𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐨𝐛𝐛𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐬

Of Beers and Winks | Bofur

I was walking through the streets of my city holding the hand of my boyfriend. It was night, a winter night. When I looked at the streetlights I could see little raindrops that were just starting to fall on our heads. I wrapped up my coat well and put on my scarf, as I was always in the habit of wearing it wrong. The wind was so cold, a cold that reached my bones, so we decided to hurry and get to a bar as soon as possible, just as he said. We were going to have dinner, he knew where he was taking me and was pulling my hand.

We got to his car and, after driving across the width of the city, we finally reached that bar. When he opened the door we could see a lot of people doing different things, some of them having dinner, others attending to the guests, others waiting in a queue, others making a lot of noise, the TV was very loud, but, the worst thing of all was in a more remote area of the place, where there were some men playing billiards and others who looked very bad shouting at each other, smoking, drinking, vomiting, pushing each other, making bets, playing with women, some of them were sitting on their legs. It was horrible. We didn't go there, lucky for me, but stayed at the bar counter and waited for the waiter to serve us. In the end we ordered dinner and sat down at one of the tables that had been left free.

On the way to the table I bumped into the people several times and they threw most of the beer I had taken. Not only did I stain them, but they also stained me, and to top it off they got angry and said things to me that were anything but pleasant. My boyfriend didn't turn around to help me, but went on his way. He wanted to get to the table as soon as possible and wait for the food to be brought to us.

We talked like a normal couple and when the waiter brought us the food, we went in our own way, without much conversation. However, in spite of all that unconfortable noise and the strange sensations that the place transmitted to me, there was something that generated a certain curiosity in me, something that night caught my attention, a small orange light coming from a poorly lit area of the bar. I couldn't quite see what it was, but I could see smoke coming out of it.

When I looked closely I could see a pair of bright eyes behind that orange light, a pair of eyes that I felt they had been watching me all along from the beginning.
"It's something wrong?" my boyfriend asked to me.
"No, it's nothing, I had just remembered some things, don't give it relevance..." I said trying to hide my curiosity, because he saw me with my eyes wide open looking at that man. I decided to keep eating to avoid worrying him but once I saw that he was looking at his food again and thinking about his things I relaxed and focused my attention again on that man who kept looking at me. In the end that light was a pretty old lit pipe. There were dry burning leaves on it that emitted that relaxing orange light, visible in the middle of that darkness.

After a while, I continued talking to my boyfriend, but this guy kept intriguing me and therefore, although I wanted to listen and follow the rhythm of my boyfriend's conversation, I couldn't stop looking at where this man was. I saw him leave his pipe and start drinking a big jar of beer, emptying it in a few seconds and putting it on the table again. He was alone. There were people sitting around him but he was alone, sitting and leaning against the wall. From time to time he turned his attention away from me, looking at the people passing by, smashing the leaves of his pipe, smoking, getting up from his seat to refill his jar with the golden liquid and then sitting down again. After all that, his eyes were focused on me again, a pair of eyes with a touch of mistery slightly covered by the pipe smoke. That, in a way, made me feel nervous, producing a slight chill that ran down my back.

My boyfriend was a bit strange that night. Even from the car I could feel things out of the ordinary, things that I didn't like, although the truth is that I wasn't in a very good mood either. When we finished dinner, we went to the bar counter and he asked the waiter to serve us one more beer, this time he invited me, although not with much energy or enthusiasm. Once the drinks were ready, and after giving them a few drinks, he looked at me and his eyes turned to those who showed a slight indifference, within the supposed sadness that he seemed to want to show.
"Are you okay? You've been down all night..." I asked him.