Spend Some Time

Rowan

After reaching up and grabbing the bottles and containers off the wooden oak shelves of my fathers bar - which I was currently tending - I set them down. My hands were quick and my brain was single-minded as I pour out the Stillhouse Whiskey. Well, mostly single-minded.

"I met him here, right in this very place under the same roof listening to the same music off the shitty old jukebox. Pink Floyd was playing, I believe. It wasn't my biggest concern that day."

I pour the 4 oz. of clear whiskey into the cocktail shaker and move to the next bottle.

"How the hell does someone like me draw him in? His album was on the top of the charts, everyone talked about him. He had the world on its knees, he could have anyone! Apparently, he had many more than one."

I toss the 3/4 oz. of dry vermouth into the metal container and slam the martini glass down.

"I thought I was so lucky. Everything about him swept me off my feet, made me forget who he was, who I was. I wasn't just working some bar so I could pay off my career of an aspiring poet. In his eyes, he saw beauty, he said I was damned just like him."

Olive juice is the last thing I throw in along with ice before screwing the lid on top.

"Within the first month, he had me completely weak to him. It's not an embarrassing thing to admit, necessarily. I've always been that way, for him it was... amplified."

I begin shaking the contraption, staring straight ahead at the empty tequila and vodka bottles that throw off the colors of orange and lime from the bar on the other side.

"I don't know, maybe I'm misreading the whole situation. Maybe it really was me spreading my legs to easy, or his smooth talk was that good." I chuckle darkly. "If anyone is going to destroy you with their words, it was him."

I pour out the clear liquid before finishing it with two olives.

"But actions speak louder than words, don't they? And when we woke up the next morning, I couldn't believe he was still there. I ignored the eagerness to leave that his body displayed and instead listened to him demanding my phone number and promising to come back. I assumed he was late to be somewhere." Again, I laugh. "Late to be right into the next bitch."

The man's grey eyes are shocked and wide, but entirely from my blurting of a ramble and a sob story, not so much the actual story. His lips are parted but he says nothing. I slide the drink over.

"Bottoms up." I choke down my own shot and ignore the customer.

My eyes fall down onto the black journal where I have written more words with more meanings than the dictionary holds. I've tried for years to get my ideas printed on published paper.

I grab it and toss it into the trashcan beneath the black granite counter top.