Speakeasy

  Smitty was in the middle of a shift. Now he’s on the floor and not breathing.

  Benito has squirted something into his nostrils and now he’s rolling Smitty onto his side. Smitty makes a horrible gagging sound.

  “Breathe,” Benito orders, whacking him on the back.

  Two paramedics arrive, crowding into the storeroom. I wiggle out of the way and find myself behind the bar, where Connor is valiantly attempting to run Alec’s business while a life is saved a few feet away.

  “Could you fill three glasses with ice?” he asks.

  A beat later I realize the request is aimed at me. “What glasses?” I ask in a hoarse voice.

  “Rocks. Those right there.” He gestures toward the ice bin and I spot the glasses waiting beside it.

  With shaky hands I dunk each one into the ice bin and then pass them toward Connor.

  In front of me, a young woman wearing a baseball cap leans against the bar. “Hey, can I get three Goldenpours?”

  I glance at Connor, who is pouring vodka over the ice I just gave him. With his other hand, he’s stirring something else. “Goldenpour is all out,” he says. “Try the Sip of Sunshine instead.”

  “Okay,” she says, looking back at me.

  So I grab a pint class, hold it under the Sip of Sunshine spout, and pull the tap. Tilting the glass to prevent too much head, I watch the honey-colored liquid roll down the side and into the bottom. I inhale the scent of yeasty heaven, and my mouth waters. Just one beer would do nice things for my shaking hands.

  But the customer is waiting. So I hand her the full glass and then pour two more of them in rapid succession.

  “Thank you, love,” Connor says. “That’ll be twelve bucks,” he says to the customer. To me he says, “I promised everyone four-dollar beers if they’d stand back and give me their patience.”

  “Can I get a Heady Topper?” someone else asks. “And a glass of cabernet.”

  “Heady is served in a can, and the wine is six dollars,” Connor prompts.

  I get the beer from the reach-in cooler, then look around for the wine glasses. I take one off the rack and then pull the rubber cork out of the cabernet bottle. It’s from California. The fruity, plummy smells rush me as I pour a healthy portion.

  God, what I wouldn’t do for a glass of it. But I shove that rubber stopper back into the top when I’m done and hand over the glass. Not fair! my addiction shrieks. Why can that guy have it when I can’t? This is bullshit!

  Because you won’t stop at one, I remind myself. Also, nothing in the whole world is ever fair. There is no fair. There’s only lucky and not lucky.

  And I’m not the unluckiest person in the room tonight. I turn and look towards the storeroom. Nobody has come out of there yet.

  I turn back around and find several more customers waiting in front of the bar. “Hey,” one woman says. “I’d love a Goldenpour when you get the chance.”

  “Goldenpour is sold out,” I say, reaching for a glass. “Try the Sip of Sunshine.”

  * * *

  I serve countless drinks. They all blur together. I take money and make change on autopilot. But then I look up at the next customer and find that it’s my brother, Griffin. “What the hell are you doing?” he asks. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. You’re slinging drinks?”

  He says this in a tone that suggests I’m building a pipe bomb or cooking up methamphetamines.

  “I’m helping,” I yelp. “Alec’s bartender he…” I swallow hard, because I’m picturing that needle and his blue lips. “There’s been an emergency.”

  As if to prove my point, the two EMTs pick that moment to exit the storeroom. Alone. They’ve got their stretcher and their equipment, which looks untouched. I lean against the bar to let them pass behind me.

  Is Smitty dead back there? I feel shaky all over again.

  “You can’t be the one serving drinks,” my brother says. “That’s bullshit.”

  “Oh shut up, will you?” I fire back, and not nicely. “For once, can’t you just stay out of it?”

  Apparently not. Griffin bellows toward the storeroom. “Alec!” He ducks under the bar, as if to go look for him.

  But Alec appears in the doorway. “What?”

  “May can’t be your backup bartender. You can’t ask her to do that!” My brother’s face is red and angry.

  Alec seems not to notice that Griff is ready to blow. “May, come here, please. Griffin, feel free to help out.” He disappears again.

  “What the fuck?” Griffin mutters.

  “Hey, dude. Can I get a Sip of Sunshine?” a customer demands.

  “Charge him four dollars,” I say, walking away from grumpy Griff. When I peek into the storeroom, there’s no dead body. There’s nobody at all. The back door is open, so I step outside. Benito and Alec are standing out there looking tense. Smitty sits on a wooden crate, leaning back against the building, looking just slightly healthier than a corpse. “Shouldn’t you be in the hospital?” I yelp.

  “No.” Smitty scrubs his forehead.

  “They’d charge him thousands just to watch him overnight,” Alec says.

  “It’s a fucking scam,” Smitty mumbles.

  “Which he knows, because this has happened before, apparently.” Alec’s dark eyes glitter with shock and worry.

  “It’s not that big a deal,” Smitty says.

  But Alec knows otherwise. He looks as angry as I’ve ever seen him. “You keep saying that, and it’s not helping.”

  Smitty shrugs.

  “At the very least, you can’t have drugs in my bar. Not ever again.”

  “There’s always my car,” Smitty says. “I’ll just duck outside.”

  Alec clenches his fists as if he’s about to clock the guy whose life he just helped save. “What if you could just pretend for five minutes that you give a fuck? I want you to be okay.”

  “No, you want to judge me. I’m the same bartender I was yesterday. Just shut up or I’ll probably puke again. That’s not going to get your business staffed.”

  Alec looks right at me for the first time. He beckons, and I follow him inside the storeroom. “Hey,” I say. “You okay?”

  He shakes his head. “I didn’t know he used,” Alec whispers. “And he’s not in treatment. He wants me to pretend like it’s no big deal. I don’t know what the fuck to do. Tell me how I’m supposed to feel about this.”

  “You can feel any way at all about it,” I whisper.

  “But it would be wrong to fire him, right?” Alec searches me with his big brown eyes. “I can’t believe my employee shoots up at work. That’s insane.”

  “You don’t have to allow that! No drugs at work—that’s a pretty simple rule. If he’s late or not performing, that’s a reason to fire someone.” My lawyer brain is really handy tonight.

  “I hate this,” he hisses.

  The anger in his face makes me feel like throwing up. I’ve seen that anger before in people who just wanted me to snap out of my addiction. “Alec, I don’t know what to tell you. I hate it, too? I don’t have magical insight into every addict’s mind.”

  He throws his arms out. “You think that’s why I’m asking you?”

  “Isn’t it?” I gasp. “Why else would you?”

  His eyes bug out. “Because I trust your opinion!”

  You wouldn’t if you knew me better.

  “How does this end?” Alec whispers.

  With you leaving me for someone like Chelsea. Some sweet young thing who isn’t complicated. But that’s not what he’s asking. “I don’t have any idea. Heroin isn’t my area of expertise.” Thank god.

  “If he doesn’t get treatment, it will just happen again, right?”

  Yes. “I don’t know what to tell you, Alec. If every addict got fired, there’d be a national labor shortage.” And now my hands are shaking again. For once this isn’t my drama, and yet I’m stuck in the middle of it anyway.

  My brother sticks his head into the storeroom. “Alec, your ba
r needs you. I have to see Audrey and May home.”

  “May doesn’t need a ride. Her car is right outside,” Alec says. He gives me a helpless look, and I feel a pang of love for him. The happy-go-lucky bar owner gets a strong dose of dysfunction, and doesn’t know what to do.

  “Let’s go, May,” my brother says sharply. Like I’m one of his farm animals that isn’t falling in line.

  “So go already,” I snap. “I’ll help Alec clean up after the wake.”

  “It’s late,” my brother presses. His face is full of questions. Like—why am I so chummy with Alec and what the hell is going on here tonight?

  “What do you want from me?” I demand. “What exactly is the problem?”

  He looks between Alec and me as if he can’t quite work out why we’re standing together in a dark storeroom. But, damn it. It’s none of his business. “Drive safe,” he says, then he turns to leave.

  “You can go, you know,” Alec says a moment later. “Preserve the illusion that we don’t know each other that well.”

  We don’t, though, and that’s the whole problem. Alec only gets to see Fun May. I’m more like Smitty than he thinks. I never ever want him to see that, either. “I can help you shut down the party next door. I know you’re having a long night.”

  Someone snickers from the rear door, which is still standing open. It’s Smitty. He’s hauled himself to his feet and is now leaning in the doorway. “A long night? Or an all-nighter? I bet Alec didn’t tell you why you’re his latest piece.”

  “My what?” Alec gives him a look that’s sharper than cut glass. “Don’t be a dick right now.”

  “Yeah, I’m not allowed to say a word, because I’m just a stupid junkie. And you’re the big business owner. But you’re also the guy who said—‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I got even with Griff Shipley by sleeping with his sister?’”

  “I never said that!” Alec barks. “That is not how the conversation went.”

  “You laughed your ass off.” Smitty says, his smile evil. “You hate the Shipleys. Everybody knows it.”

  “Fuck you!” Alec snarls. “What is your goddamn problem? Go home.”

  Alec doesn’t, however, dispute it again. And when he turns to look at me, I can see it in his face. They had that conversation. Some form of it anyway.

  And suddenly I have to get away from him. I step past Alec, shoving Smitty out of the way. He smells like vomit. It’s a scent I know too well from my lowest days.

  “May!” Alec calls after me. “Don’t believe his bullshit.”

  But I don’t stop. I’ve had all the truth that I can take tonight. And my car is conveniently located in my special secret parking place on the other side of the dumpster.

  Sixty seconds later I’m driving away, feeling horribly upset. Because Alec didn’t outright deny that he and Smitty discussed seducing me.

  Tears cloud my vision and I have to blink them away. It’s just sex. Those are my own words. So why am I so surprised that Alec treated me like a conquest?

  The dark road stretches out in front of me. It’s snowing lightly, so the headlights illuminate the flakes better than the road. When the entrance to the highway appears, I don’t get on it. I take the side roads instead. I need to think.

  But thinking hurts. All the things Alec has said and done these last two months are a jumble to me now. We had a good time. Alec wouldn’t fake that. I know it in my gut.

  Or do I? Daniela was cheating on me, and I didn’t notice.

  So did Alec have sex with me just to piss off my brother? Maybe. He seems awfully eager to let the whole world know we’re together.

  I hate thinking that. But I know for a fact that Zara’s feelings once got hurt by Griff, and that Alec didn’t like it. Heck. The whole town knew about it. I can see the appeal of settling that score.

  With that in mind, everything between Alec and me looks a little different than it did before. The way he so eagerly volunteered to go to the law school function. The way he kept it up with me afterward, showering me with attention.

  I never was the cool, fun girl he made me feel like. Of course I wasn’t.

  The way he looks at me sometimes, though… Like he can’t wait to kiss me again. Is that real, or is that fake?

  And does it even matter? We are not supposed to be a couple. So why am I so sad right now?

  I take each curve of the road carefully. And it occurs to me that I could buy a bottle of wine somewhere on the way home and nobody would know. Tonight I watched somebody almost die, and I found out that a boy I like a little too much probably only flattered me to annoy my brother.

  This deserves a drink, right?

  Men suck. I want to call up Lark and tell her all about it. But she doesn’t agree that men suck, and she’s probably making love to hers right now.

  If I can’t have Lark, I want a drink. It always comes back to this. A drink would be such a relief right now. It sounds like such a small thing, really. Why can’t I have it?

  The road is dark and empty. There aren’t any stores on this stretch—certainly nothing that’s open at ten p.m. on a Sunday night. Not even a convenience store.

  The thin line between my sobriety and relapse might come down to this: it’s inconvenient to fall off the wagon in a rural community.

  My phone vibrates in my jacket pocket.

  Alec, probably. He’ll tell me not to listen to Smitty. He’ll tell me that he would have slept with me anyway, even if he didn’t want to get even with my brother. Maybe it’s even true.

  It’s just that I won’t ever completely believe him again.

  You hate the Shipleys. Everyone knows it.

  The phone keeps dancing in my pocket. I’ll be on this road another twenty minutes. I’m going thirty-five miles an hour because it’s snowing and I can’t see very well beyond the headlights.

  The suspense is killing me. Do Alec and I end just like this? Because an angry, detoxing bartender decides to spit venom everywhere?

  I reach into my pocket and pull out the phone. Sure enough, there’s a flurry of texts from “Selena.”

  He’s angry at me and full of shit.

  He once said that I should sleep with you to piss off Griff. I might have laughed.

  I don’t even remember. But that’s not what happened.

  You don’t want to hear this, but it’s true—

  The last three words take my breath away.

  I love you.

  I stare at it a split second too long. When I look up again at the road, it’s too late to react to the doe standing in my lane. And since I’m holding my phone, I have only one hand on the steering wheel.

  Swerving is my only option. But in spite of my studded tires, I skid in the fine layer of new-fallen snow. I miss the deer.

  But I don’t miss the trunk of a tree rushing at me in the glare of my high beams.

  My shriek echoes in the car before the loud crunch and the sound of broken glass.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Alec

  I don’t get to bed until three a.m. And then I lay there, missing May.

  She never replied to my texts. She’s obviously super pissed at me. And I don’t know if she’s ever going to forgive me. Or if she’ll ever feel about me the way I feel about her.

  I lie here in the dark feeling lost in a bed that’s too big without her. I’m not guilty of sleeping with her to annoy Griff. After Smitty made that joke before the law school thing, I probably laughed. But when May and I hooked up, I never gave a thought to her stupid brother.

  And yet I’m still guilty of so many things. I probably laughed at Smitty’s joke. And I never noticed Smitty’s downward spiral. Even Zara noticed his odd behavior the night she subbed for me. Smitty keeps disappearing on breaks, she’d texted. What’s with that?

  What indeed. I thought he was ducking out back for cigarettes. But I never saw him with one. Maybe I thought he was making calls.

  I didn’t care enough to notice.

  If May was her
e right now I’d curl up around her body, hold her while she slept, and listen to the soft sound of her breathing. Maybe then I could get some peace. But she isn’t here, because she knows better.

  Just because I’m finally ready to fall for a girl doesn’t mean the girl is dumb enough to fall for me.

  My alarm goes off at the predawn hour of ten a.m. Trust me, if you own a bar, and especially if you cleaned up after a wake until three a.m., ten is indeed a predawn hour.

  In my twenties, my mantra was, I’ll sleep when I’m dead. At thirty-two, it’s not funny anymore. I feel half dead right now.

  But maybe it’s just the heartbreak talking.

  When the beer delivery truck shows up, I unlock the storeroom door for Kevin to bring in the kegs. “We brought you an extra Long Trail,” he says, “because you didn’t answer Chelsea’s email.”

  “Chelsea sent me an email?” I’ve been too swamped with the wake and with almost watching Smitty die to read any fricking emails.

  Kevin looks troubled. “You’re not getting any Goldenpour this week.”

  “Wait. What? I didn’t get any last week.”

  “Yeah. No kegs for the Gin Mill. So I brought you a Long Trail because you didn’t tell us what you want instead.”

  “Where’s Chelsea?” I ask, glancing around. She’s always here during my beer delivery. Except that last night…

  Oh, fuck.

  “She’s in the truck,” Kevin says.

  Fuckity fuckity fuck. I pass Kevin without another word and go out to the truck. Sure enough, Chelsea is sitting in the cab, poking at her phone. I reach up and open the door. “Can I have a word with you, please?”

  She gives me a wary glance, but then hops down. “What can I do for you?” she asks.

  “Look.” I take her in. She’s wearing a bright pink parka and skinny jeans. She looks about twelve years old, and I don’t know why I didn’t notice our yawning age gap sooner. “I know I haven’t been a lot of fun lately,” I start.

  Chelsea snorts. “You’ve been dodging me. Don’t you think that’s kind of weak? You should just own it. You’ve got something going on with Shipley’s sister. So just say that. Don’t be a dick.”