Chapter 2
E WAN
“Rough night, huh?” the barista, a woman with a cat tattooed on her neck, tosses at me.
She flicks her chin to the empty glass in front of me.
“Do you want another one?” she asks.
I slowly run the edge of my teeth over my bottom lip, pondering and glancing at the neon clock pinned on the wall behind the bar.
“Sure. Why not?”
She turns around and pours me another drink.
It’s the same drink.
Whiskey neat.
“Don’t forget about the water,” I rasp, and she glances at me, her hand already around an ice cold water bottle.
“It’s fine,” I say when she moves to untwist the cap and pour the water into a second glass. “Don’t need that. Besides, I hate clutter,” I explain, and her smile wavers.
“As you say.”
She wants to provide a good customer experience and stay on my good side.
At the same time she can’t help herself, and she sneaks a peek at me from time to time.
She’s new here.
I’ve only seen her twice before, and I come here a lot.
It’s my favorite spot to hang out because people know me and leave me alone.
Women do what she does because my blue-gray eyes snag their attention. I get that a lot. It doesn’t matter to me much.
When you have it, you don’t care.
You don’t have it––like the dude perched on the bar stool next to me, trying to woo his woman––you struggle.
He’s been hitting on that flashy redhead cackling next to him for the past twenty minutes, and there’s no progress in sight.
She’s laughing all right, but she’s doing it at him more than with him. And the fucker doesn’t get the message.
I’d move to the table next to the window and drink my whiskey in peace but I arrived before them, so I won’t move.
It was his stupid idea to plop her on a stool at the bar.
To seem casual about wanting to get in her pants, I think?
What was he thinking?
Normally, I wouldn’t eavesdrop. And I’m not eavesdropping. I don’t care. I never cared. I’m sick of my own problems.
I don’t need to hear about other people’s issues.
But this is the place if you want to get laid at this time of night, only a few short days before Christmas.
Most people are more careful when planning to pick someone up to spend time with over the holidays.
It doesn’t mean the guy isn’t in for a ‘one time only,’ but she might know he is loaded, and she’s playing hard to get. So their one-night stand stretches into something more lucrative, like a nice vacation, gifts, perhaps, and maybe more.
I know he’s loaded, for a fact. And it’s not only because he drives an expensive car that isn't a rental, or he isn’t behind on payments and trying to score one last time before his vehicle gets repossessed.
He’s a fucker with an auto service shop here in Long Island, and he’s doing pretty well.
He has a nice house and all that.
I’m sure he could settle down with someone and skip the nasty pickup lines he vomits out for this woman.
To each his own.
I look the other way, trying to ignore them.
The place is small and private, with––for the most part––quiet dialogue, soft chuckles, and dim lights.
Someone put in the work to make it look homey with fancy Christmas decorations, piles of pine cones on the tables, and thick red candles wrapped in golden bows.
They serve food too, as they share a commercial kitchen with the big restaurant in the back overlooking the water, but most people are here for drinks and getting laid.
“Is he your friend?” someone asks behind me, and it’s not the redhead––her voice is screechy. And it’s not the barista, for sure. She’s more mellow than that.
I slowly move in my seat to get a view of the patrons at the bar.
A woman with long blonde extensions––don’t ask me how I know––arches an eyebrow at me.
The sucker next to me shifts in his seat as well.
“Oh…” he says when my glare punches him in the face. “He’s not with us.”
Us, meaning him and the redhead.
He gives me an apologetic smile with hope sprinkled on it.
Yeah.
He’d love me to be his wingman.
Maybe he’d get laid for once.
But if I did that, I’d make him watch me railing those women so he could learn how it’s done.
The problem is, I’m not in the mood for fucking tonight, yet I understand the math.
The redhead has a friend. Somehow, the friend got a tip and showed up here uninvited.
I happen to be here, alone, nursing my drink.
Again, this place is known for getting laid if you were a man and scoring a loaded jerk if you were a lady.
I didn’t make the rules.
I just observe them.
I’m one of the loaded jerks, but luckily, no one knows that. Unlike the dick on my side, I don’t drive an expensive car.
For each thing, there is the right time. Right now, I don’t need the aggravation.
And other than that? I rarely wear suits these days and seldom pick up women at the bar.
I’ve had my share. It all ends the same.
Hair extensions in a cheap hotel room. Lipstick on my dick. Pale and gaunt looks in the morning. Empty eyes. The crushing disappointment on both sides.
We both look like dead ends.
Sex can do a lot in life, but for sure, it can’t erase your memory or give you a new direction.
I’ve been sailing aimlessly for a while.
“Maybe he’d like to join us,” the blonde insists, obviously taking a liking to me.
What you don’t need usually comes easy. I study her face under the curious eyes of the odd couple at my side.
I give her a taste of what lies behind my spellbinding eyes––their words about my eyes, not mine. And I see the recoil in horror in her body.
The other two don't notice it, but I do.
Her upper lip trembles and her eyes lose their sparkle. All that cheerfulness has gone stale. A quick once over gives me everything I need to know.
She’s older than the redhead, younger than me, for sure. Somewhere in her early thirties.
She could be a hard-working woman by day.
A teacher, a lawyer, or a doctor.
She has that self-assuredness about her, the kind that women in control can never bury deep enough, not even when they go out to have some fun.
Maybe she was on one of the dating sites the creepy guys call home, tried her luck with a bunch of them, and none of them gave her what she wanted.
Maybe she was married at some point, and it ended badly.
She dusted herself off and started from scratch. Whatever her story, I’m not her man.
I peel my eyes away from them without gracing them with an answer.
They get the hint quickly and start talking amongst themselves, not commenting on my behavior.
They know better than that.
“Can I have another one?” I toss at the barista, who brings the bottle to the counter and fills up my glass while I clean my palate with cold water.
My phone buzzes, and I take my damn time to reach inside my pocket and check it.
There is no good reason for anyone to be calling me at this hour. Sometimes, I get calls from my men, but it’s usually stuff I need to approve of.
Nothing crazy.
Things are quiet these days.
They have been quiet for a while.
Maybe too damn quiet.
It can’t be one of them.
My brothers.
We’re all living in our own little worlds, none of us feeling like talking, let alone socializing in a formal setting. Who the fuck wants that?
The phone buzzes again, and I take a sip of whiskey before fishing it out from my pocket and staring at a number I don’t recognize.
This better be good.
I weigh my options for a couple of seconds before picking up the call.
“Yeah?”
A pause comes first, followed by some muffled voices blended in the background, punctuated by the electronic beeps of what sounds like medical machines. Is that a hospital?
I’ve only heard those unmistakable sounds over there.
“Hello?” I say again, my voice rough like I just smashed a few faces in before getting my drinks.
“It’s me,” a hesitant voice travels from the other end.
“Ezra?” I ask, unable to stifle my surprise.
A pang of guilt grows in my chest while I’m waiting for my son to speak.
We haven’t talked in a week.
The last time we chatted, he was in Colorado.
He found a girl there.
I push away from the bar, my phone pressed to my ear, my eyes on the view outside.
The sky has shifted colors like crazy, from blue to gray to dark, and now that the evening has crawled in, snow comes down in a curtain of white.
I don’t know what kind of words to push out first.
“Is everything all right? Are you okay?”
It’s like I’m talking around a fist of dirt, or I have a rock in my mouth.
No matter how I try to say it and be there for him, it’s not working. It hasn’t worked for a while.
“Where are you?” I ask, my irritation growing.
At me.
At the situation.
As always, he’ll think I’m angry at him.
“I’m at the hospital.”
“What happened?” I push out before waiting for his answer, my breaths ripped out of my chest.
“Are you still in Colorado?” I ask again. “Someone did something to you?” I bark, and a couple of people interrupt their conversation and look up from their drinks.
“Talk to me,” I say, my voice strangled, my fist sweaty. “I swear to God if someone did something––”
“There was an accident,” he eventually says. “I fell off my bike, but I’m fine now… I’ll be fine ,” he rephrases. “And I’m back in New York.”
I’m carved in stone.
“What??”
“Yeah. I came last night.”
“Why couldn’t you call me? Where did you sleep last night?”
“I shacked up with a friend.”
“What friend?” I ask, jolting out of my paralysis and spinning back to my seat, where I pick up my jacket, pull out some cash from my pocket, and leave it on the counter before nodding at the barista.
She waves at me, withholding a smile, and I stride out without looking back.
I click my car key, and the headlights of my truck cut into the falling snow.
“What friend, Ezra? Is this a new woman?”
He doesn’t answer.
I hop into the driver’s seat, blaming myself for his taking after his father.
“It fucking is,” I mutter. “Does your accident have to do with your new woman?”
“No, it doesn’t,” he says, not talking like himself.
“Is she there with you?”
“Yes, she is.”
“What hospital?”
He gives me the name of the place, and I slide my phone into the cupholder before steering my car away.
“Tell me what happened,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “I’m on my way.”
“I told you… It was an accident. Everything is fine now. You don’t need to worry about me,” he says with the clueless voice of a nineteen-year-old who fell off his bike and still thought things were fine.
“What does it mean fine?” I ask, stepping on the gas and not accidentally running a red light.
“What are you in there for?”
“They’re running some tests to make sure everything looks fine.”
“Any broken bones?”
“A torn ligament, some bruises, and a couple of broken ribs,” he says quickly––someone must’ve coached him to do this.
Smoke comes out of my ears.
“Broken ribs? Can you breathe?”
He chuckles at the other end of the line.
“They’re hairline fractures. It hurts, but I can breathe.”
“I want to see you. I’ll video call you.”
“No, no. I can’t do that. My phone has been smashed. This is her phone. You’ll see me when you get here. I gotta go now. The doctor is here.”
And he hangs up.