by Emma Lea
I shot a quick look at Clarissa, who was still giving me the cold shoulder. The night wasn’t off to a brilliant start, but surely she wouldn’t hold my choice of tie and the traffic against me?
Francesca
I checked my phone for about the fifty-millionth time and sighed before shoving it back into the back pocket of my jeans. I didn’t know why I was expecting Lucas to text me, I mean, he was proposing to Clarissa tonight…if all went well, I probably wouldn’t hear from him until tomorrow.
Was I an awful person for hoping she turned him down or that he chickened out?
Yes. Yes, I was.
“A round of beers for table fourteen,” Sherry said to me as she leaned her elbows on the counter.
“No problem,” I replied, grabbing glasses and pouring.
It had been a quiet night at the bar and I was ready for it to be over. I loved my job most nights, but I was finding it difficult to keep work in the forefront of my mind. It wasn’t just the whole ‘proposal’ thing with Lucas that was distracting me either, although it was a big part of it. No, it was my dissertation. The meeting with my supervisor had not gone well. We’d tossed around a few ideas, but none of them grabbed me. One option was to research the aftermath and recovery of the recent world-wide pandemic, but it just didn’t excite me. I’d lived through it and the very last thing I wanted to do was live through it again. Besides, I was convinced there would be a hundred other students writing their dissertations on that very thing and the last thing I wanted was to be the hundred and first. I wanted something more exciting and less…well, depressing.
I loaded Sherry’s tray with the beers and sighed as she headed off to deliver them.
I didn’t need to work. I was one of the lucky few who had parents willing to support me through my studies, and I had a trust fund. But I enjoyed staying busy, and I liked people watching, both of which were in good supply at a bar like Drinks. Plus, I got to live out my Cocktail fantasy, even if I was far too young to know the Tom Cruise movie. What could I say? My parents were die-hard eighties movie buffs. I’d grown up with all the classics; Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, Top Gun, You Can’t Buy Me Love, and of course, Cocktail. And yes, I could toss those bottles around like Tom and Brian.
Although my parents didn’t insist I work, I knew it made them happy that I wasn’t just coasting by. They were both hard workers. Both of them came from upper-middle-class families, and together they’d edged themselves up into upper class through hard work and smarts. I mean, my mom was a neurosurgeon, you didn’t get much smarter than that. My dad was equally blessed in the smarts department, working as the senior grants and contracts manager at Harvard. They worked hard and were the best parents a girl could have and I wanted to make them proud.
So, yeah, I worked in a bar and used the people-watching element as fodder for my cobbled together sociology/psychology/anthropology degree. Now I just had to come up with a killer dissertation topic and I could finally graduate with my Ph.D. firmly clutched in my hot little hand. I wasn’t exactly sure what my next steps were…I’d been so focused on graduating that I hadn’t really looked to what the future held. Maybe that was a little short-sighted of me, but I wasn’t big on having my entire life planned out for me. A little bit of planning and some general guideposts along the way was great, but I liked to leave a bit of room for spontaneity. Besides, I’d been studying for decades…okay, not decades, I was only twenty-six, but man, it felt like decades. I could afford to take a bit of time off after graduation to just chill.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket again and checked the display. No new messages. I bit my lip and my finger hovered over the message button. Should I text him? He had to be freaking out…had he even popped the question yet?
I groaned and slipped the phone back into my pocket. He would contact me when he was ready, I just had to be patient.
My phone vibrated in my pocket and I whipped it out, but it wasn’t Lucas, it was Effie.
E: Have you heard anything?
F: Nope.
E: Did he tell you about the king?
Um, what? That had to be a typo. Maybe she meant ring?
F: Yeah
E: I think this will be good for him.
I groaned. I didn’t think him marrying Clarissa would be a good thing at all, and it surprised me Effie thought so.
F: Maybe
I slipped my phone back in my pocket and smiled as Sherry came back with another order. I needed to stop thinking about Lucas and concentrate on the job at hand, not that it was busy. I should use the time to come up with my dissertation topic instead of thinking about Lucas.
“Tell me about table three,” Sherry said, leaning on the bar as I made the drinks for her order.
I shot a quick look at the couple sitting at table three and smirked. “Not a first date,” I said. “Probably only a second or third, though.”
“Will they make it?”
“Nah,” I said, shaking my head. “Look at the way she’s sitting. She likes him well enough, but only as a friend. They have no chemistry and every time the door opens, she looks up to see who’s coming in. If I had to guess…”
“What? Tell me.”
I smiled. “If I had to guess, I’d say she hasn’t long broken up with someone else and she’s still pining over him. She chose this guy because he’s safe and different to her rebel-without-a-cause ex, but really, she’s waiting for her ex to storm in here and sweep her off her feet.”
Sherry sighed with a beatific smile. “I want the ex to storm in here and sweep her off her feet. How romantic would that be?”
I shook my head and filled Sherry’s tray. It was fun to make up stories about the customers, but I would be glad when my shift was over. I could lie on my bed and binge on Netflix while trying not to think about what Lucas was getting up to with his brand new and sparkling fiancée. I mean, she would be an idiot to turn him down and as much as I didn’t like Clarissa, she was not an idiot.
I just had to get through the next hour and a half and then I could wallow. The next ninety minutes would be brutal.
Chapter 3
Lucas
I patted the corner of my mouth with a napkin and cleared my throat. The night hadn’t being going well. Clarissa was unusually quiet and, dare I say, a little frosty. Surely she couldn’t still be upset about the tie, could she?
Or maybe it was because she was nervous too. Maybe Mother had told her what to expect tonight, and she was waiting for me to finally pop the question.
I wondered what Frankie would make of how our date was going. I’d heard her make up stories about the couples that came into her bar all the time. If she was observing my current date with Clarissa, would she say it was going well or was the awkwardness obvious to everyone?
“So, um, we’ve been seeing each other for a while now,” I said, shifting in my seat.
Clarissa opened her mouth to reply, but a waiter approached to fill our wine glasses. She closed her mouth and smiled tightly until the waiter retreated. I took a sip and before she could say whatever it was she was going to say, I rushed on.
“I’ve been thinking about my future of late and the…the human condition, as it were.”
“So have I,” Clarissa interjected. “I’ve been thinking about us a lot, actually.”
Buoyed by her admission, I rushed on. “Right, so in light of the fact we have both reached a stage in our lives where it is time to settle down and plan for the future, I believe this is the next step for us.” I took a deep breath. “Clarissa, will you marry me?”
“I think we should break up,” Clarissa said at the same time.
“What?”
“What?”
“I’m proposing to you and you’re…breaking up with me?”
“You’re proposing to me?”
“I just asked you to marry me,” I said, belatedly pulling the ring box from my pocket and placing it on the table. I opened it and Clarissa gasped.
Her eyes hun
grily ate up the four carat pavé diamond and platinum engagement ring that sparkled against the velvet of the box. She licked her lips, and then sighed, tearing her eyes away from the diamond to the surrounding restaurant before her gaze came back to mine.
“Why do you want to marry me, Lucas?” she asked.
“What sort of question is that?”
“An honest one,” she replied.
I sighed. “We’ve been dating for two years,” I replied, listing the points on my fingers. “You and my mother are practically best friends, we get on well, you would be a suitable wife…”
She snorted elegantly and then took a long sip from her glass.
“What?” I asked, flummoxed by her reaction.
“I want to be loved, not just tolerated,” she replied. “You just proposed to me and not once did you tell me you loved me. I don’t want to marry someone because I’m friends with their mother or because they think I would be a suitable wife. Yes, we’ve been dating for two years, but don’t you think it has been more out of habit than because we have deep feelings for one another?”
I gaped at her, opening and closing my mouth like a fish stranded on the beach. This was not what I expected to happen tonight. And maybe I wasn’t the most demonstrative person in the world, but I liked Clarissa well enough.
“Haven’t you ever wanted to feel so passionately in love with someone that you can’t think about anything else? Haven’t you wanted to feel that rush that consumes you when you see the other person and that overwhelming desire to just be with them twenty-four seven?”
“Um…no,” I answered honestly. Those feelings of passion made me uncomfortable and just the thought of a rush of adrenaline was a nightmare for me—it felt too much like a panic attack for my liking. “A marriage can’t be built on such fleeting emotions as…as passion,” I replied.
“They can,” Clarissa replied. “And that’s what I want in a marriage. I want excitement, not…”
“Boring?” I finished for her. “Bland? Dull? Monotonous?”
“I was going to say equable. I want more and, in fact, I’ve—“
“You’ve found someone else,” I said. It wasn’t a question but a statement of fact and I could see my guess validated by the look on her face.
“I have,” she replied. “It’s still new and…well, nothing has come of it yet.”
“But it made you realize what you were lacking being with me,” I replied wearily.
“You’re a lovely man—”
I groaned.
“No, it’s true,” Clarissa said. “You are kind and sweet and stable—”
I groaned again.
Clarissa reached across the table and patted my hand. “You will make someone a wonderful husband one day,” she said.
“But it won’t be you,” I replied.
“No, it won’t,” she said.
Before I could say anything else—I hadn’t even gotten to tell her about the appointment to the royal court—Clarissa stood and brushed a kiss on my cheek.
“I wish you all the best,” she said before walking out.
“I should drive you home,” I said, but too late. She was gone, and I was left sitting at the table with an engagement ring and the entire restaurant witnessing my utter and complete failure.
I picked up my glass of wine and swallowed the rest of it before lifting my hand to summon the waiter. I would need more than wine to get through the rest of tonight.
“Scotch, rocks,” I said.
My father would cringe at me drinking scotch and not raïda or tsipouro, but I didn’t care. It was probably the most rebellious thing I’d done in my life and I was feeling reckless. Clarissa had not only turned me down, but she was leaving me for another man and my father would see that as yet another disappointment to add to the endless list of my disappointments, so drinking scotch could just join the list.
Besides, I’d developed an immunity to raïda and tonight I wanted to get drunk enough to forget all my shortcomings. I would deal with the fallout tomorrow, but for tonight, I just wanted to forget.
Francesca
Sherry and I were about to call it a night when the door burst open and Lucas stumbled in, his glasses sitting crookedly on his nose. I don’t think I’d ever seen Lucas so…disheveled. Or drunk. Lucas didn’t get drunk. There were times when we were at college together that I thought he had some mystical power over alcohol. He could drink me—and almost anyone else—under the table and still pass a sobriety test. In more recent years, he’d cut back on drinking. Now he was the designated driver and the voice of reason and the one who held my hair back when I’d had too much to drink.
“Lucas?” I asked as he stumbled to the bar and slid haphazardly onto the bar stool.
“Frankie,” he slurred and gave me a sloppy smile. “My favorite person.”
Sherry raised her eyebrows at me, but gave us some privacy as I leaned on the bar opposite Lucas and took him in.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You have really pretty hair,” Lucas said, his eyes glazed. “It’s like…chocolate dipped in caramel.”
“Uh huh,” I nodded. He wasn’t wrong, my hair was dark with caramel-colored ombre, but he’d said nothing about it before.
“And I like it short,” he added.
I always wore my hair in a short choppy bob. I was currently rocking an undercut, but again, Lucas had never said anything to make me think he noticed my hair.
“Thanks,” I said. “You want to tell me what’s going on? Shouldn’t you be with your fiancée right now?”
He groaned and dropped his head to the bar.
“She broke up with me,” he said.
“Wait, what?” Those were not the words I expected to come out of his mouth, even with his inebriated state as proof that the night hadn’t gone as planned. “Clarissa broke up with you?”
He moved his head in a nodding motion, although he’d laid it down on the bar.
“She wants passion, and she thinks I’m dull.”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge, opening it and sliding it toward him.
“Drink this,” I said.
He pushed up slowly and took the water, taking a sip before pushing it away and laying his head back down again.
“You didn’t drive here did you?” I asked.
“Uber,” he mumbled.
“So Clarissa broke up with you,” I repeated, still not quite believing it.
“Yep,” he said, tilting his head to look at me.
“Do you want me to punch her?” I asked, fully prepared to take a shot at the woman who could make my best friend so unhappy. “Or I could start trolling her on Instagram. Yeah, maybe that would be a better thing to do, hit her where it would really hurt.”
Lucas snorted. “Thanks, but no.” He groaned. “Clarissa turning me down and breaking up with me isn’t even the worst bit.”
“It’s not?” I couldn’t imagine what was worse than his girlfriend breaking up with him when he was trying to propose to her.
“No,” he groaned. “Now I can’t go to Kalopsia.”
“Pardon?”
He sat up then and reached for the water, taking another drink before trying to focus on me. “That’s right,” he said. “I haven’t told you that bit of news yet.”
“What news?”
“The king wants me to go to Kalopsia and be part of his newly formed royal court. He wants my father to pass his title to me.”
“O-kay,” I said slowly.
I knew about Kalopsia, but only in really general terms. I knew a bit of the history and that they had a new king and that Lucas’ family were once part of the court.
“So what does Clarissa turning you down have to do with that?”
“Father won’t let me go unless I’m at least engaged,” he mumbled, dropping his head again.
“What? Why?”
Lucas sighed. “They think the island is overrun with desperate gold-digging wo
men who will take one look at my title and my trust fund and seduce me into marrying them.”
I snorted. “Your parents do realize we’re living in the twenty-first century, right?”
“You’ve met my parents,” he said. “Is it so hard to believe they would say something like that?”
I sighed. “No, you’re right, but Lucas, you’re twenty-seven years old and if the king is summoning you, I don’t think your father has a say in it.”
“You’d think that,” he sighed. “But you know my father. He made a ruling, and that’s that. Clarissa turned me down and now I can’t go.”
“Did you want to go?” I asked, curious.
I would have thought Lucas would be relieved to not be forced so far out of his comfort zone.
He sat up again and focused on me. “That’s the thing,” he said, reaching for the water again. “I didn’t think I wanted to go but then Mother and Father said I couldn’t go unless I was married and going to Kalopsia suddenly became a lot more attractive.”
“Don’t tell me you actually stood up to them?” I said, impressed.
“No,” he sighed. “I didn’t say anything to them. At that point I thought Clarissa would say yes and it would be a moot point.”
“And now?”
“Now I want to go and I can’t.”
“Of course you can. I don’t think your father can overrule a king.”
“But can you imagine the fallout? I just can’t deal with that.”
“Even if it means not going to Kalopsia?”
Lucas sighed. “Even then,” he replied.
I felt bad for him—not about the Clarissa thing; I was positively doing a happy dance over that—I felt bad because for the first time, Lucas wanted to do something for himself and he was being denied. I wanted to go to his father and tell him to step off and let Lucas go, but it wasn’t my battle to fight.
“Couldn’t you just…go for a couple of weeks and check it out?” I asked.
“I wish I could,” he replied, fiddling with the water bottle.