by Audrey Bell
When Sam met Vanessa, he stopped doing things like driving over to Cambridge to fuck around with Harvard kids.
She had seemed to be so good for him. I closed my eyes and stared up at the ceiling. How did someone who made Sam—my genetic clone—seem responsible and sane as a nineteen-year-old kid turn into the kind of disaster who drank or drugged herself to the point of being hospitalized.
I started to feel the itch up my spine—the desire to run as fast as I could, just to get away from Boston. I’d go anywhere else.
I’d go somewhere people couldn’t find me.
January
Christian ditched work for his girlfriend on Friday and Darrin, who just laughed whenever I got anything wrong, showed me how to make drinks before we opened on Saturday.
It poured rain outside, and I liked the sound of it against the windows and roof while I tried to remember the ratios for each drink.
“Anyone who orders that deserves to have it fucked up,” I told Darrin when he showed me how he made Long Island Iced Tea for the fifth time.
“I call it Strong Island Iced Tea.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Christian’s right about you. You are kind of mean.”
“He told you I was mean?”
Darrin just grinned.
I sipped my soda while I practiced. I was starting to feel less crazed.
I’d made enough money my first week to feel sane. I mean, I had three figures in my bank account. I just needed to breathe and focus and I could find a way to not end up homeless.
“Is he coming back tonight?”
“Who? Christian?” he asked. “I think so.”
“Where was he? Kevin said something about his girlfriend…”
“Something came up.”
“With his girlfriend, right?”
“No.” He started to stay something and stopped himself. “I don’t know.”
“Kind of like his girlfriend?” I asked casually, like I didn’t care one way or another. But Darrin didn’t smile. He shook his head.
“Vanessa…” he sighed. “It’s really complicated. But she’s not his girlfriend, no. She…you know, I can’t really get into it with you. I don’t…it’s just…” Darrin grinned sheepishly. “Chris is a private guy.”
“No, it’s totally cool,” I said pretending not to be insanely curious. “Just wondering. Sorry. Is she okay?”
I asked that softly, because I’d felt sort of like a monster for thinking about how much I liked the eyes of a guy who had a hospitalized girlfriend.
“I think so.”
The door closed and we both turned to see Christian. It must’ve been obvious we were talking about him because his jaw was knotted and his eyes were flashing.
“Evening,” he said shortly, walking in the lurching way that he did to the back room.
I turned my head and watched him go.
Darrin whistled, shaking his head. “Someone’s in a bad mood,” he whispered to me.
The evening was slower than most—Sundays were like that, Christian said.
“You want a ride back?” Darrin asked me as he locked up the cash register.
“That…”
“I’ll take her,” Christian said shortly. He hadn’t spoken to me all night and he’d barely spoken to customers, prompting them to order with a jerk of chin instead of his usual friendly, ‘what can I do you for?’
“It’s not a problem,” Darrin said. “Really.”
“I got it,” Christian said shortly. “Harvard’s on my way home.”
“Sure,” Darrin said neutrally. “Night, January.”
I watched Christian’s movements, precise and deliberate. He knew where everything went. He moved fluidly. He limped slightly, but still seemed so graceful.
“What?” he demanded when he saw me staring.
“Nothing. Sorry.” I looked away. “I’ll meet you out back.”
He unlocked his car—the battered old Jeep I’d insulted the first night I met him—and I got in before he reached me.
“Is Vanessa okay?” I asked, as he started the car.
He jerked to look at me and I jumped. “Who told you about Vanessa?”
“Nobody.”
“Darrin?”
“I asked. Sorry. I shouldn’t…”
“It’s fine,” he said shortly. “She’s fine.”
I bit my lip. He seemed distracted as we drove. “Sorry,” I said eventually. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
He exhaled a long breath. “No, it’s fine. Sorry I snapped.” He looked over at me, and his jaw was still knotted and his thick-lashed blue eyes were still stormy. He fixed his gaze back on the road. “She’s my brother’s ex…or his girlfriend. Whatever you call that. They were dating when he died.” He rubbed his jawline and gripped the steering wheel a bit harder. “She’s been totally fucked up ever since I…” he cut himself off, with a shake of his head. “Why am I telling you this?”
“You can tell me.”
“You have enough to worry about.”
I frowned and adjusted my seatbelt. “Not really. I mean, it’s not like anybody tells me anything I can worry about.” I pulled my ears. “My parents don’t talk to me.”
“Well, that’s shitty,” he glanced back at me. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine. For legal purposes, you know?”
“Still sounds pretty shitty to me,” he said. “I haven’t seen your mother or father being harassed by photographers.”
I pursed my lips. “Well, I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Yeah?” he asked. He smiled wryly—a cocky little grin that he probably had ample opportunity to practice when he was a star forward for the BU hockey team. “Try me.”
“We were talking about Vanessa,” I said.
“Which was a mistake,” he said coolly.
“You know what? Next time, just let Darrin drive me back,” I said. I felt like a bitch as soon as I said it, but Christian laughed at me.
“It’s on my way. Not his.” He looked at me again. We were close to school, and I was itching to get out of his car, away from his searching eyes, and rasping voice. “I don’t see why he should go out of his way. I’m the one who couldn’t say no, remember?”
“God, you’ve got a real Jesus complex.”
He snorted. “Because I won’t let my friend pay for my mistakes?”
“I’m your mistake? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“That came out wrong.”
“I’ll have you know I’m doing a very good job. And—”
“That’s not what I meant, January.”
“And we were just fine when you ditched us last second on a Friday.”
“Oh, yeah, I really wanted to be spending my fucking night in the hospital with—” he had snapped and he stopped himself. He took a breath.
“Say it,” I said. “Don’t hold back now.”
“You’re a real bitch, you know that? It’s not what I meant. I said so. You want a handwritten apology or are you going to act like an adult and get over it? Nobody else that I can see has done anything to help you out. So, give me a break. I misspoke.”
“Whatever, Chris,” I muttered mutinously. “Why don’t you let me out? I can walk from here.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Let me out.”
“No,” he said.
I stared at him.
“I have to drive up to your dorm to turn around anyways,” he said.
I seethed during the final minute and a half to the god-awful dorm I shared with that cretin and her imbecilic hanger-on boyfriend otherwise known as my ex.
Christian smirked at me when I got out of the car. “You want to talk about it sometime, let me know.”
I couldn’t help myself. “If I were you, I really wouldn’t hold my breath on that.”
I closed the door hard, maybe a little bit too hard.
He rolled down the window, grinning even wider. “I wasn’t pl
anning on it.”
Asshole, I thought, as I traipsed back to my dorm. He was really, really just such an asshole.
Christian
Vanessa had moved to an inpatient rehab facility near Beacon Hill, and I was almost positive that my parents were paying for it after the hospital had failed to rouse her parents.
I asked my father, flat-out, whether he was paying for it, and he gave me a long, hard look that told me just how little he thought of my interest in his finances.
Still, I pushed. “You should let me chip in, if you are. I mean, it’s my fault she’s there. I should be responsible.”
He snarled. “You didn’t make that girl overdose.”
I was sitting at the kitchen table—it was long after dinner, my mother was in bed—and I hadn’t touched the lasagna my father insisted on reheating after I told him repeatedly I wasn’t hungry. “How much is it costing you?”
“You did not make that girl overdose, Christian,” my father said. “Do you understand me?”
“I’ll write you a check for what I can,” I pressed. “Dad, it’s not right for you to…”
My father slammed his fist down on the table. “It’s not right for you to blame yourself for this. You didn’t make that girl drink herself halfway to a coma and you’re sure as hell not going to pay for it. End of story.”
I pushed my fork against the lasagna. “I’d feel better about it…”
“Well, I don’t care what would make you feel better,” he scowled.
“It’s not your responsibility to—”
“We’re paying for it, because Sam would’ve wanted that. Not because it’s our responsibility. Not because it is your responsibility. We are doing it out of kindness. Because that is what Sam would have wanted,” he said. “Is that perfectly clear?”
“You don’t need to sugarcoat things for me. She wasn’t addicted to anything when Sam was alive.”
“Maybe so. But you didn’t kill your brother, Chris, and you didn’t make her sick,” he said softly. He sounded tired, and terrible, but he also sounded dangerous, like if I pushed him on it, he’d blow.
“If you’re not going to eat anything, you might as well go to sleep. I’ll clean up.”
“I can do it.”
“Christian,” he said. “You’re dead on your feet.” He met my eyes for a long second, and then he shook his head.
I choked down a few bites of lasagna, to placate him, and then I handed him the plate. “Thanks.”
He ran a hand through my hair and grabbed my neck warmly, as close as he ever got to affectionate. “Don’t worry about Vanessa. She’s an adult, too. It’s not your fault.”
I leaned into his hand and nodded. “Yeah, okay,” I lied.
My leg ached mightily when I got into bed—and I wondered again, as I often did, if there were some sort of link between pain and guilt, because mine seem to rise together.
Vanessa wasn’t supposed to have visitors at rehab. I’d tried. I wanted to apologize. I wanted…
I wanted to kill someone. Maybe douchebag that had been giving her prescription painkillers for free, thinking eventually she’d settle up by sleeping with him. I remembered him, rat-faced, scrawny, carried a knife, and tailed girls with money, and girls who were beautiful.
It was the only thing that helped with the pain. Imagining the drug dealer who gave her the OxyContin and grabbing him by the neck and breaking his fucking face.
If I ever got to sleep, it would be the only thing I wanted to dream about.
It took a few days for me to shake the feeling of dread that had sunk into my bones ever since Vanessa’s overdose. And I hadn’t fully realized that I’d shaken it off, until I got a good look at January at the bar one evening, her hair up in a high ponytail, and thought about how badly I’d like to fuck her.
She was laughing in those skin tight jeans and a pair of white sneakers—she’d traded in the fancy shoes after her first night on the job—and she did better in tips than Darrin or I ever would. She could’ve done it on looks alone, but the girl was a charmer. She was chatting up some customers sitting at the bar, and Darrin seemed to be handling the cash register.
Fuck, I thought, shaking my head quickly.
I stepped behind the bar. “You look good in a suit, Christian,” January commented. She had a way of speaking sometimes that straddled the line between sincerity and sarcasm and I had no way of discerning which was the case. I’d come from an on-campus interview for a banking job I knew I didn’t want. The suit fit well, though. I’d worn it to the draft. “Only you could make that sound like an insult.”
“Only you could read that much into a compliment,” she said coolly.
I bit back a smile as I walked to the back room, pulling off my tie and shedding my shirt and pulling on an extra blue t-shirt in the back.
I looked like a goof, in dress pants and a belt, but I didn’t have much time to think about it. It was a Friday night.
I washed my hands, clocked in, and asked a tearful brunette, who was talking loudly and raggedly to a disinterested boy in a pullover, if she needed a drink.
“I am fine, alright?” she said sharply. “Like, I keep telling everyone, I am fine.”
“Sure, no problem. But, do you want a drink?”
“I said I was fine!”
I held up my hands and backed away.
“Did Weeping Wendy go all psycho on you?” January asked.
I smiled. “Eh. She got a little testy. You?”
January lifted her chin. “Oh, yeah. She’s a real psycho. She was in an anthropology class with me freshman year. Psych-o.”
“Mm,” I said, looking at her. “That’s scary, coming from you.”
“Hey, January,” said a redheaded kid from Harvard, grinning. “Could I get a screwdriver?”
January nodded at him. “That’s boring, Caleb. Let me make you something new.”
Caleb shrugged uncertainly.
“If you hate it, it’s on the house.”
“What did you say?” I asked.
She ignored me.
“Sure, whatever,” he leaned back, looking mostly annoyed.
“You can’t do that,” I said, following her as she went to make the drink.
“Do what?”
“Not give them what they ask for. You don’t even know how to bartend.”
“I kind of do know how to bartend, actually. And I am taking chemistry. It’s all about mixing things,” she said confidently.
"Yeah? Well, I have a bartending license and I'm a business major and that's not how you bartend and it is definitely not how you run a business.”
"It's exactly how you run a business. Like Steve Jobs said, people don't know what until you show it to them."
"You're unbelievable."
"That's what he said. And he ran a very successful business," she said. She snagged a red maraschino cherry from the bowl next to the straws and popped it into her mouth. She finished making the drink and crossed back towards the bar to give it to the customer.
“The business was called Apple. They make iPods,” she added seriously, like she thought maybe I had never heard of Steve Jobs.
"I know who Steve Jobs is, but we’re not reinventing the phone here. When people order a screwdriver, it means they want a screwdriver."
"In your opinion," she said lightly.
"In reality."
"This is great," Caleb called out.
Perfect. Just what she needed. People deluding her.
January beamed. “Thank you, Caleb. I’m glad to hear that!”
"What's it called again?" he asked.
"I haven’t decided,” she looked at me with her wide blue eyes which were mesmerizing enough for me to forget I was pissed for a millisecond. “Maybe the iPhone.”
For fuck’s sakes, were people purposefully trying to make her impossible to work with?”
Caleb laughed. “Well, it’s awesome. I’ll have to remember to ask for it.” He strode away and January stoo
d, a hand on her hip, looking rather satisfied.
“That’s cute,” I said sarcastically, nodding at her. “The iPhone.”
“Yeah, I thought so,” she said.
“How much did you pay him to say that?”
“Jealous much?”
“No. You got lucky. Stop doing that.”
“Would it be so hard to believe that I sometimes have decent ideas?” she asked.
“He ordered—“
“A boring drink. And I gave him something he loves.”
“That’s not your job.”
“You can’t actually have a problem with me making our customers happy. That would be totally—”
“Let me guess. Psycho.”
She smiled approvingly. “Right.” Then, she nodded at the growing crowd. “Maybe you should go give your customers what they're asking for," she suggested. "They seem pretty anxious to order."
I smiled, half-amused and half-annoyed. “Maybe you should quit screwing around, January.”
She laughed at me. “Maybe.”
I walked over to a group of guys at the bar muttering about treacherous blonds from Texas. “Alright, who’s next?” I asked.
A group of guys and girls jockeying by the dance floor all yelled for my attention and I nodded at one I was sure had been there longest.
He handed me his credit card as he shouted out his order: “Can I get two coronas, a vodka Red Bull, vodka cranberry, and a Moscow Mule?”
I nodded. “No problem,” I said, opening the bottles and lining up the glasses. “You want to open a tab?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. Under Matt Richards.”
“Will do.”
I took care of five of them in quick succession, mostly beer and shots.
I turned to two girls who had been waiting for a while now. “Sorry about the delay, girls. What can I do for you?”
“Hey, can I have that January Jam thing?” one of them asked.
“What?” I said.
She shrugged and looked back at a girl next to her. “Melissa, what’s that drink called?”
“The January Jam.”
I cocked my head in disbelief. “The January Jam?”