The Bartender

PROLOGUE

There are rational answers to everything and while considering myself as a responsible and whole-hearted person, I didn't blurt out everything that my brain could think of. Yet, yesterday evening while I sat down at the pub next door to my apartment building, I didn't think. The words left my mouth as soon as the guy across the bar asked me the burning question.

"I love him."

Silly, right? Love, it was a tender word, a word you don't just throw around like this. It is a word everybody, besides me, add to their sentence as much as possible and never doubt its true meaning.

"I love these shoes. Where did you buy them?" and "I love the way you make my heart beat. It goes faster, yada yada yada."

I had only said the magic three-word statement to one guy in my life and after I had said it, the world came tumbling down with the never-dying dustcloud suffocating me.

There is a story to my heartbreak. A story behind the reason why I am now sitting at the bar, drinking my worries down the throat.

And I have to go back two years, for me to explain everything. 

I had just lost my job, moved back to New York and gotten an apartment. The huge brick building was located in the Bronx, two blocks from the closest subway station. I finished unpacking my bags and headed downstairs to get the rest of my stuff.

"No pets allowed!" The sign was hung above the mailboxes, reminding everyone that no furry animals or any other kind of living creatures weren't allowed in the building. I was fine with that.
I was a dog person but it didn't mean that I wanted to have a dog while I lived in NY. An apartment wasn't a suitable place to have a K9 as a pet, I just considered it as torture for the animal. Four walls, city air and limited places to hang out in parks weren't even enough for these pocket-sized doggies.

Before moving back to NY, I worked as a waitress in a small pub in Miami. I grew to love this job, enjoyed the active nature of the job and people I met daily. I was good with people, gotten used to taking whatever a mean client would throw at me because that element came with the job. I grew a thick skin and sworn I would never let them hurt my feelings.

So my main goal was to find a waitressing job as soon as the plane touched tarmac in NY.

I hadn't noticed the building down at the river until the latest job-hunting site led me to it. The pink neon sign shined brightly above the double glass doors and blinked ever so often, probably stopping to work very soon.

A girl with short strawberry blond hair was smoking a cigarette behind the building, next to the back entrance. The guy at the other end of the call told me to enter from the back because the front door was always locked until the opening at 9 pm.

"You are here for the interview?" She asked me, blowing out a cloud of smoke. Her bright red fingernails held the thin cigarette while her cherry colored lips curled up to a sweet smile.

"Yeah, my name is Jennifer." I extended my arm and she threw the cigarette butt in the trash bin on her left. "Nice to meet you."

"Oh dear, I am just another waitress and not the manager you were expecting." She laughed. "He is somewhere in there. Just call for Jon, and he might even hear you."

"Oh... alright."

"Just don't make yourself look like you are desperately needing this job," she whispered and lit another cigarette. "He will offer you less pay and make your work overtime as much as possible. You would hate it."

"Got it," I nodded and took a mental note while I opened the backdoor.

"And don't look at him in a weird way. He hates it when people stare." The woman said.

My brows furrowed, unable to figure out why she had to point that out. Maybe the guy was someone famous? Maybe he had a lazy eye or maybe he had some distinctive facial features that looked uncommon? God knew I wouldn't make fun of anyone for their appearance.

Nothing actually mattered since I just had to get this job. For what I managed to remember from the phonecall I got was the pay they offered, everything else kind of slid pass me while I was on the phone with Jon.

And then I stepped into the building where the next two years of my life, I spent working until my heart got broken again.