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Mason
Then…
“You call that two fingers!” I shouted at the bartender, who rolled his eyes and walked away to serve more drunk customers. “That’s not enough! Not nearly enough.”
I stood up on the stool, stretching out over the bar, when suddenly someone had me by the back of my pants and was dragging me back down. I flopped to my seat. I would have fallen right out of it if she hadn’t caught me. Pulled my face to hers. Crashed her lips against mine. Laughter and whiskey and me on her lips.
Rachel. Her name was Rachel.
Or at least that’s what she told me. I didn’t care if it was her real name or not. I’d call her whatever she wanted to be called. Anything in the world.
Rachel nipped at my bottom lip playfully and then pulled away. Her glass collided with mine, whiskey spilling over. The glass was so wet that it nearly slipped from my fingers as I raised it to my lips.
“I think this is plenty,” she said after the shot, collecting stray drops of whiskey around the edges of her glistening mouth before sucking it off her finger with an audible pop.
The string of Christmas lights hung above the bar sparkled in her eyes as she broke out into laughter. “Until the next shot, that is.”
I couldn’t have been with Rachel for more than a couple hours (Or was it a couple years? Had I known her my whole goddamn life?), but I never wanted to leave her side. Her energy was infectious. Her smile both innocent and wildly naughty. She was charming and loud and sweet and bold and greedy, greedy, greedy for life. She wanted all of it. All of it and more.
I wanted to give it to her. I wanted to be there with her when she took it. I wanted to drain the whole world for her. To help her run away with it all.
Okay, so I might have been a little drunk. There was the whiskey at the first bar. And there was the whiskey at the second bar. I was fairly sure this was the third bar. But it might have been the fourth. Definitely not the fifth. Absolutely certainly definitely not the fifth…
Okay, okay, so I might have been a little more than a little drunk. But Rachel had her legs draped over mine, her arm on the back of her bar stool, and she was looking at me with these hooded cat-eyes and a devilish grin and if anything at all can sober up a drunk man, it was his whole goddamn future staring at me. There. In the flesh. Everything he never knew he always wanted.
Does that make sense?
“Does that make sense?” Rachel was saying as she handed me a magically refilled glass.
Her toes were painted a bright lavender and they wiggled atop my lap like we were casually at home on the couch. Five years into our relationship. Ten even. I shook my head and laughed.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I honestly wasn’t listening.”
Rachel chewed on a bar straw and wiggled her toes.
“I was saying that I think we’re going to get married and fight about hand towels and shit in the grocery store one day and that I kind of can’t wait,” she said. “And I asked you if that made sense.”
I tapped my glass against hers and smiled, saying, “I’m not sure anything has ever made more sense to me in my entire fucking life!”
There might have been another bar or two. There might have been some tripping down the sidewalk on the strip, arms draped over one another’s shoulders like age-old friends. There might have been hands on chests and stumbling steps backwards and backs colliding with streetlamps or bus station posts or stop signs and sloppy, wet kisses as cars whipped by, horns laid on loud and heavy. There might have been intense eye contact, stupid promises, slurred vows. There might have been laughing and singing and making fun of each other’s accents. And then there might have been one more bar after all that. Or two.
There was definitely a Denny’s.
On the table in the booth there were two massive cups of black coffee, two platters of pancakes dripping with maple syrup, a plate with crispy bacon, scrambled eggs, and sausages, a pot of more maple syrup (why?), more varieties of hot sauce than I even knew existed, and a host of condiments like mustard and ketchup and honey and green salsa and God knows what else. All of that didn’t stop Rachel. I was fairly certain that nothing would have stopped Rachel.
That’s why I loved her. Loved her more than I had loved anyone else. Loved her like I didn’t even think I was capable of loving.
Love. You might think that sounds ridiculous. Loving someone after a few hours. Loving someone after a few drinks. Or even more ridiculous, “loving” someone after a lot of drinks.
But you didn’t see the way that Rachel hopped up onto her side of the booth after darting over to the jukebox. How she stepped up onto the table like it was the grand stage at the Bellagio. How she ignored the shouts from our waitress, “Hey, hey, hey!”, ignored the clattering of the cups and plates and jars of hot sauce, how she ignored everyone else in that Denny’s, everyone else on that flashing neon street, everyone else in the whole damn world except for me.
Rachel stood tall above me and gave me a wicked wink before closing her eyes as the music began. She swept her hands down low and then raised them up, up, up. She sang along and danced. She got dirty looks from the other customers and threats from the waitress and catcalls from out on the sidewalk, but she didn’t hear any of it, see any of it. She was dancing. Dancing for me.
She saw only my eyes on her. She saw only my mouth stupidly open. My arms limp at my sides like I no longer had any use for them. My head shaking slowly side to side because I couldn’t believe that I’d found her.
Rachel saw me fall in love. I was sure of it. Sure of it from the way she smiled down at me as she danced. Like she knew. Like she’d always known. She saw my heart open to her. Unfold for her. Break into a million pieces for her.
Rachel danced up there on that table and I sat below her on that red vinyl booth and she saw me imagine our lives together. Our future together. She wiggled her hips and she saw me imagining the words I’d say to her when I proposed. She shouted the lyrics at the top of her lungs and she saw me imagining the dress she’d wear as she walked down the aisle toward me. She kicked her long, tanned legs, one and then the other, and she saw me imagining the children we’d have together. The colour of their eyes. The shape of their tiny lips. The texture of their delicate curls.
