Chapter Ten
Teague
She brings reinforcements.
It’s Saturday night, which is already louder than I prefer, and Zoe walks in at nine-thirty with four girls trailing behind her like ducklings in lipgloss.
They’re all her age, all dressed up, all looking around Anthem with the wide eyes of people who’ve never been in a bar that doesn’t have a cocktail menu on an iPad.
Zoe leads them to the corner table, the big one, and they pile in with their bags and their phones and their energy, and the noise level in the bar jumps by about thirty percent.
One of them squeals about the pool table.
Another one takes a photo of the neon sign.
A third says “oh my God, it’s so authentic” in a tone that makes me want to charge a cover.
Zoe comes to the bar alone.
“Moscow mule,” she says. Then she looks back at the table. “And whatever they want. I’m buying the first round.”
“What do they want?”
“Keely wants an Aperol spritz. Mia wants a vodka soda. Jordan wants something with tequila, and Raquelle wants whatever’s fun.”
“Whatever’s fun.”
“Her words, not mine.”
I make the drinks. The Aperol spritz takes longest because I have to find the Aperol, which I keep in the back because almost nobody orders it. While I’m pouring, one of the girls comes up to the bar. Short, curly hair, loud voice.
“Are you Teague?”
“Depends.”
“I’m Keely. Zoe’s best friend.” She leans on the bar. “Zoe talks about you.”
“If she does, she's probably talking about punk music. I’m just the delivery system.”
“She talks about you too.” Keely grins. She’s got the confidence of someone who’s been the loud friend her entire life. “She said you gave her a Shirley Temple when she tried to get drunk.”
“She was twenty-two and sad. That’s a Shirley Temple situation.”
“I’m also twenty-two.”
“But you’re not sad. You’re having a great time. So you get the Aperol spritz you ordered like a functioning adult.” I slide it across to her. “Tell your table the first round’s on Zoe and the second round’s at menu price.”
Keely takes the drink and goes back to the table. I watch her sit down and lean into Zoe and say something, and Zoe looks at me over Keely’s shoulder and shakes her head, laughing, mouthing sorry at me from across the room.
I don’t mind. That’s the thing I should mind about and don’t.
Five girls showed up in my bar on a Saturday and they’re ordering drinks I have to dig for and taking photos of the neon and one of them just asked someone if we have a DJ, and I should be annoyed because this is Anthem, not a birthday brunch uptown, and instead I’m watching Zoe laugh with her friends and thinking she looks different in a group.
Not better. Different. She’s louder. She touches people when she talks, a hand on Keely’s arm, a shove to Jordan’s shoulder.
She throws her head back when she laughs.
She’s comfortable with these people in a way she isn’t at the bar with me, and that makes sense because these are her people and I’m just the bartender, but there’s a version of Zoe I’ve been seeing at my bar that’s quieter, more focused, and I realize now that version is the one she becomes around me specifically.
I don’t know what to do with that.
The night moves. I pour drinks and clear glasses and manage the room.
The regulars are here too. Paperback guy left early because the noise hit his limit, which I respect.
Pool table couple is playing doubles with two of the girls, who are terrible and cheerful about it.
The bar is full, which means my tips are good, which means the Anthem fund gets fed, which means the contract in the drawer moves closer to being real.
At eleven, Zoe comes back to the bar. She’s flushed from laughing, cheeks warm, and she’s had two mules over two hours, which is her pace.
She sits on her stool and the noise from the table is behind her and it’s almost like it’s just us again, except it’s not because Keely keeps looking over and whispering to Mia.
“Sorry about them,” Zoe says.
“They’re good for business.”
“They’re a lot.”
“They’re twenty-two. Twenty-two is a lot by definition.” I lean on the bar. “They’re your people.”
“Since seventh grade. Most of them.” She traces the rim of her mug. “Keely’s my ride or die. Mia and I were on track together. Jordan lives on my block. And Raquelle is Keely’s cousin who we adopted sophomore year.”
“You collect people.”
She looks up. “What?”
“You collect people. You walk into places and you keep coming back until you belong there and then you bring more people and the place changes shape to fit all of you.” I wipe down the bar. “You’ve been coming here for two weeks and you’ve already changed my Saturday demographic.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s something.”
She licks her lips. There it is. That quick nervous motion I’ve been tracking since the first night, the one she doesn’t know she’s doing.
I’ve seen her do it when she’s talking about Station 11, when she’s listening to music she’s never heard before, when she’s sitting across from me and trying to figure out how much of herself to show.
She’s doing it now. Looking at me with those dark eyes and that soft mouth and I’m thinking about it, which is a problem because I don’t think about regulars. Regulars are transactions. Regulars are good for business. Regulars are not people whose mouths I catalog while I’m supposed to be working.
“I like your bar,” she says. “I like the music and the neon and the sticky floor by the pool table.”
“The floor’s not sticky anymore. I mopped.”
“I like that you mopped.” She grins. “Can I put a song on?”
“The playlist is curated.”
“One song. Please.”
She’s doing the face. The face she probably uses on Captain Donnelly, the one that’s all sincerity and zero guile and makes it nearly impossible to say no without feeling like you just kicked a golden retriever.
“One song,” I say. “If it’s Taylor Swift I’m burning the place down.”
“It’s not Taylor Swift.” She pulls out her phone. “How do I connect?”
“You don’t connect. You tell me the song and I decide if it’s worthy of the speakers.”
“Against Me! ‘Don’t Lose Touch.’”
I stop wiping the bar.
She requested my song. The one I told her was mine.
The one I’ve never played at Anthem because it’s too close to something I keep for myself, and she walked into my bar on a Saturday night with her four best friends and asked me to play it like it was nothing, like she didn’t just reach into my chest and find the thing I didn’t offer her.
“That’s a deep cut,” I say. My voice is even. I’m good at even.
“You said it was yours. I want to hear it in here.” She gestures at the room. “I want to hear what it sounds like in this place.”
I could say no. I should say no. This is my bar and my playlist and that song is private, and playing it because a twenty-two-year-old with a smile that could power a small city asked me to would be giving up something I didn’t plan to give.
I play it.
Laura Jane Grace’s voice fills the room, cutting through the noise from Zoe’s table and the pool game and the clinking glasses.
The opening chords are clean and restless and familiar in a way that feels like pressing on a bruise, and I stand behind the bar and listen to a song I’ve listened to a thousand times in private hearing it for the first time in this room.
It sounds good. It sounds like Anthem. It sounds like it should have been here all along.
Zoe doesn’t say anything. She just sits on her stool with her Moscow mule and listens, and when the chorus hits she closes her eyes for a second, and I watch her listen the way I’ve been watching her since she walked in on a Tuesday and asked to be destroyed and I gave her ginger ale instead.
The song ends. The playlist moves on. Rancid. Different energy, louder, and the room adjusts.
“Thank you,” Zoe says.
“Don’t thank me. It’s just a song.”
“It’s not just a song.” She looks at me. “You played it because I asked.”
“I play lots of songs because people ask.”
“But not that one.” She finishes her mule. “Thanks, Teague. For letting me hear it.”
She slides off the stool and goes back to her friends. Keely pulls her into a hug and whispers something in her ear and Zoe laughs and they all pile together in the booth, loud and young and taking up more space than five people should be able to take up.
I wash the mug. Wipe the bar. Laura Jane Grace is still in the speakers even though Rancid is playing, and I’m feeling something I’m not going to name.
They leave at midnight. All of them, together, a mass exit of bags and phones and hugs and one of them yelling “bye Teague!” from the door like we’re friends. Zoe is last. She stops at the bar and puts a twenty down and looks at me.
“Same time next week?”
“You know the hours.”
“I know your hours.” She picks up her jacket. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Zoe.”
The door closes. The bar goes quiet. I stand there for a moment, in the neon light, and then I pick up the twenty and put it in the tip jar and start closing.
I don’t play “Don’t Lose Touch” again. Once was enough. Once was already too much. But I don’t take it off the playlist queue either.
I leave it there. Just in case.