Thirty
M arcela doesn’t stay for much longer. I should head out, too, but I want to say goodbye to Krystal, especially since she’s avoiding me. It doesn’t feel right to put even more space between us without figuring out what she’s thinking. Another bartender takes my order while she’s gone, a man with close-cropped hair and a flirty grin that does absolutely nothing for me.
“I hear these are your usual.” He deposits a Malibu sunset onto the bar. “Extra Malibu, on the house,” he adds with a wink.
I take a sip and nearly sputter from the burning sensation clawing at my throat. “How much extra are we talking, here?”
“Not sure.” The side of his mouth quirks up. “I don’t measure alcohol for friends.”
Another cheesy wink. I glance over my shoulder, where Krystal is busying herself with wiping down tables. I don’t return the bartender’s advances, but I do down the drink in three gulps. He sets another beside my empty glass. It’s not as strong as the first but has twice the amount of grenadine it should. I wince at the taste, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
He’s leaning over the bar, a leering smirk on his admittedly handsome face, when a shadow falls over us.
“I can take her from here.” Goose bumps prickle the hair at the back of my neck at Krystal’s voice. When I turn around, her stony-eyed gaze is trained on the new guy.
“That’s okay,” he says, looking back at me. “I’m good here.”
“It wasn’t a suggestion.” Her stern voice sends chills running up and down my spine. “Go take inventory in the back.”
“I already did that when I came in.” Krystal stares him down until he finally breaks. “Guess I’m doing inventory again.”
“Who was that?” I ask once he’s gone. She doesn’t answer my question as she clears away my three empty glasses and grabs a fresh one from behind the counter. She opens the tap, filling it with water before handing it to me.
“Drink up,” she says, her tone brokering no argument. I do so, if only because I’m kind of a fan of this bossy side of her. Is she… jealous? “I can’t leave you alone for a second. How much did he give you to drink?”
“Just what you cleared away.” I wave her concern away. “I’m good. Ish. We’ll find out when I try to stand up.”
She curses beneath her breath. “I’m gonna kill that guy.”
“He was just doing his job.” I shrug. “I can’t expect you to hang out with me all night. You were doing your job too.”
“And you were occupied for half the night yourself,” she reminds me, her expression torn. Finally, she asks, “How was your date?”
I rear back. “I’d hardly call it a date.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, Angel. You can do whatever you want. We agreed to just be friends, remember?”
“Still, it wasn’t a date,” I insist. “After the scavenger hunt, who knows? If she wins, maybe we’ll see each other again. Or maybe we won’t.”
“Do you want her to win?” she asks, holding my gaze. “You told me you like her, after all.”
I do like Leti. Under very different, Krystal-less circumstances, yeah, I’d probably be rooting for her to win. We want the same things. Hell, we’re both graysexual. She’s pretty and smart and incredibly interesting, but at the end of the day, she’s not Krystal . I take a sip of water instead of answering. After a beat, Krystal sucks in a deep breath.
“I texted Isaac,” she says out of nowhere, surprising me. “He hasn’t replied yet and I don’t know if he’s going to.”
“That’s still good,” I tell her. “You never know, right? He could surprise you.”
“Maybe. But I’m not holding my breath.”
“Still. I’m glad you texted him.”
“Yeah?”
I nod. “Do you know what you’re going to say to him if he replies?”
“I keep going back and forth in my head about it.” She pushes a stray curl back from her face. “If I’m apologizing for the wrong reasons, is it still worth saying ‘I’m sorry’?”
“That depends more on whether he wants to hear it,” I say. “Plus, how wrong can your reasons for apologizing be?”
“Maybe it’s selfish,” she says. “Aside from last weekend, we haven’t spoken to each other since we broke up. Actually, I’m not sure we spoke at all.”
“Maybe that’s exactly why you two need to talk,” I tell her. “If you hadn’t seen each other at my house, neither of you would’ve bothered to reach out. Now you have an opening. It might be a hard conversation to get through, but maybe it’s needed.”
“You’re right.” She groans. “I’m just nervous.”
“At least wait until he replies to be nervous.” I smile dryly. She pushes at my shoulder, but there’s no force to it. “It’ll work out, regardless of whether he wants to see you.”
“You really believe that, don’t you?”
“I believe you’re capable of forgiving yourself,” I say, if only because I so desperately want that for her. “With or without Isaac.”
“That makes one of us, at least.” She looks up at me from the floor, and for the umpteenth time, I’m sucked into her orbit. “You’re a good friend.”
Those words can’t negate the pounding in my chest or my inability to breathe properly in her vicinity. I may be inexperienced, but not so much that I don’t know friends aren’t supposed to feel like this for each other. But at this point, I don’t see any other option for us.
“We shouldn’t try to be more than that,” I tell her. Tell myself , because I need to hear it more than she does. “At least, not until after the scavenger hunt is over.”
“Right.” She bites her bottom lip, my eyes immediately pulled to her mouth. “We still have that rule.”
“Someone thought it’d be a good idea, not that I can remember why.” Not when she’s looking at me the way she is now.
“Well, you’ve had a couple drinks,” she reminds me with a stern look. “You’ll remember in the morning.”
I hop off the barstool, and boy is that a mistake. The room spins for a moment until I’m able to right myself by grabbing on to the bar. “Malibu, why hath thou betrayed me?”
“Angela?”
“That stupid boy threw off the portions in my drink.” I rest my forehead against the wood as my head starts to pound. “Too much grenadine, then too much booze. Or maybe it was the other way around. Too much booze, and then too much grenadine.”
“Who are you talking about?” She walks around the bar and pulls me into her arms. “The bartender who served you?”
“Isn’t it in the job description that a bartender has to know how to make a damn drink the correct way?” I’m spewing complete nonsense at this point. “Oh god, I think I’m gonna be sick.”
She power-walks me to the bathroom, where I hurl into a toilet bowl just in time. After pulling my hair back into a chongo, she tells me to stay here while she closes the bar, as if I was capable of moving off this floor by myself. Luckily, my stomach seems to be feeling fine after one barf session and I’m not nearly as dizzy as before.
Once the building is locked for the night, she returns to the bathroom to lead me to her car and helps me into the passenger seat. I reach for the seat belt above my head but can’t seem to find it for some reason. Krystal’s chest rises and falls with a long sigh. Just as I find the buckle, her hand closes over mine.
I glance up and holy shit her face is so much closer than I thought it was. The upper half of her body is bent over mine, her right hand braced on the seat beside my thigh. There’s that feeling again, like something’s clogging the back of my throat, preventing me from breathing.
“There we go.” She pulls down the seat belt and buckles it in place over my lap. She sounds as breathless as I imagine I’d be if I was capable of speaking, but she recovers quickly. “You feeling okay?”
All I can manage is a nod, and not even because of the alcohol. When she closes the door, I’m finally able to catch my breath. Krystal walks around the car until she reaches the driver side.
“Let me know if you start to feel sick,” she says as she starts the engine. “I might have a plastic bag you can barf in if you need to.”
“I think my stomach settled after the one.”
“Good, but I’m still taking you back to my place,” she says. “You can’t drive back home like this.”
I’m too tired to argue with her, because she’s probably right. I’m in no state to drive myself anywhere. But the two of us under one roof, with all our unresolved feelings? That doesn’t sound too smart either.