my head was on his chest. I listened to the beat of his heart. I find I sometimes still dream about him in the last few moments before I open my eyes in the morning—Luke on top of me breathing into my hair. And I remember feeling so happy and cared for. It was that feeling that made everything that happened afterwards so hard to bear.
    â€œFantastic,” Luke spoke first. We lay like that for a long time until the sun lost its warmth and the sky began to get dark and Luke Goddard helped me pull my clothes back on and walked me home.
    â€œI’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, expecting him to kiss me.
    â€œI do really like you, Sam,” he said instead and he went home.
    I lay awake all night feeling excited and happy. I really thought that from that moment everything would change because my photo-story had come true. I’d be Luke Goddard’s girlfriend and everyone would like me again.
    But the next day the fact that I’d slept with Luke Goddard was all round the school.
    â€œLuke Goddard says you fuck for a pound,” Matthew Green said. “I’ve got fifty pence—will you do me a blow job?”
    â€œShut up,” I shouted at him. “That’s not what . . . shut up!” I saw Luke walking toward us.
    â€œLuke,” I said. “Tell them!”
    â€œOooh, Luke!” Matt Green and his mates chanted.
    â€œTell them I’m your girlfriend!” I pleaded. Luke didn’t look at me but kept on walking.
    â€œLuke!” I said, feeling my stomach clench. “Tell them I’m your girlfriend!”
    Luke turned around and grinned at me.
    â€œNice body,” he said. “Shame about the face.”
    It was as if he had slapped me, and in a way I wished he had. Because for the rest of that day and the next and all the days left until I turned sixteen and could finally walk out of school, anything would have been better than the lies and rumors that Luke Goddard spread about me. Anything would have been better than having to read what I was supposed to have done with him written on the toilet wall.
    What made it even more painful was that I was still in love with Luke. Part of me thought that after what had happened between us he must feel the same way about me. He just couldn’t say it, so it wasn’t really his fault.
    So I carried a torch for Luke for the longest time.
    In fact, I was still in love with him on the day I met Adam.

Eleven
    I stopped outside the bar.
    Despite the cold air, my face felt hot. I stood for a moment beside the door that led into the pub.
    I stuffed my fingers into my pockets against the cold and felt a folded piece of paper there. I smiled, took it out, and unfolded it, holding it up against the light that shone through the frosted glass door.
    Why did the woman who walked into the bar have to go to hospital?
    It was an iron bar!
    I tried to smile, but I couldn’t. I shivered and felt like—as my mum would say—someone had just walked over my grave.
    I pulled down the hem of my skirt and flicked my hair back off my shoulders.
    I walked into the bar.
    The first person I saw was Brendan standing behind the bar and chatting to the woman he was serving. Smiling and joking with her exactly the way he did with me.
    â€œAnd a vodka orange for