Love On Tap (Love By Design 8)

1

Sierra

Ten years was a long time to be away. I catalogued the scars both inside and out. I didn’t have a passport filled with stamps unless you counted the casinos in Las Vegas pretending to teleport you to Italy, Paris, or the Pyramids. I didn’t have a photo album stuffed with pictures unless I counted that one trip to Mexico hazed in a blur of tequila and bikinis in a club across the border. I didn’t have a passel of personal belongs, just my backpack and a small storage unit with nothing sentimental. Even the rent was due on that and I considered letting the owners sell it to a pawn shop.

I snorted thinking how they’d be disappointed to find old dishes, fake wooden bookshelves, and few boxes of overdue library books. I didn’t have the heart to return them timely. Especially if I was the only one who’d taken them out and read them over and over again as evidenced by their blank cards inside the pocket. I loved those books and I knew what it was to be a blank card hoping someone would take you out and lovingly turn your pages with appreciation. I’d heard a rumor library fines could become warrants, and if that was the case, it was best I left Nevada and all her attempts to numb my past behind.

I didn’t know if it was a blessing or a curse the way time passed. The rain continued to pelt the sides of the silver greyhound bus as it pulled up to the stop on the corner of Main Street. Anxiety zinged in my veins like electric. My backpack was already in my lap and I was glad to be getting off the bus now that the snoozing college boy next to me had woken up and was chatting for the last hour. I didn’t have much to say, I seldom did, that was my personality, but I also didn’t want him to think me rude, so I made soft sounds committing to a conversation I wanted desperately to be over.

So many missed opportunities for words to be exchanged. I was good at that too. Missing things. Avoiding things. Running away. The fog on the window was thick and blurred the lights outside like greasy smudges of a diner burger on parchment paper. I rubbed with my elbow and watched cars pull up to the light, wait, and then proceed in an orderly fashion. I was anything but orderly. Controlled chaos as my Nona liked to say.

I reached inside my bag for the worn envelope I’d been carrying with me for weeks. White paper dirty from travel back and forth across the country in my bag. I rubbed the paper, thick, and foreboding like the catch in your throat right before you’re about to be sick. I’d memorized every word and traced the jagged curves of his signature at least a thousand times. He wanted closure. It was the one thing I denied him because I was selfish and cruel. My time had finally slipped through the sand leaving me few choices.

A decade passed since I’d been here last and with it the turning of seasons, missed holidays, birthdays, friends gathering, anniversaries, and deaths… I picked at the hole in my jeans as the bus emptied out enough for my row to stand up. I’d taken a window seat thinking I’d find a little solace before the penance, but no luck with the boy sitting next to me.

He stood up but didn’t move except to grab his fancy backpack filled with electronics and clean laundry. He had a clean-cut preppy way about him, but nothing stirred my interests. Despite my thin frame and pixie looks, I was also old enough to know better than get involved with a college townie. I pulled my leather jacket tighter together and mentally repeated the Greek alphabet in my head over and over willing him to move down the aisle.

No such luck.

He smacked his puffy lips and asked, “Hey, are you hungry? There’s this great pub up the street that serves appetizers and drinks.” The boy, named something like Toby, Robby, or something jabbered on, but my eyes caught site of the dance studio across the street. My veins chilled recalling a dark and rainy night ten years ago not so unlike the one tonight. Memories flooded my mind the way water overtakes a boat on the ocean, relentless and unforgiving. The lights were out, but I wondered who owned it now.

There was a time dancing gave me solace and a place to hide from my critical family. There was a time those childish dancing skills paid for a roof over my head and enough food to fill my stomach, but not the empty pit of shame in my soul. Dancing was a savior and a sinner wrapped up in a pretty bow and lies we tell ourselves when the lights flash and the curtain closes on another performance. It keeps us going when we have no other choices, and it stops when the final pirouette ends. I blinked my eyes hard coming back to the conversation pushing down the memories as the rain continued to fall.

He ran a hand through his hair looking impatient with me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the studio and glanced back. I went after those memories like a bad shiny penny, I wanted to pick it up, turn it over and see if the other side was different

then expected. It’s the sort of thing you know the answer too but can’t help asking like a glutton for punishment.

Doing the same thing over and over was the very definition of insanity and here I was like a kicked puppy starved for affection.

He blocked my exit off the bus and I felt antsy wanting to push through him. “You in?” His phone lit up and he looked down texting someone back, frowning.

“Uh, sorry.” I muttered glancing back out the window which fogged back up blocking my view.

“Darn. Looks like my ride back to campus is early.” He had that expectant look on his face. If he thought I wanted to catch a ride with him, he was mistaken. “Want to exchange numbers?” His thick boyband eyebrows perked up and internally I rolled my eyes. Doing anything with this guy who looked like he barely skated through high school in designer jeans and then decided to attend an overpriced college was a bad idea. While I was a connoisseur of such bad ideas, even I had limits.

“Sure.” I faked my smile, grabbed his phone from his hand and saw his backscreen was a picture of some emo band that was super popular right now. A message comes through asking Bobby why he’s still on the bus. Probably so he can be a creeper and get my number, but I don’t scroll up to see his replies. Instead, I typed in a number wondering how the recipient will feel getting a message from an entitled college boy. That was me letting my chaos out in spurts and spits. My current phone was a prepaid drugstore brand and I wasn’t pulling it out to exchange numbers–least of all with bus-boyband-Bobby.

“Great, catch you later!” He sang, practically bouncing off the bus. I sighed. The only thing that boy would be catching was a chlamydia scare if he was lucky.

Grabbing my bag, I hefted it over my shoulder and wobbled toward the bus door. So many things had changed for me since I left here and I wondered if this would be it. Could I make peace, move on? I had more questions than answers and no idea where to start. Nodding at the driver who looked a bit worse for wear having driven here by way of Philadelphia, I knew he still had a stop in Albany a good ninety minutes away. I didn’t envy his job, but at least he had one. I bet he even had a wife to go home to, maybe some kids, or a loyal dog that missed him.

What did I have? The sum contents of a single backpack weren’t impressing anyone. I breathed in the evening air and looked up the street to that pub the boy mentioned. The signage looked fresh and I imagined a pair of brothers spending a summer painting it, lining the green, orange, and gold up just right. Flower boxes lined the windows, a holdover from the previous owners. I recalled many discussions about taking them down, but unanimously they remained filled with a combination of fake, but well-maintained clovers and violets.

My hand instinctively went for the delicate gold chain inside my shirt making sure my one and only treasure remained. My finger touched the gold clovers lining it. Three inlaid on a short chain. They could have been the holy trinity, the phases of the moon, or the dominions of earth, sky, and sea. In reality, my clovers were a charm against evil having saved me on three occasions, but just barely. No matter how difficult life got, my clovers were the one thing I never gave up and my lips turned upward for a second remembering a happier time. I doubted the gift giver of my clovers would have felt the same way, but soon enough I would find out.

The damp evening chilled my bones and I hiked the sidewalk up the street to the entrance. My anxiety revved up as I brushed past bodies lingering outside. My hand touched the golden knob of the wooden door with a little more than just trepidation. Easton’s Pub was still a favorite local hangout and I followed its owner’s success with micro-brewing over the past few years. He’d won awards and grown a successful business like he said he would.

Andrew Easton was a man who was good at making promises and following through. Bobby probably came here with his college buddies to scope out girls and eat nachos like they were going out of style. It was a good life to live if you had the opportunity. He wasn’t wrong about it being a good place and the curiosity that should have killed my inner cat a long time ago won out as I pushed through the door.

The last time I had been here, I’d walked through these doors as a happy eighteen-year-old bride. Tonight, clutching my backpack and the letter that summoned me here, I had no idea what I’d find of the tattered past I left behind.

2

Andy

“Well would you look at what the cat dragged in.” I raised my head listening to my brother David mutter over the slow pouring of beer from the tap. Tilting the cup, I let the right amount of foam touch the rim. It formed the perfect amount of white froth, thick and heavy against the glass. It would taste bittersweet with berry and caramel hints. I placed the pint of cold beer in front of the customer and followed David’s head-bob and hard eyes to the door.

We had just cleaned up a bunch of red, white, and blue streamers from the election and I wasn’t in the mood for more drama. In a landslide poll, if you counted eight hundred and twenty-seven voters, I lost the mayoral election by about fifty votes. I guessed that the Elks Club wasn’t my biggest supporter despite the free keg of beer. Personally, I blamed the Ladies’ Bridge Club who started this nonsense by lobbying to write me in. Those ladies were savage as they knitted winter items for the homeless and held annual fundraisers for the animal shelter. You simply didn’t say no to a grandmotherly woman who babysat half the adults in this town when we were in diapers.