Reminders of Him

But why?
We make eye contact when I reach for her mug. She hasn’t looked at
anyone else tonight. Only me. I should feel flattered, but I feel scared.
I played professional football and own a bar, yet I’m scared of a little
eye contact with a pretty girl. That should be my Tinder bio. Played for the
Broncos. Owns a bar. Scared of eye contact.
“What next?” I ask her.
“Wine. White.”
It’s a hard balance owning a bar and being sober. I want everyone else
to be sober, but I also need customers. I pour her the glass of wine and set it
in front of her.
I remain near her, pretending to use a rag to dry glasses that have been
dry since yesterday. I notice the slow roll of her throat as she stares down at
the glass of wine, almost as if she’s unsure. That split second of hesitation,
or maybe it’s regret, is enough to make me think she might struggle with
alcohol. I can always tell when people are tossing away their sobriety by
how they look at their glass.

---

Drinking is only stressful to alcoholics.
She doesn’t drink the wine, though. She quietly sips on the soda until
it’s empty. I reach for the empty glass at the same time she does.
When our fingers touch, I feel something else trapped in my chest
other than my voice. Maybe it’s a few extra heartbeats. Maybe it’s an
erupting volcano.
Her fingers recoil from mine and she puts her hands in her lap. I pull
the empty glass of soda away from her, as well as the full glass of wine, and
she doesn’t even look up to ask me why. She sighs, like maybe she’s
relieved I took the wine away. Why did she even order it?
I refill her soda, and when she isn’t looking, I pour the wine in the sink
and wash the glass.
She sips from the soda for a while, but the eye contact stops. Maybe I
upset her.
Roman notices me staring at her. He leans an elbow onto the counter
and says, “Divorce or death?”
Roman always likes to guess the reasons people come in alone and
seem out of place. The girl doesn’t seem like she’s here because of a
divorce. Women usually celebrate those by coming to bars with groups of
friends, wearing sashes that say Ex-Wife.
This girl does seem sad, but not sad in a way that would indicate she’s
grieving.
“I’m gonna say divorce,” Roman says.
I don’t respond to him. I don’t feel right guessing her tragedy, because
I’m hoping it isn’t divorce or death or even a bad day. I want good things
for her because it seems like she hasn’t had a good thing in a long, long
time.
I stop staring at her while I tend to other customers. I do it to give her
privacy, but she uses it as an opportunity to leave cash on the bar and sneak
out.
I stare for several seconds at her empty barstool and the ten-dollar tip
she left. She’s gone and I don’t know her name and I don’t know her story
and I don’t know that I’ll ever see her again, so here I am, rushing around
the bar, through the bar, toward the front door she just slipped out of.
The sky is on fire when I walk outside. I shield my eyes, forgetting
how assaulting the light always is when I step out of the bar before dark.

---

She turns around right when I spot her. She’s about ten feet from me.
She doesn’t have to shield her eyes because the sun is behind her, outlining
her head like it’s topped with a halo.
“I left money on the bar,” she says.
“I know.”
We stare at each other for a quiet moment. I don’t know what to say. I
just stand here like a fool.
“What, then?”
“Nothing,” I say. But I immediately wish I would have said,
“Everything.”
She stares at me, and I never do this, I shouldn’t do this, but I know if I
let her walk away, I won’t be able to stop thinking about the sad girl who
left me a ten-dollar tip when I get the feeling she can’t afford to leave me a
tip at all.
“You should come back tonight at eleven.” I don’t give her a chance to
tell me no or explain why she can’t. I go back inside the bar, hoping my
request makes her curious enough to show back up tonight.

---

CHAPTER FIVE
KENNA
I’m sitting on an inflatable mattress with my unnamed kitten, contemplating
all the reasons I shouldn’t go back to that bar.
I didn’t come back to this town to meet guys. Even guys as good
looking as that bartender. I’m here for my daughter and that’s it.
Tomorrow is important. Tomorrow I need to feel Herculean, but the
bartender unintentionally made me feel weak by pulling away my glass of
wine. I don’t know what he saw on my face that made him want to take the
wine away from me. I wasn’t going to drink it. I only ordered it so I could
feel a sense of control in not drinking it. I wanted to look at it and smell it
and then walk away from it feeling stronger than when I sat down.
Now I just feel unsettled because he saw how I was looking at the
wine earlier, and the way he pulled it away makes me think he assumes I
have an active issue with alcohol.
I don’t. I haven’t had alcohol in years because one night of alcohol
mixed with a tragedy ruined the last five years of my life, and the last five
years of my life have led me back to this town, and this town makes me
nervous, and the only thing that calms my nerves is doing things that make
me feel like I’m still in control of my life and my decisions.