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Constantine Kane is undeniably the worst. His hair is always vaguely dreadlocked and he smells like patchouli and old weed and unwashed- something, and he’s a crappy songwriter and singer. And he’s always fucking crying.
And yet. Here she is: sitting near the back of a grubby Greenpoint bar on a Tuesday night, an open-mic night. Constantine’s playing, possibly a song about cottage cheese. Amy’s sort of stopped paying attention because she keeps getting distracted by the group-text she got looped into with Peralta and Diaz and Boyle. Her phone lights up and buzzes on the sticky tabletop every few seconds and Amy should just put it in her purse, but she doesn’t. Peralta and Boyle seem to be live-texting their meal at a new raw restaurant near the Nine-Nine and it’s mostly a string of emojis and Rosa chiming in every few minutes to tell them to take her off the goddamn group message.
“You here alone?” says a voice just behind her shoulder, and Amy jumps in her chair. The man hovering has two drinks with him and gestures with one toward her. He’s cute, with dark curly hair and kind eyes and a warm smile. Something about him makes her stomach flutter a little.
Amy gives him a polite smile and shakes her head. “I’m with the band, actually.”
She does enjoy saying that. Even if it’s a shitty band at a shitty open-mic bar.
The nice man, who is wearing dark-wash jeans and a button-down shirt, frowns and looks up toward the stage. Constantine is wearing denim cutoffs (that he cut himself) and a pink hoodie with an obvious mustard stain across the front and three puka shell necklaces. Somehow it’s those last items that embarrass her the most.
In a few weeks Amy will turn 30. According to her life plan she’s supposed to have met her future husband by now (but not be married until 32). And though she’s not nearly as committed to the Personal Life Plan as she is the Career Life Plan – she knows there are certain things like “falling in love” and “marrying her soulmate” that are beyond her control, to a degree – it’s still dawning on her that soon, she’s going to have to get some focus when it comes to her romantic life.
That means it won’t be acceptable for her to date terrible, bad-choice, one-night-stand men – which is, she believes, a thing that women in their 20s are supposed to do. And a thing she never has done.
Constantine isn’t actually, technically (at all) a one night stand, but aside from the fact that they’ve been dating for nearly three months he still somehow feels like one (possibly because Amy can’t wrap her head around three months of Constantine Kane, dear god what is she doing). But he is terrible and he is a very, very bad choice.
The point is, she kind of wants to try this on for size. Just once in her life, she wants to be a ridiculous woman who dates an absurd man.
(Of course, none of that was actually crossing her mind when she met Constantine at Kylie’s wedding. She’d just had four drinks and thought, why not? And if she’s being fully honest with herself, this whole dumb relationship is really just an exercise in Amy’s disinclination toward personal confrontation and, like, hurting people’s feelings. It’s something she should probably deal with. She’s going to add that to her Life Plan later.)
At the bar, the handsome man in the sensible shirt is still staring bemusedly at Constantine. He looks back at Amy and cocks an eyebrow at her, and Amy shrugs and nods.
“He’s really good in bed,” Amy says too-loud, and also, that’s a complete lie.
“Well then,” the man says, tipping one of his beers toward her, “have a good night.” Which Amy reads as either “good luck” or “what the fuck” and possibly both.
She doesn’t have a good night. Constantine plays three songs, one of which involves crooning her name for a full minute and ends in tears that may or may not be intentional. Amy’s tempted at one point to contribute to the group text about the terrible date she’s on, but that would open way too many cans of worms and also, Peralta does not need to know anything about her dating life.
When Constantine comes back to the table she slips the phone into her purse and lets him slide into the seat next to hers and wrap an arm around her shoulders and nuzzle her hair in a way that makes her feel like a pet. She pulls away from him a bit to tell him his set was great.
“Oh yeah? What song did you like best? I think ‘Pumpkin Pie’ is great but maybe it should be pecan instead, yeah?”
“Uh-”
“Yeah, exactly,” Constantine says, and kisses her on the mouth, quick and sloppy. “Hold on a few, I’ve got to FaceTime my mom.”
“Your mom? Right now”
“Gotta tell her how the show went,” Constantine says. He’s already up and walking toward the back exit, hopefully for a cigarette but possibly for something less legal.
Amy sighs and pulls out her phone again. Jake has sent about a dozen new texts in the interim, and when she looks closely she sees that the most recent one is just to her, not the group.
It says: “our waiters name is pine sap. save me pleaz.”
Amy laughs and claps a hand over her mouth. She starts tapping at her own phone, types, “At least your date didn’t just go out back to smoke weed and call his mom.” And then she bites on her lip, thumb hovering over “send.” She deletes the message and goes to put her phone away, takes it out again and sends him a shrug emoji.
He writes back immediately: “HELP.”
Constantine comes back then, and she buys him a rum and coke and then they go back to his place, where they have terrible sex on his futon.
Amy spends the night, and he’s out cold when she wakes up to her alarm. She gets up quickly, collects her clothes and changes in his tiny bathroom with the shower that’s always dripping. When she’s dressed she sits on the toilet lid and checks her phone. She got three more messages from Peralta overnight.
“food should always be cooked btw”
“i dont think pine sap likes me”
“are you home?”
She’s not sure why, but she pauses on the last message, just sort of staring at it for a moment. He sent it long after midnight. She wonders why he asked.
Amy leaves the bathroom without replying. Constantine is spread out in the bed, dreaded hair spilling over both pillows like tangled seaweed. He has a tattoo of Bob Marley dressed and posed as Jesus on his shoulder.
Amy’s been carrying a three-page (double-sided) breakup note in her purse for weeks, waiting for the right occasion to read it to him. Now she takes it out and reads it over one more time, then folds it neatly into thirds and leaves it on the bedside table. She sneaks out, holding her shoes in her hand.
When she gets home she considers texting Peralta, even though she’s going to see him in a couple of hours. She doesn’t, of course. But she thinks about it.