by Jess Riley
Natalie and Harper were waiting to order a drink in a throng of people pressed against the bar. Someone had ordered a complicated cocktail, which the bartender frantically mixed and poured and measured while the queue bottlenecked behind him. “You want to try one of the back bars?” Natalie shouted.
“Yeah, I’m getting claustrophobic!”
They wove their way through the mass of people, past the second bar next to the shuffleboard table to the cozy, well-lit bar near the back patio. It was a mild night, and the garage door was up to provide access to the patio. People milled about under the portable propane heat towers, smoking and telling animated stories and checking their phones. “I was starting to feel like the kid brother in A Christmas Story when he was all bundled up in the snowsuit,” Natalie said, breathing a sigh of relief when they snagged a vacant stool at the bar.
“I can’t put my arms down!”
“You can put your arms down when you get to school! Want to sit?” Natalie gestured to the lone bar stool.
“No, you sit,” Harper said.
“Maybe we should go to The Algoma Club. Is there a band playing tonight?”
“I’ll go if it’s the Dead Horses. Just sit, seriously. I need to stand because I sat all day.”
“Here,” someone said from behind them, “Sit on this.” A second stool was shoved their way.
They turned together to thank their mystery seat benefactor and Harper’s smile faded—it was He Who Shan’t Be Named, looking distressingly good. It felt as if someone had suddenly poured a bucket of seltzer and Pop Rocks in her chest. Natalie scowled. “Sit on this? Nice.”
“Sorry, it was the first thing I could think of.”
“You generally shouldn’t say the first thing you think of.”
He paused for a moment, staring into the distance behind Harper’s shoulder. “Sorry, the second and third things I thought of sucked, too. Anyway, what are you guys up to tonight? Can I get you a drink?”
“No, thanks,” Harper quickly said, “We weren’t going to stay long.”
Natalie didn’t say anything, perhaps because she was too broke to decline a free drink, even one from her best friend’s sketchy ex-boyfriend.
“Come on, at least stay for one drink. Let me get you something. They’ve got Hometown Blonde on tap, and Serendipity.”
“Serendipity?”
The bartender, who’d been waiting on their order, jumped in to help close the sale. “It’s a seasonal sour brown ale made from cranberries, apples, and cherries. It’s pretty fucking good. New Glarus wouldn’t steer you wrong.”
“How’s the lemon berry shandy?” Harper asked, nodding at one of the tappers.
The bartender made a face around the toothpick he’d been chewing. “Not one of my favorites. Too watery. I wouldn’t even call it a beer, really. It’s more like a shitty Zima.”
Natalie caught Harper’s eye and shrugged. “It’s up to you. I know you’re not going to do anything stupid.”
The bartender began to fill a pint glass, angled at the tap, with frothy, brown Guinness for another customer. “Or I could make you a Peanut Butter Cup.”
“What’s that?”
“Half chocolate stout, half peanut butter porter.” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and sniffed. People were piling up at the end of the bar, waving ten dollar bills and shooting them cranky looks.
“Ah, you found my weakness,” Harper finally conceded, feeling magnanimous and brave and totally unlike the kind of person who used to wait for phone calls or cry after one too many glasses of wine.
Natalie ordered a Skinnygirl Tangerine Vodka and seltzer, with a lime wedge, because she was on Weight Watchers again. “So what brings you out tonight, Sam?” she breezily asked He Who Shan’t Be Named, temporarily forgetting her commitment to his nickname (or making a point of it, Harper couldn’t tell).
“Ah, you know, the usual. It’s too nice to stay home.”
“Translation: I’m too young and single to stay home,” Harper said, raising an eyebrow. “So who are you here with?” she added.
“Chase, Dylan, Tyler and some girl Chase just started dating.” Natalie used to call Tyler “Ugly Adam Levine.” Most of Sam’s friends had treated Harper dismissively, probably because they knew she wasn’t the only girl in his life, but Ugly Adam Levine had always been kind to her, asking her about her family, her job, the latest movie she’d streamed on Netflix. She glanced around but failed to see any of them, which made her wonder if Sam had seen her first and followed her to the back bar.
The bartender finished pouring and placed their drinks on three coasters before them. Sam handed him a twenty and told him to keep the change.
“This isn’t bad,” Harper said after sampling her beer. Natalie sipped her own drink, eyes scanning the room, still visibly annoyed.
“It’s good to see you,” Sam said. He sounded heartfelt and sincere, and he looked even better in a snug, vintage plaid shirt with mother-of-pearl inlay on the buttons. He had sand-colored hair, deep brown eyes, and a cleft in his chin like an action figure. He’d played baseball in college and still played ball on local summer leagues, giving him a lithe, muscular body somewhere between quarterback and swimmer. He had freckles on his arms as well as his back, Harper knew. She’d once taken a pen to them, connecting the dots to draw an ice cream cone.
“You, too,” Harper said, and she meant it. “How’s work? No trips this weekend?”
“No, I’m off this weekend. I’m doing the Chicago loop these days, commuter flights between Appleton and O’Hare during the week.”
“Oh. No more Atlanta?” Harper asked, careful to keep her voice steady. She noticed he was wearing the thick leather wrist cuff she’d gotten him for his birthday last June. It made him look more like the lead singer in a decent-ish cover band than a guy who ferried businessmen back and forth through the clouds all week.
“No more Atlanta,” Sam said. His eyes fell and he swirled his beer around the glass.
“Well, that’s good,” Natalie interjected loudly, her tone clipped. “Fewer things to lie about.” She looked at Harper, about to say something else when a woman in a drapey red top with shirring on the shoulders came up behind her and tapped her on the arm.
“Natalie?”
Nat spun around. It took a moment for her mood to cycle through irritated to surprised to genuinely pleased to see this person. “Sharon! Oh my gosh! I was just thinking about you.” Sharon Keating ran a small public relations consulting firm in town. Her son played with Natalie’s son Brandon on the same T-ball team. She’d recently divorced, so she tended to be out on the town more than usual these days.
Sharon leaned toward Harper and raised her voice above the din: “Mind if I steal her for a minute? I’m going to try to talk her into working for me.”
Natalie’s mouth fell open. “Really?”
“Yeah. Kim Frederick went on maternity leave, didn’t I tell you? And it looks like she’s not coming back. You minored in marketing, right?”
Natalie nodded vigorously before holding up an index finger. “Excuse me.” She turned back to Harper. “I’ll only be a minute.” She looked at Sam. “Don’t assume this means she’s going home with you. Don’t roofie her drink, and don’t be a dick.”
Sam laughed defensively. After Natalie became engrossed in conversation with Sharon, he said to Harper, “She hasn’t changed. And neither have you. Still the prettiest girl in the room.”
“Ha-ha.” Her cheeks flared with self-conscious heat. It was exactly the kind of thing a man who’d led a double life for nearly a year would say, and she hated that part of her still liked it, maybe just a little. With Natalie focused elsewhere, Harper began to feel exposed. She wished she hadn’t worn the yellow, ruffled sundress with the skinny, shoulder-baring straps, or the red platform wedges with the ankle-tie ribbons. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea—staying here, having a drink with Sam like it was still last August, like she’d never found those emails, like Atl
anta never even happened. He was looking at her with those sad eyes again: I know you. I hurt you. I’m sorry. She cleared her throat. She could be strong, easy-going, cool. More than six months had passed—that was enough time gone by to try friendship with an ex, right? Things were different now. She was different now. “Any interesting stories from the road? I mean air?”
He smiled, and the deep dimples she’d adored appeared on his cheeks. “Always. There was this one woman on my flight last week …”
While he talked, she listened and nodded, laughing at all the right parts, but her mind began to drift. He ordered them another round of drinks, and she tried to place her feelings. She didn’t want him back exactly, but her eyes kept returning to the hands that had absently stroked her hair while they watched TV on the couch, the arms she’d nestled into late at night.
She thought of how she hadn’t seen her pretend boyfriend at their intersection in nearly a week, not since she’d missed him at Kwik Trip. It was silly, anyway. He was a figment of her imagination. A daydream, a mirage, a distraction. Spring semester would be over in a few weeks, and she probably wouldn’t see him all summer … and who knows if she’d see him in fall?
He was a pipe dream. Pun maybe intended.
Recognize what’s happening here, she told herself. But recognizing it was one thing; doing the right thing was something else entirely.
PART THREE
Zach
“I DON’T KNOW if I could be friends with you if you wore pants like that,” Josh said, nodding his head at a slender young man to their right. The guy was sipping a neon blue drink through a tiny straw, and below his white shirt and the peach-colored, nubby scarf coiled around his neck, he was wearing the tightest skinny jeans Zach had ever seen. They were bright green, and they looked nearly spray-painted on.
“Dude looks like a fruit roll-up.”
Zach snorted, still trying to get the bartender’s attention amidst a pushing, shoving herd of similarly frustrated patrons. “Jesus Christ, remind me why we came here again? I feel like I’m in some third-world country waiting for bags of rice to be tossed out the back of a United Nations truck.”
“Because this place is a pastry box,” Josh said, “strumpet city.” He was still staring with wonder at the effeminate man in the slim green jeans. “Guy’s gotta have Low T. That’s the only explanation for why a dude would wear those pants. And that scarf.”
“What’s the explanation for the disaster you’re wearing?”
Josh glanced down at his plaid shorts and a T-shirt that read, STARE AT ME IN DISGUST (if you want to blow me). “What’s wrong with this? I look sick!”
Zach rolled his eyes, finally flagging down one of the harried bartenders. He ordered two Newcastles to keep it simple. “I think you put that on so you could match this Kid Rock song.”
Josh shrugged. “I guess it looked better on your mother’s bedroom floor. And what the fuck kind of shirt do you have on?”
Zach was wearing a gray T-shirt featuring two iPhone text bubbles that read:
-Let’s talk about potassium
-K
“What? It’s clever.” He handed Josh his pint of beer.
“First of all, it was a gift from your Mom. Second, it’s fuckin huge on you! What is that, an XXL?” Josh started laughing.
This was true on both accounts. He’d tried washing and drying it several times on high heat, but to no avail. Still, it was a clever shirt. But definitely too big. Whenever he wore it he had to keep his arms down because it got really drafty otherwise.
“Uh-oh,” Josh said, eyes locked on someone behind Zach’s left shoulder, his expression freezing. “Don’t turn around.”
Zach turned around and it was as if someone suddenly reached into his chest and squeezed his heart. Andrea Wallace was standing in the crowd behind them, chatting with a friend and sipping a rum and coke. She was wearing a pink halter top that exposed her shapely, tanned shoulders, her hair pinned up the way he’d always liked: kind of messy, with a few long, loose strands. He used to kiss the back of her neck when she wore her hair like that. The light from the popcorn machine behind her gave her a warm, backlit glow—almost an aura. If this were a scene in a movie, an orchestra would swell, or the sad indie folk-rock would begin: “No One’s Gonna Love You” by Band of Horses, maybe “The Engine Driver” by The Decemberists or—why beat around the bush: “Sometime Around Midnight” by The Airborne Toxic Event. But the only option here was the jukebox, currently playing dubstep. A group of girls was trying to dance to it, waving their drinks and head-banging. They looked like slutty robots with dying batteries.
She hadn’t seen him. “I told you we should have gone to The Algoma Club.”
“I feel you dude, but I don’t want to go see some band I don’t even know and stand there going deaf and shouting, ‘What?’ and shit anytime someone talks to me. Let’s stay for one, chill for a bit, enjoy the moment, then we’ll hit Peabody’s.”
Zach took a long swig of his beer. He didn’t know how anyone could enjoy the moment, unless they’d always wondered what it felt like to be a sober, irritated pinball.
“Fuck it, broski. Let’s shoot some darts,” Josh said, but when they squeezed into the game room, all of the dart boards were already in use. So they returned to the main bar, wedged themselves miserably into a corner near the ATM machine, and drank their beers quickly so they could leave.
And then Zach felt a small, cool hand on his arm. “Zach?” He took a deep breath, forced a smile, and turned.
“Hey, Andrea. What’s up? You look great.”
She went in for a hug which he awkwardly returned one-handed. “So do you.” When she pulled away, she studied him with concern. He felt lightheaded. “Gosh, it’s been too long. How are you, really?”
Ugh. He hated this. It felt like a test to see if his heart was healed, if he still missed her (ostensibly because she was so missable), if she could stop feeling guilty.
When he was nine, he’d fallen off his bike and broken his arm; his panicked father, first on the scene of the screaming, had attempted to assess the damage by frantically bending and rotating and twisting his arm, which only made it worse. That’s what it felt like Andrea Wallace was doing to his heart right now.
“I’m great!” he said, going for upbeat casual and landing somewhere between bitter and crazy. He debated telling her he’d sold his novel but ultimately decided against it, because he didn’t want to look like he was break-up bragging to boost his self-esteem. It was the literary version of leasing a bright orange Dodge Challenger and joining a gym right after being dumped.
“Still working at …?” She never could bring herself to say the name of his employer.
“Yep, yep.” He nodded and took a long drink of beer. Where were the goddam giant Hobbit eagles when you needed them? Josh was talking to a cute brunette in braids, oblivious to his roommate’s escalating discomfort. “Well, also I sold my novel.”
Motherfu—!!!!
“Zach, really? Oh, that’s wonderful!” She hugged him again, and when she pulled away he felt lightheaded from her perfume. “Tell me all about it!”
And he did, and she seemed genuinely happy for him. He didn’t dare ask about her new job because she’d know he was snooping on Facebook, so he simply asked, “You? How’s work?”
“Oh, I got a new job! At Aurora. Better patient load, better hours, better benefits.” He felt himself zoning out while she told him about it, reflecting with sardonic wonder that this beautiful girl making polite, distant small talk used to send him the filthiest texts while he was at work. He felt heat creep up the back of his neck at the thought, forced himself to wipe the memory clean, and concluded that a pretty crummy version of hell would be to relive this moment over and over and over.
When she finished talking about her new coworkers and shorter commute to work, he changed the subject. Again, going for casual and sticking the landing much closer to aggressively insecure: “So how’s Derek?”
/> Strangely, Zach actually found himself hoping she and Derek were still together, because it would be somehow worse if she were single and still didn’t want to be with him.
“He’s great!” She pointed to the other end of the bar, where her boyfriend was talking with friends and watching her carefully. He nodded gruffly when she gave a small wave. “He’s over there, actually. Speaking of, I should get back to him.” She paused, gazing at Zach thoughtfully. “It was great to see you, Zach. Congratulations on the book. Let me know when it’s out! I want a signed copy.” She took a small sip of her drink and added, “For what it’s worth, you know I always loved your writing.”
“Sure.” He nodded, willing her to leave already, to stop looking at him like he was some shaking little dog in a dirty cage on a commercial narrated by Sarah McLachlan. At least she didn’t hug him a third time, because then his heart really might explode, or his brain might melt and leak out his ear.
Josh stopped chatting with the girl in braids and returned to Zach’s side. “Just thought of a good one for Pretentious Asshole Bingo: Person who starts sentences with, ‘That being said.’”
Zach sighed. “How about a person who starts sentences with, ‘For what it’s worth …’”
Then, from somewhere behind him: “Hey, if it isn’t Steinbeck 2.0!”