I parked next to his Chevy, but walked in pretending I hadn’t recognized it. I saw him alone at a table in the back, but continued to scan the heads at the bar- then snagged the first empty bar stool.
“HEY,” I heard the same familiar voice I’d been falling in love with for months.
I threw my arms out as I spun around on my seat, feet up, smirking with sarcasm, “I can’t even get a drink first??” I shouted back. Drawing attention from the rest of the bar. This whole entire bar knows us each by name.
“Nope.” He threw his arms out in reciprocation, looking to envelope me in affection. I hopped off the stool, and walked across the weathered hardwood floor, into his waiting arms; melting into the same puddle of love I’d been drowning in all summer.
“Please,” he released me enough to take a look at me, “put it on my tab.” I laughed as I shrugged his arms off me, “You better believe I was already going to.” I heard him laugh as I skipped back to April behind the bar.
I ordered a whiskey coke and made my way back to his table, “can I sit with you?” He laughed with a smile- already anticipating my coy behavior.
I made a joke on twitter a couple weeks ago how we always pussyfoot around each other at first, acting as if any boundary ever existed- and then it always just turns into a huge mess of our DNA. “Please do!” he smiled a perfect smile at me, as he pulled a stool over directly in front of him.
We talked about work- and when I’d finally start my new job. We talked about the dates I’d been on- and why I was pretty much just done dating. We talked about how the sale of his farm had just fallen through- and how he’d just rented an apartment in Folsom earlier that day. We laughed at how my new office is just a block away from his office of 20+ years. “Oh my god,” he covered his forehead with his right hand. “Remember when we used to joke about hooking up on our lunch breaks?”
“Do I?” I looked up while sucking the straw of my whiskey.
At one point in every conversation between us, it touches on something deeper than jokes and catching up and making each other smile while howling with laughter in our own world. “The last time we spoke,” he began- and I rolled my eyes, already knowing it had to be acknowledged. “don’t roll those beautiful eyes at me,” he grabbed my thigh, “you were not happy with me.”
He says he’s torn between telling me more than I need or want to know, and just telling me only the things that make him appear less criminal. From the moment we met, drunk in line for beer at a concert, one hundred percent honesty has always been the basis of our friendship. For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.
“You haven’t looked at a single cowboy that’s walked in this door.” He raised his drink, and his eyebrows at me.
“Yeah, well. The only man I want is already in front of me.” I served with conviction and a sarcastic smile.
“I like that,” he set his glass down, and placed both his hands around my face, “and I love you.”
I’m just a heaping pot of honey whenever he’s around.
“Can you believe,” he threw his whiskey glass back, as he settled against the back wall of our bar. The same bar we had our first date. The same bar we both now call our neighborhood bar. “This all started at the show of a Led Zeppelin cover band?”
Wild Little Hare 