Love On Tap (Love By Design 8)

“Unreal.” My brother grunted swinging back to me with a, what the fuck, Andrew, look on his face.

David was never one to hide his cynicism despite getting laid on a regular basis these days. If I had been honest with myself, the sour pit in my stomach was a well-formed knot of jealously because David finally found someone to take away the pain, whereas I had not.

Glutton for punishment?

It should have been my middle name.

I thought after the last decade, I had been tortured enough and paid my penance. Instead, what I saw in the bar’s entrance was either a ghost from the past or my newest nightmare in the form of slender curves my hands itched to touch and cat shaped eyes with the power to destroy me all over again. She still wore skin tight ripped jeans in black to match her cold heart and I smiled inside thinking that some things never did change.

Her graceful swagger was the same and if you didn’t know Sierra Occho, you would have thought she was the lead in Swan Lake with her fluid movements and princess perfect appearance. A dead ringer for Natalie Portman on the outside. What she really was amounted to the level of Black-Swan-Mila-Kunis-crazy you only survived once. My stomach flip flopped and if I could have jetted into the back office to sort through orders and upload them to David’s idea of slow torture, aka Quick Books hell, I would have.

David’s brow raised and I put more elbow grease into the sweeping movements of cleaning the polished bar top. For once in her damn life, Sierra could get her ass over here. I wasn’t chasing her inside my own bar.

Easton’s was our family pub for as long as we could remember, well before either my brother or I were born. Its roots were in the family for over sixty-nine years. We grew up here barely able to reach the bar top, our grandmother Gloria tended bar and cooked appetizers while chasing grandpa out back at the end of the night snapping her dishtowel. They always carried on about something, but they loved each other deeply up until the day they died, a year apart from each other lingering with bad health and a plethora of memories I regretted not writing down. Even death wasn’t about to keep them apart.

Dad sold the pub five years ago to me with a promise to keep it going. Mom wanted sunshine year-round and dad needed a break from long nights. Despite David’s army deployment early on, I managed it with his help, and my business degree was proving useful.

I worked on the home brew concoctions and David updated the technology. With a few changes we renovated the inside and paid off the loan to our dad. Easton’s had been a staple here in New Paltz and the gust of wind that blew through the door revealed a face I hadn

’t seen in years. She stripped me bare and left me a self-flagellating mess blowing raw in the wind. A rather unwelcome one at that leaving me with a sour taste in my mouth like those first hops I tried brewing unsuccessfully until I got it right.

Practice made perfect.

Or in my case, it made you painfully aware of all your faults.

I still juggled the winery, had controlling interest over it, although little desire to set foot on the dark soil that stained both my boots walking through fields of lush purple grapes. My bruised ego and bitter heart were not in the mood for this, and now she was back and I had no idea how to process this new information even though it was my letter with a final ultimatum that likely prompted her return.

Dressed in a burnt orange leather jacket with fringe that seemed out of place, reminding me of our darkest stout, Sierra Occho sat down in front of me. More like she slid onto the barstool with a feline grace and stealth I didn’t appreciate given the chasm of hurt between us. Her fluid movements fit her devious she-devil persona and it was clear she was still dancing in one form or another.

She looked thinner then when I saw her last if that was possible. Her skin was always translucent, even in summer with a golden hue. Her jeans were threadbare, painted on her legs. Over the bar counter, I spied the ripped fabric exposing a tattoo I’d never seen before, but then again, Sierra was always marking herself. Caramel eyes and freckled honey skin greeted me with a smile I would never forget. Front teeth spaced with a slight gap made her grin infectious no matter how angry I felt with her or that a decade had passed since I last saw her. She was more than a sleek cat; she was a fucking ninja who haunted my dreams and stomped on my heart mercilessly.

I hated her.

I spent the last decade exorcising her from my soul with booze I didn’t drink and women I didn’t fuck.

I loved my firefly still.

I wanted to tear her clothes off, maybe hate fuck her tiny little body over the bar countertop pressing her into the hard polished wood. I’d make her bruise the way she always begged me to when all I ever gave her was tenderness. Little did I know, she wasn’t wired for comfort, and I wasn’t wired to be an asshole. I guessed it was just dumb luck that polar opposites attracted like summer lightening. She was chaos wrapped in silk and deceptive the way oatmeal raisin cookies break your trust with steadfast chocolate chip. She was my hail and thunder shipwrecking my heart. I couldn’t be what she so obviously needed, and I had neglected the truth. Fireflies only came out in the summer heat illuminated for a brief spell and ours flickered out before I learned the hard truth that I had no power in winning that age old argument.

My love for Sierra was an unconditional commitment to an imperfect person. I spent years numbing myself with work because I couldn’t get it up for another woman. She left me an impotent mess and I hated myself for letting her have that kind of power over me. I had accepted her for who she was from the moment I met her, but she had been unable to accept herself, and that was what destroyed us before we began.

I wanted to scream at her for leaving me. I wanted to scream at her to stay. I wanted to fuck her until I forgot why I was so angry at the world for keeping us apart.

So now, I needed to protect my heart, I needed that hate to build a fortified wall around me from anything she might say or do that twisted me up in a dirty rag of alcohol and lies. She was my kryptonite and along the way I had learned to choose self-preservation over internal destruction for someone who I didn’t think could ever love me back.

“Andrew.” She placed her small backpack on the bar and no matter what I told myself, her money was no good here. I spied the envelope peeking out of her bag with my return address and knew exactly why she was here. All it took was one word from her, my name on her treacherous coral lips, and she molotove cocktailed her way back in. She was a full-on sucker punch, and I was helpless to resist her despite the festering wound she’d left last time she blew through town.

“Sierra.” Curtly, I nodded and wondered what made her return to rural New York state after all these years besides a letter demanding a dissolution of a will, of us, of our sordid history. Ten fucking long years when my life should have gone on instead of staying stagnate and waiting for her return. I doubted she came back for the mountain views or the winery, and I held my tongue, letting it cement in my mouth.

From the far end of the bar, my brother stepped in to save me, “So you’re back, what brings you here?”

Obviously, David was planning on carrying the conversation since I was silently stewing in my corner gathering my thoughts. He had no idea I had invited this hurricane. I waited years for Firefly to return home. What were the odds on the night she walked back into my bar, my life–I’d made my vow to finally let her go–fucking Murphy’s Law–but it didn’t mean I had to make this easy on her either. David glanced at me, his eyes asking if I was okay. I didn’t know what to say and I shrugged trying to resume some form of normalcy in the wiping down of the already immaculate bar. My brother was good like that picking up the pieces when I clearly couldn’t.

“A few things, David.” She smiled with shark teeth and her acid tone, a mix of sweet and sour which nearly took a bite from my brother. David didn’t deserve her ire, though I couldn’t say those two had a good history between them. Much like of all of her connections, she burned a lot of bridges on her way out. For me, if anything, maybe Sierra’s return would be a good experiment in exposure therapy, get it all out and done with for once and all. I didn’t have a clue, but I knew this was going to fucking hurt. She was my terminal infection, a cancer on the idea of love.

David, not one to let anything go bit back hard, “I hardly think you’ll find what you’re looking for here. Everything you touch turns to dust, darling.” David grunted.

Ouch. I couldn’t expect David to have the soft spot for Sierra that I did once upon a time. I’m only intervening to save them both and stop a scene from blowing up in the bar. At least that was what I convinced myself by stepping around the bar between them. Why did it always feel like I was intervening on her behalf? Hadn’t I learned by now that she was a tough girl? After all, she did the leaving while I spent years wallowing in misery for something that was never mine. A beautiful butterfly, she flitted away and our spring had come and gone leaving me in a harsh state of winter.