Please, Remember Me

Chapter Two - Growing Old is Getting Old

As I walked into the pub the day after my birthday I bathed in the sensation that this was where I belonged.

The Bull and Horns was two levels. The ground floor for the customers was a two room kind of place with tables and chairs in one bit and a dancefloor in the other bit in the back. No door separated the two but everyone knew the difference. The floor below held bathrooms for guests and all the behind the scenes stuff like kitchen, staff room and office. It seated about a 70 people for eating/drinking but we had capacity of up to about 300 with the high tables to stand around and other seating that wasn't for eating in the back. We weren't so much a restaurant as a place to come and enjoy a pint, but we did still serve a traditional pub menu, fish and chips, steak and ale pie, sausage and mash... those kinds of things.

I waved at Elliot, a handsome guy in his late twenties with tattoos covering one his arms, who'd started working at the bar about two years after me. His hair was always slightly ruffled even though the cut should have put the blonde locks into a perfect faux-hawk at all times. He had a jovial and kind disposition that made him an instant favourite amongst us, but he had his secrets as much we did. He never worked nights, at least extremely rarely, and none of us really knew why that was. It was fine since both Adam and I worked full-time and cowered nights behind the bar as well as a girl named Christine who only came in for a night or two a week. But Elliot still made me wonder sometimes... I was curious about his reasons for not working nights yet I'd always respected his privacy enough to never ask. He stepped in on those very special, horrible nights where both Adam and I was incapacitated because of the secrets he held. I knew all about secrets because of Adam, and that led me to respect the fact that Elliot had a right to his.

I walked down the stairs, into the basement and toward the kitchen, office and staff-room yawning.

Last night had gone on for hours. I'd never had that kind of conversation with anyone online before. It was thrilling and exciting on so many levels I was still buzzing. I didn't know why I'd decided to be honest with him. I usually bended the truth in some way, just because I could, but hadn't with Kieran.

I knew taking anything he'd said as truth was a risky game but something about him had seemed so sincere. So, until proven otherwise I was going to go with it all being truths.

We'd talked for hours, and hours. I dragged myself to bed at seven this morning and barely got in four hours of sleep before I had to haul my arse out of bed and get to work. But it was worth it. The only reason the conversation had stopped was because I got into googling the time difference between London and Louisville, which was the city he'd talked about going to college in and the city closest to his hometown, and realized that it was 2 AM for him. He hadn't commented on it himself, but when I asked about it and told him it was 7 in the morning for me, he'd been annoyed with himself for not thinking of it sooner and apologized for not letting me get to sleep. We'd talked for seven hours straight. Seven. It was astounding.

I'd done something I usually never did while chatting. In a way it wasn't surprising because the conversation I'd had last night was anything but usual for me, I'd given him my Skype address while saying that I'd love to hear from him again. He might even have gotten my email...

I just didn't want for it to end. I genuinely felt like this guy was a person I could get to know and actually become really good friends with. The conversation had been so easy, natural and simple even though it mostly revolved around things neither of us were used to talking about with strangers.

It was fun. It was something to make me feel better in the morning after a night that was bleak by default. He'd managed to make my birthday, the day that had been a day of sorrow for the past two years, into something... fun.