Bar Crawl

by Andrea Randall

  “Brilliant. Fucking seriously. This is going to be so good.” My knees bounced up and down as I waited. “Start with one about people you’ve seen a lot of.”

  CJ looked around for a minute. “It’s too quiet in here,” he mumbled.

  Of course it was. CJ’s life was largely spent in bars and/or behind a drum set. The thick silence of my home was probably choking him. I bounced off the couch and over to my iHome. Pushing “play,” I wasn’t in the least surprised to find my living room suddenly filled with ‘90s easy listening. Tonic’s “If You Could Only See,” hummed through the space as I returned to my seat.

  “What?” I questioned as CJ stared at me with a curious look.

  “No,” he said.

  “No?”

  “What the hell is this?” He pointed toward the direction of my speakers.

  I shrugged. “You play your ‘90s music on stage, I listen to my ‘90s music in here. It’s a romantic song. It sets the mood. Read, Kane.”

  His eyes widened. “You know my last name?”

  “I searched for drummer, Cape Cod, and Last Call. I found your last name and information about you and your cousin on there.” I grinned and winked.

  “Sneak,” he teased.

  “Read.” I had loads of questions for him about his cousin, but I was significantly more interested in CJ’s word talents.

  He sighed. “Fine. Okay. So…don’t, like, judge this, okay? It’s just a rough dra—”

  “I know how the process works, CJ. I’m a reader and an English teacher and a general patriot of words. Please stop stalling and read.”

  CJ cracked his knuckles and looked down at his screen. “This bit isn’t in third person omniscient, just to warn you. I’m going to rework it. Anyway…” He took a deep breath and started in. “He wasn’t that big of a guy, but I could tell he was strong. His skin struggled to contain the muscles that seemed to be trying to beat themselves out. I probably had him by about three or four inches in height, but the anger that always seemed to linger in his jaw told me not to push anything with him should it come to it. Adrian, my friend Ember had called him. She fooled around with him for a while, then didn’t, then did. When it was finally done between the two of them, I hadn’t seen him in a while. But, that night, he was back, and Ember would be nowhere near here. She and her boyfriend, Bo, had just left for San Diego to record music full time. I wasn’t sure if Adrian knew this, though, as he leaned against the bar, casting sideways glances across the entire room.”

  “How’d you know that backstory?” I questioned in a whisper.

  CJ shrugged. “I got lucky, I guess. That stuff about Bo and Ember is true. Ember’s best friends with my cousin, Regan.”

  “The one who is engaged to your best friend, Georgia?”

  CJ nodded.

  “Cozy,” I remarked.

  He rolled his eyes. “Ember hates me.” He grinned and continued with his story before I could ask for more details.

  “Marley had been working at Finnegan’s for a few months, and had met Adrian several months before. She was still new the last time I’d seen him here. I was sure it would be his last visit to Barnstable, but there he was, chatting up Marley. Still looking around. Eventually, between sets, my curiosity got the best of me. Usually one to sit back, I’d seen enough of this guy in action to know he needed a good social barometer reading before he’d be allowed to consume much more liquor…”

  For the next hour, CJ read to me from his manuscript. Sometimes he’d read a whole section, and sometimes he’d just give me pieces, claiming that he hadn’t ironed it out yet, or that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to include that particular story.

  In truth, I was completely infatuated on every possible level. From the way his voice smoothed as he considered his own words, to the stories themselves, I was blown away. He didn’t have a stock list of adjectives and potential stories that he pieced together in random assembly. CJ had crafted stories that considered facial expressions, body language, frequency at which bar, and what people ordered when—and that was just for starters. The maniac drummer who seemed to have a hard time focusing on any one person in the crowd was anything but. He considered everyone and was interested in their stories. Enough to write happily ever afters and tragedies into each one.

  “Did that kid really die in the car accident?” My lip trembled as CJ closed his laptop.

  He tilted his head to the side and winced. “Yeah, that part was real. The details are taken from lots of stories like that that I’ve seen over the years, though. I didn’t want to offend anyone by writing someone’s direct story, but the tale needed to be told. Bar life isn’t all glamorous.”

  I snorted. “I’ve always thought it was anything but.”

  CJ grinned. “Some of it is great. Take away binge drinking, okay? Going out and having a few drinks with your friends at the end of a long day or week is great. Inhibitions are just slightly lowered to let people laugh. People don’t laugh enough.”

  “You laugh all the time,” I countered. I realized, looking back, that I’d always seen CJ with a smile on his face or in the middle of a laugh.

  He shrugged. “I love my life, Frankie. I get to do everything I’ve always wanted.”

  He looked off for a moment, gazing just past my shoulder and seemingly out my french doors. I knew there was nothing of consequence back there—nothing ever was. He was looking somewhere else. Sometime else.

  “What else do you want?” I questioned quietly, shifting slightly so my knee grazed the denim on his thigh.

  CJ drew his eyes back to mine, swallowing hard before his gravel-like tone returned. “You.”

  I had no moisture left in my mouth to swallow. “I think that’s been…established. But why?”

  “I don’t know.” He exhaled and looked down.

  “Thanks,” I mused.

  “No. Not like that, Frankie.” He looked up with a plea in his eyes. “Jesus, I wish you’d stop shitting on yourself.”

  I sighed. “I don’t… I don’t shit on myself, CJ. I’m just observant. You’ve never been, um, around anyone who wasn’t a breathing version of a Barbie doll.”

  CJ’s face contorted. “What the hell are you talking about? Oh,” he cut himself off as his eyebrows lifted, “I get it. You just don’t pay attention to when I’ve been with anyone who is like you. You made me out to be the guy you thought I should be by paying attention only to the things that would fit in that box.”

  My jaw dropped. “I don’t do that!”

  He laughed. The roaring room-filling laugh that he alone owned. “You do. I’m telling you. I find all kinds of women beautiful, Frankie. You have a slammin’ body. That aside? Your personality is…”

  “Is what?” My heart sped up, leaving me to take an extra breath.

  Without another word, CJ’s face seemed to pale slightly and he shot to standing—letting his laptop slide onto the couch. “I need some air.”

  “Are you okay?” I stood, studying his suddenly panicked face.

  “Yeah, just…” He paced the length of the living room before spotting the door he’d stared out of only minutes before. “I’ll be right back,” he huffed as he barreled through the door and into my backyard.

  The confusion and tension of the day caught up with me, and I collapsed back onto the couch, catching my breath and watching the behemoth of embodied sex pace erratically around my backyard.

  CJ

  Shit. Fuck. Shit.

  I flattened a good square of perfectly mowed grass in Frankie’s backyard before having enough sense to reach for my cell phone. I couldn’t turn and go back into the house after making such an ass out of myself. Not yet anyway. So, I dialed my emergency number.

  “Hellooo,” an overly chipper voice sang into the phone.

  “G,” I nearly shouted back.

  “CJ,” Georgia greeted, “what’s up?”

  It was clear she didn’t hear the panic in my voice. Why would she? I’d never shown an ounce of pan
ic in her presence in the ten years we’d known each other. Evidently I was all about showing things about myself today.

  “I’m…in trouble. With a girl.” I ran a hand through my hair and forced myself to sit in the still-warm grass. The sun had only begun to think about setting.

  I heard what I figured was a stainless steel bowl crash into the matching stainless steel counter in her bakery’s kitchen. It was still early in California, and Georgia would be working at her bakery, getting ready for the Sunday “post-church sugar praise” as she liked to call it. “Christ, did you get someone pregnant?”

  I laughed once, loud enough to scare a few birds out of a nearby bush, before growling. “No. Jesus. No.”

  Georgia took an audible breath; I could nearly feel the relief extend the three thousand miles between us. “Care to catch me up?” she asked with a hint of her own anxiety.

  “It’s Frankie. That girl I told you about.”

  “The one you stalked?”

  “What is it with women and that term? I just—”

  “Stalked her at work. Continue,” Georgia chuckled, “did she call the cops on you?”

  “No. I’m at her house. I came here this afternoon, and we had dinner, and I read her some of my book.” I said it all in one breath, and I still couldn’t believe I was stringing all of those words together.

  Georgia was silent for a long few seconds. “You. I. Your. What?”

  “See?” I nearly begged. I wished so badly that she was sitting with me on our old stools at Dunes, talking through this.

  “I don’t… I don’t really know what to tell you. You told her about the book. That’s… Wow. It took you a year to even tell me that you liked writing, CJ.” She had a resigned and almost cautionary tone. One I wasn’t familiar with.

  “What? What’s with that tone?” I pushed.

  “Are you ready for this?”

  “For what?”

  Georgia sighed, and the waves crashing in the background on her end told me she’d stepped outside. I’d have bet anything she was sitting on the split-rail fence across the street from her bakery. She liked to think there. “For being an adult. A relationship.”

  “Whoa,” I stood, “who said anything about a relationship?”

  “You did.”

  I looked around in confusion, knowing Georgia often spoke in riddles a la the Mad Hatter, but was still off-balance. I definitely never used the word relationship. It was taboo.

  “Stop pacing,” she instructed as if she were right next to me. “You’ve spent more than a few hours with her, shared a meal with her at her house and have read her some of your book? Why is it that you call me to spell things out for you that you’re perfectly capable of reading yourself?”

  “I don’t…ugh,” I grumbled. “I don’t know. I like her.”

  “Yep. Hence all the date-like things you’ve done with her. Sigh,” she said. “My little CJ is growing right the fuck up.”

  The tension broke in my chest as I chanced a glance back through the door and into Frankie’s living room. She was sitting on the couch, picking her nails as she seemed to make an effort to look anywhere but where I was standing.

  “Wait,” Georgia interrupted. “Where is she now?”

  “Inside. I’m outside in her backyard,” I admitted sheepishly.

  “You know, Kane,” she huffed. “Why do y—no. It’s okay. You’re going to clean this up and apologize for however it was that you exited her house, because I know, knowing you, it was far from graceful, then you’re going to hang the hell onto her until Regan and I can get there to check her out, okay?”

  Georgia was set to marry my cousin in two weeks in a wedding on the Cape Cod beach. Georgia didn’t have much family to speak of—besides her mom—and all of Regan’s family still lived on the peninsula. Being the best man was really the best of both worlds. I felt like I would be fully standing up there for the both of them.

  “Well, I don’t think we need to turn your wedding weekend into anything but that. Your weekend.” I smiled broadly at the thought of seeing Georgia marry the only guy in the world good enough for her.

  “Whatever,” she snipped. “Just go back in her house and un-make an ass out of yourself.”

  I laughed again, not surprised that she vocalized the same thought about my behavior I’d assigned to myself. “I miss you.”

  Her typically sharp voice softened. “I miss you, too, CJ. I’ll see you soon, k?”

  “Yeah. Say hi to Regan for me.”

  I walked up Frankie’s back steps and quietly reentered her house. She was still sitting on the couch, looking quietly patient.

  “Hi,” she said, lifting her eyebrows. “Everything…okay?”

  I took my seat next to her and clasped her hand. Her skin felt cold, which was impossible on this extra-warm day. I cringed internally at the thought of how sweaty my palms must be. Amazingly, a talk with my best friend was exactly what I needed to reassure me that my compass was, in fact, oriented correctly.

  “I’m sorry,” I started. “I just had a little freak out there.”

  “Who were you on the phone with?” she questioned innocently.

  “Georgia.” I didn’t hesitate to say her name. I wasn’t hiding anything from Frankie. Especially about Georgia. I knew lots of girls found it weird—or threatening—that my best friend was female, but I’d already been honest with Frankie about G’s gender, and her importance to me.

  Frankie nodded slowly. “Did she help? With…whatever was going on?” I could tell there were a million follow up questions brewing on her tongue by the way her eyes were lit up, but she was holding back.

  “Don’t expect too much from me,” I blurted out, feeling sweat form between my shoulder blades. “I mean, I won’t sleep around, but—”

  “‘Hey Jealousy,’” she interrupted.

  “What? No, I’m not—”

  “No.” She smiled and stood, walking to her iHome. “The things you just said are almost identical to the lyrics to ‘Hey Jealousy,’” by Gin Blossoms.” A few seconds later, the familiar tune was streaming through her house. “Did you do that on purpose?”

  I chuckled. “No. I didn’t.”

  “What?” she teased. “They’re good.”

  I nodded. “You’re right. They are, but, what I’m trying—”

  “Shit. I’m sorry.” She sighed and ran both hands through her hair. “You were trying to be serious and I got all…whatever the hell this is.” She dropped her hands into her lap and interlaced her fingers, taking a deep breath as she watched me.

  I took a deep breath. “It’s clear we like each other, and it’s clear that we’re both nervous about it—for very different reasons. What I’m trying to do is plead my case a little. I know how it looks, but I wouldn’t sleep around on you. Anytime I’ve ever had an actual girlfriend, I haven’t slept around on them.”

  Frankie put up her hands, looking defensive with wide eyes. “I’m not asking to be your girlfriend.”

  I sighed. “I know. Ugh. I’m just saying that any time I have had girlfriends—”

  “So that’s more of an in-between activity? The sleeping around?” Frankie’s sarcasm was thick and caused me to grin and feel regret at the same time.

  “I guess.”

  “Sorry,” she cut in. “I know you’re just out there having fun. I need to get off my judgy-wudgy soapbox.”

  Judgy-wudgy? Even her made-up words were insanely cute.

  “You’re right, though.” I reached out and touched her knee. “I’m ready for more. But that’s why I said that you shouldn’t expect too much from me…right away, at least. I’ll screw up. A lot. I don’t know how or when or why, but, it’s not in my nature to be anything but selfish. I…” I trailed off, wondering when this leaky valve of honesty would stop. It did feel good, though, so I kind of hoped it wouldn’t.

  Frankie placed her hand on mine, moving her thumb down the length of one of my fingers. “I believe you. And I know that sounds a
bsurd, given all the shit I give you, but…”

  “But what?”

  “A man doesn’t simply write a book in order to get in someone’s pants. Well, they might—I do know lots of Lit majors—but you? No. That’s not your style. And I’ve found that, in general, artists are either in touch with their emotions or running away from them.”

  “Isn’t running a bad thing?” I huffed.

  She shook her head, moving her hand to let her fingertips graze my jaw. “You’d think, but in reality it still shows you’re aware that you have emotions. Big ones. And you’re acting on them. Most people let the heavy swallow them. Or they ignore it. I figured you’d be in the latter, but I saw so much of you in that book, CJ, in different guys you wrote about, and even the girls. It’s like you not only watched them carefully, you fully put yourself in their shoes and created different realities for yourself.”

  My chest pounded as Frankie dissected my brain. “I want to run from this conversation,” I admitted.

  “Why do I scare you?” she asked, tilting her head to the side and scrunching her eyebrows as if it were absurd.

  “Why do I scare you?” I retorted, though I assumed I knew where her fear came from.

  Frankie sat back with a sardonic smile. “Well, even you had to open your speech a few minutes ago with the words, ‘I won’t sleep around.’ I’ve never seen you with the same girl twice, so when you started looking at me, I did all I could to look away. I didn’t want to be just another fun night for you. I didn’t even want a fun night with you because of all the other women I’d seen you with.”

  “Just to clarify,” I cut in. “I don’t have sex with every girl I leave the bar with.”

  She snorted. “Give me a percentage.”

  I rolled my eyes and growled. “Maybe seventy-five? Stop judging me,” I sort of snapped.

  “Oh, get over yourself. People judge each other. Period. That’s how we decide who we want to talk to, be friends with, have relationships with. We judge what we see and hear and piece it together.” She crossed her arms in front of her almost defiantly.