𝐂𝐑𝐀𝐙𝐘 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓! | harry styles

𝐗𝐈𝐗

SIX years after the fire, I've got a new life.

"Harry, the Guinness tapped. Go replace it."

I salute the weathered man behind the bar, his eyes rolling at my enthusiasm. Going outside to the basement doors where the kegs are housed, I breathe deeply, letting my eyes close for just a moment. Every day I make sure to appreciate the simple things; never taking advantage of what my freedom has brought me. I continue my task while whistling the song playing in the barroom above me.

The Crow's Nest is lively for a Wednesday at four o'clock. Stools and tables filled by the old cronies and the kids from NYU that are 'slumming it', trying to be hip frequenting an old man watering hole where the peanuts are stale and the talk even staler.

I love it.

My life is completely different out on the other side of metal bars that kept me locked in. There's no green line to act as a guide as I walk like a free man, although I do find myself looking down from time to time. There's no shoveling food in my mouth with only precious minutes to get the hunger satiated before the loud alarm rings, but sometimes I do forget that and then wonder where my food went when I finally lift my head from my plate.

Minor things like that bring me down, but mostly, I'm happy, finally living a life that I've chosen for myself. All alone. All me. I shouldn't be as proud of that as I am, but a small part of me is starting to believe I've earned it.

Pete and I spend the next few hours side by side, pouring the shots and pulling the beers. He splits early, leaving me to lock up at 2 am, tossing out the regulars that will be here at eleven in the morning to get their whiskey and shoot the shit, pouring over the Daily News and the Post like they have any say on what goes on in the world.

Barflies, all of them, but it's what's kept him in business for thirty years, and it's the clientele I'll gladly inherit when he eventually decides to retire and sell the bar to me, the kid he gave a chance to.

I put a fiver in the juke box and pick a few songs to play while I clean up. Singing out loud, I sweep peanut shells into piles, restock the bar for tomorrow, move the empties to the back to take out the next day.

The smell from the ashtrays is strong and stings my nose as I wipe down the bar top. You're not supposed to smoke in New York City establishments, but Pete would rather pay the fine than lose the customers, regulars that he says "should be able to smoke a goddamn Lucky with their bourbon if they goddamn want to".

I make a face as I wipe them out. Smoking was something high on the priority list in prison, to break up the boredom, but the first time I stuck a lit cigarette in my mouth and inhaled, I doubled over coughing, tears coming to my eyes.

But not from the hacking up of my lungs. It was from painful regret and bottomless sorrow. I looked at that cigarette through squinted, teary eyes and the first time became the last time. I haven't touched one since.

For a long time after that, just the smell of cigarette smoke caused a violent reaction. Heaving, sweating, my pulse racing and hammering. It was all in my head, but the memories associated with that smell assaulted me daily. Like I said, there's not much else to do in prison but smoke, and the inmates would light up all day. It was impossible not to be around it.

I'm used to it now, after being surrounded by it constantly for five years and now here at the bar. My reaction is less visceral, more a nagging in the back of my mind, a reminder that it never brought me anything but bad things. Funny how such a small object, something so ordinary, has become something so huge, a token of my downward spiral.

It's something I know my body won't let me do. I can't do. I don't want to do.

I pull myself from my thoughts and look around quickly to make sure I haven't left anything undone, and turn the lights off. After I lock up, I walk two feet to my door, taking the steps two at a time to my second floor walkup above the bar.