9. Chapter 9
The bar smells like bleach, citrus, and a plethora of regret tonight.
It’s a familiar cocktail and comforting in its own way.
I slide a pint across the counter and catch it just before it tips, muscle memory doing what my brain doesn’t have to anymore.
Four years behind this bar will do that to you.
Four years of drunk men, sticky floors, broken glass, and music played just loud enough to drown out all the bad decisions one might just make.
My bracelet blinks silver as I wipe the counter, but I don’t bother hiding it anymore. If anyone notices, they don’t say anything. If they ask, I’ll lie or shrug. Or tell them it was a thing. People don’t tend to press when you sound bored about something mysterious.
Imogen perches at the end of the bar, legs crossed, boots hooked under the rung, sketchbook opened but untouched. She’s been “keeping me company” for the last hour, which really means she’s making sure I eat something that isn’t fries and caffeine.
She watches me for a minute too long before the barrier on her silence breaks, simply because she can’t take it anymore. Like a box exploding because its contents are far too full.
“So, how was therapy?” She blurts.
I snort and reach for the tap again. “Real subtle.”
She grins despite herself. “I know.”
“It was fine,” I mutter, which is the biggest lie I’ve told today and not even close to the biggest one of this week. “We talked and he asked questions. I answered some of them. Not much to it, really.”
“Did you hate it?”
“No.”
That earns me her full attention. Not that I didn’t have it before, but now it’s been cranked high and alert.
“I didn’t feel like running out screaming, if that helps.” I muse.
“Oh, high praise.” She chuckles, tapping her fingers to the bar top.
A group off the far end of the bar erupts into laughter and I slide another round down, the noise washing over us like static. I like working busy nights. It allows less room for thinking and more for doing.
Imogen waits until I’m back to her end of the bar before continuing.
“Listen,” she murmurs carefully, the way she does when she’s about to push. “I was thinking… if you’re not going to sell your paintings yourself, you could let me.”
I sigh, pursing my lips and slapping my palms to the counter as I look to her knowingly. “I’m not ready for that.”
“You’ve been saying that for years.”
“Because it’s true.”
She tilts her head, eyes narrowing. “Or because it’s safer.”
“You’re one to talk. You hid your sketchbooks under your bed for a decade.” I scoff.
“And then I stopped. And guess what? It didn’t kill me.”
I roll my eyes and look to the bar, tapping my fingers to the worn wood as I let my thoughts slide across the room. Not sure how I explain to her all that I’m feeling about that offer.
“I don’t have the luxury of ‘what if’,” I mutter.
“This”—I gesture around us—“works.”
“It pays the bills, Sadie. That is not the same thing.”
I pour myself a soda and take a long drink, bubbles burning down my throat as I study my friend. My mind drifts, unhelpfully, to a quiet office with soft lighting and a man who watches more than he speaks.
We’ll identify patterns first.
I shove the thought away.
“My mom wasn’t exactly big on stability,” I admit, surprising myself by saying it out loud. “So I learned early not to rely on things that have the penchant for disappearing. Letting myself live on my art would be being just as unstable as she was, and I don’t want to live that way again.”
Imogen’s expression softens, but she doesn’t interrupt. She never does when she manages to pry a little of the truth out of my chest. I lean toward her, folding my hands as my elbows land on the bar top and I give her a little more of myself.
“She liked drugs more than she liked me, and men more than both. I never knew which one would be in the apartment when I got home. Sometimes both of them.”
I rap my knuckles to the bar top and let my mind wander back, Imogen reaching out to grip my wrist softly.
“She wasn’t cruel by standard means,” I add, because that matters. “Just absent. Checked out even. Everything revolved around whoever was sleeping in her bed that week. I don’t want to risk becoming all of that, and I don’t want to disappear again.”
Imogen’s hand tightens on my wrist. “First, you aren’t your mother. Second, you didn’t disappear, and letting me sell your art is not the same thing.”
“I ran,” I correct.
I was seventeen and old enough to know better, but I was young enough not to care.
I didn’t pack much when I left. Just a backpack, a sketchbook one of my mother’s try-hard boyfriends gave me, and a bus ticket I’d been hiding in my sock drawer for months.
I left my mother a note telling her I was safe even though I had no idea if that was true.
Not that it mattered, she never came looking.
I got my GED because it was fast and because it didn’t require teachers asking questions or guidance counselors pretending to care. College brochures went straight in the trash. Art school was a dream for kids with parents who filled out FASFA forms and showed up.
I had needed rent money.
So I lied about my age and I started pouring drinks.
Six years later, I’m still here.
“Bartending isn’t a failure,” Imogen cuts through my thoughts, somehow already sensing them.
“I know,” I murmur.
A drunk guy at the bar whistles and I shoot him a sharp enough look to cut. He raises his hands and turns back to his friends. My attention slides back to Imogen and I find her watching me carefully.
“You don’t want to be one of those people who peak at twenty-three, still talking about what could’ve been.” Imogen whispers and I level my gaze at her.
“If I give you—”
“Yes!” She blurts bouncing onto her feet, I wince at her explosion of energy.
“Christ, Im, you don’t even know what I was going to say.” I hiss.
“Bullshit, you were going to say you’d give me a few pieces to try out.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, because it was indeed what I was going to say. I just would have liked to be the one saying it before she exploded in all that energy.
“I’ll take a few pieces,” she grins as she snatches up her jacket. “Just to display. No pressure, of course.”
“Of course,” I deadpan.
“Oh my god, they are going—”
“But if they don’t sell—”
“They will,” she cuts me off.
I smile despite myself, and after she leaves, I sit alone behind the bar for a moment staring after her.
I don’t want to admit it, but Pitch pushed me out of my comfort zone in ways that I can’t say were wholly bad. Or maybe it was simply the therapy?
Who fucking knows.