Chapter Text
I stumble out of the bar bathroom, the floor gently swishing beneath me. But I don’t want gentleness, nor do I deserve it. Everything about this moment is violent. My feelings, thoughts, actions, so why is this fucking floor not getting the vibe. I have half the mind to yell at it but I am in a crowded room and far from drunk enough.
My phone buzzes in my hand, I look down at the text message from my father asking where I’ve gone. Asking why I’m not at my brother’s reception dinner. Why I’m not stuffing my face with his stupid cake while he dances around with the love of my life on his arm. While she smiles and kisses him. I hear the glass in my hand squeak from the firm grasp of my fingers and lightly relieve the pressure.
I was prepared for the headache to hit me tomorrow, but I feel it now, like tension creeping into my brow, I will have to dull it with the liquid in my hand. I go for a swing but notice that the glass is empty. I slam it a little too hard on the bar and catch the stern eye of the bartender, a friend from one of the countless summers I’ve spent in this town at my mom’s beach house. The only place that still feels like her, like home. The place I run to when I can’t handle real life.
“Conrad man,” Drew, the bartender, says as he approaches me, tossing a rag over his shoulder. “What’s up?”
“Another glass of whatever I was drinking,” I answer, trying for a smile that says charming rather than moron. I assume it works because he pours it for me and I head of in search of the chair I was using. I quickly figure out it’s been taken over and while the prospect of bickering with someone sounds like a good relief of stress, I feel anxious to part with the last remnants of my first love. Instead, I scan the room for empty space and notice a girl at the back of the bar, holding on to a table for two alone. I make my way towards her, taking a sip of my drink and reveling in the way it burns my throat. I welcome any pain that isn’t inflicted by their smiles.
The girl is sitting with her hands in her head, or is it the other way around? Either way, she has an empty chair so I plop into it. She looks up, but I don’t see her expression as I take another sip.
“I’m really not looking for company right now,” she says, voice cranky.
“Neither am I,” I smile and finally look down at her face.
Her cheeks are flushed either from the heat or the liquid in a half empty glass. Her eyes are sharp and thin, with irises of piercing gray, the color of the ocean, not at the height of summer when vibrant blues and deep greens fight for control, but the deep winter ocean, with all those colors peeking though the thick layer of glossy ice that threatens to paint it gray. Her hair is a mix of blonde and brown, the color of wet and dry sand meeting on the beach. She looks like she belongs here, in this town. Like this place is hers in the way, it isn’t mine anymore. I feel intrigue overtake me and extend my glass in her direction.
“Though misery does love company.”
She chuckles at this and her laugh hits like crashing waves. Man, I really need to stop comparing her to the beach.
“Alright, sad man, you can sit here but you’re getting me a drink.”
“What would you like…?” I pause for her to fill in her name.
“Alexandra, but friends call me Sandy.”
“Sandy” I repeat, she has got to be fucking with me. “What drink would you like?” She stops for a while, considering. I wait patiently, happy to have an odd distraction of studying her eyebrow twitches. She settles on a gin and tonic.
+++
We sit quietly for about 20 minutes before I notice her suitcase.
“Are you leaving town?” I ask, breaking the silence.
“I have been kicked out of my motel due to a double booking. So I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“You can stay with me,” I suggest for some inexplicable reason. Well, in all honesty, it’s very explicable. I really don’t want to be alone, especially not tonight.
“I’m not in the habit of staying with random men, that’s how I’ve managed to stay alive.”
“So what’s your alternative?”
“I have no idea, maybe I’ll just crash on the beach.”
“Oh yes, because there’s never any strange men outside.”
She stops at this, tensing her brow. “Fuck.”
“Did you seriously not consider this?” I snort.
“No I must have, the alcohol is not good for my self-preservation skills.”
“And yet you asked me for a drink. I’m starting to wonder how it is that you are alive.” She glares at me, thin becoming sharper yet and sticks out her tongue mockingly.
“Shut up… oh shit, I never asked for your name.” Her cheeks flush pinker. “If you’re gonna try to take me home, I should at least know your name.”
“It’s Conrad. Conrad Fisher.”
“Alright, Conrad Fisher, you’re carrying my suitcase.” She declares.
She gets up quickly, downs her drink and heads for the door, stopping only to whisper something to Drew, the bartender, who shoots me a look that screams “attaboy”.
I get a cab to take us to the beach house. I’m too sad and tired to drag her suitcase there.
Sandy cracks a window open as soon as she gets in, the breeze hitting us in the face as the car takes off in the direction of my home.
I watch her quietly as she admires the town I grew up in, her hair swirling in the breeze. She must catch me out of the corner of her eye because she turns to face me then and smiles as our eyes meet. The shadow makes her look more dangerous, mysterious. She leans forward, placing her weight on her wrists as she glides closer to me.
“You know, you’re already taking me home. You can stop acting shy now.”
I would have never made a move if she hadn’t told me to. I wouldn’t do anything to make her uncomfortable, not when this is her only option for accommodations for the night. My plan was to show her to Belly’s room, to make her bed while I work myself into tears over all the things we’d done there, then head to the liquor cabinet and drink until I pass out in mom’s bed. But this sounds less lonely. And she looks so pretty in the night light. So I let myself go, I let myself feel something other than soul crushing sadness. Something like the velvety skin of her cheek under my thumb, like the softness of her thin lips, like the pleasure that shoots through me as she grabs my hair in her fist. Something that, for a moment, might be confused for happiness.