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“She told me you worked here. On Monday. I’ve been working up the courage to try and…”
“Stalk me?” I offer. Then, I’m wondering why Olivia didn’t give me a heads-up.
“Yeah,” he laughs. “Stalk you, I guess. I mean, if I stop and be honest, like brutally honest with myself, you had made it clear—in your own way, not in a normal person way with words—that you didn’t want anything to do with me. But then, I couldn’t stop thinking about you and so I thought that maybe I’d just come down here so that you could dump me—or not—to my face. At least explain what happened because I’m completely lost here. I guess maybe you’re one of those people that goes out and meets people that they vibe with all the time and it always feels like that, but I don’t. It’s never like that.”
I can feel it again—my heart beating in my ears. Why does it have to be so goddamn loud? Can everyone else hear it, too, drowning out the bad karaoke and ruining their nights?
“I really have to get back to work,” I say. He bites his lips and nods. He starts to get up from the barstool when I choke out, “But I get off at 12. I mean, if you want to hang out for a while. Or, you know, come back, if you don’t like weird karaoke.”
“I happen to be really into weird karaoke,” he says, shrugging.
“Okay,” I tell him. I flash him a smile and get back to work because I really do have to, and he grabs his glass of scotch and heads towards an empty table with a single chair near the front entrance. I wonder how he’s going to sit there all night like that and not get hit on relentlessly right in front of my face. I glance over and see that he’s intentionally made himself unavailable to the rest of the room, almost like he’d taken a page from my own playbook, by pulling the hood of his jacket over his head and taking out some kind of sketchbook and a pencil from his bag, giving off an obvious air of someone who didn’t want to be bothered and I’m surprised to see it from him. I wouldn’t have thought he’d be the kind to hide behind an invisibility cloak so similar to my own.
It’s about 20 minutes after midnight when I finally get out from behind the bar. Jake’s still at the table, still with the book that I wouldn’t dare ask him about. I always feel deeply violated when someone thinks it’s okay to ask me what I’m writing. That doesn’t mean that I’m not profoundly curious, but it’s a boundary I would never push. I hesitantly begin to make my way across the room toward the small table in the corner. Wait, not yet. I double back to the bar, pour myself a couple of shots, and throw them back quickly. I’m going to need some liquid courage to get through this. Here it goes.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” he says. “Not a bad place.”
“Um, yeah. I like it. It’s got something, I guess.”
“A lot of mailboxes?”
“Yeah, it’s got a lot of mailboxes. They’re mostly locked, except for a couple. They’re like our own little easter eggs. People write notes and leave them in there or drop stuff in the outgoing mailboxes. Sometimes, it’s not stuff we want. We have to empty them like, once a month or so."
“Hmm,” he says. “I’ll have to leave one for you sometime.”
“I can’t wait,” I tell him.
He waits. I’m not sure what for. “Well?” he says. “Why did you bail on me like that?”
I prepare to be honest with him. Like I said, I've never been able to hack it as a liar, at least not to anyone other than myself. Elusive, sure, but not a liar. “I’m just going to be real with you. I saw your apartment and I just…flipped the fuck out.”
“Why? What’s wrong with my apartment?”
“Okay, how do I say this? You are how the other half lives. I’m a bartender that will never get out of student loan debt. I mean, I do some freelance writing or I’m trying when I have the time. Regardless, it’s unlikely my circumstances will ever change. When I woke up, I felt like I was in a museum, and I was going to get in trouble for getting things dirty or maybe the real owners were going to come home and catch us in there and call the police or something.” He’s laughing now, but I wasn’t trying to be funny. “I mean, do you have an entire family in there or something? What is going on? When you say ‘accountant’ do you mean like of criminal enterprises or something, likeOzarks?”
“What? No!” he says. “It’s a big firm. It’s established. It’s been in my family for a while and so yeah, I guess I’m privileged. I got a little leg up that most people don’t get.” Normally, I resent those people. His self-awareness, at least, is refreshing. “But just to be clear, what you’re telling me is that you decided you weren’t interested in me because I have a nice apartment and it looked like I made a lot of money?”
He was oversimplifying it, but I guess that was what I was saying. It just wasn’t quite what I meant. “Also, you were completely naked. It was intimidating,” I add.
“What are you talking about? Nudity is disarming. Besides, you were naked a lot, too.”
“Disarming? How is nudity disarming?”
“It shows vulnerability.”
“Not when it’s you,” I scoff. “You think that if you were to strip down right here, in the middle of this bar, the people inside are going to be disarmed by your vulnerability?”
He laughs at this. “Maybe. Should we try it?”
I sigh, changing the subject. “I live in a basement studio a couple of blocks from here. It’s probably the size of your bathroom. There’s no wraparound balcony. I have a small window, and I guess it opens, but sometimes scary things happen when it does. And that’s all fine with me.” It was true. Everything in it was mine, and it was warm and safe. For me, that was enough. “I just don’t feel like we exist in the same space, you know?”
“I still don’t get it,” he says. “Do you really think you know enough about me to decide that we don’t exist in the same space? We can’t even hang out?”
“I know enough about myself,” I say, shrugging.
“Look, I’m not asking you to marry me or move into my offensive apartment or anything. I’m just saying that I had a good time with you, and I think we should keep hanging out until we stop having a good time. It’s really not that big of a deal.”
