Chapter Eight Euan
The bartender is not happy to see two people standing outside the doors five minutes before they open. He shoots us several aggrieved looks as he finishes his opening tasks, as if hoping we’ll mosey away and find someone else to bother.
Finally, he unlocks the door and gestures for us to come inside. “What can I get you?” he asks in a monotone voice.
“Do you remember us from last night?” Alex asks, trailing the bartender inside like an overeager puppy.
The bartender’s lip curls. “You’re hard to forget.” Though his tone implies he wishes that we weren't.
Alex’s eyes widen in excitement as if he can’t feel the irritation radiating from the man. “Did you officiate our wedding?”
That finally makes the bartender hesitate. “Your what?”
Some of the excitement drains from Alex’s face but the bartender’s clear confusion doesn’t deter him. “So, here’s what happened—”
My phone buzzes while Alex summarizes the events as we know them. I glance at the notification, grimacing when I see the name.
Nick
Can we talk?
I put my phone away and tune back in to Alex’s words.
“We’re still pretty sure it’s a scam, but the quickest way to figure it out is to figure out who the officiant was. Did you officiate it?”
The bartender stares at Alex for a long moment before saying, “No.”
“Do you happen to know who did? They stayed out of frame the whole time.”
“No. Do you plan to order anything?”
Alex heaves a sigh and looks at me, his big blue eyes pleading.
I’m not sure what he expects me to do—I’m not exactly trained in interrogations.
But I give it a shot anyway. “We’ll take two Cokes.
” When I pay for them, I make sure the bartender sees that I’ve left him a twenty-five-dollar tip.
As far as bribes go, it’s not much, but maybe it will make up for some of our behavior last night.
“There were a few other people in the video. They wore lime green and orange shirts, like they were part of a group. Do you know who they were?”
The bartender grabs two soda cans and plops them on the counter, popping both tabs with a simultaneous hiss.
“Look, here’s what I can tell you about last night.
Around eight o’clock, the two of you made up about half of my customers.
You ordered some shots and a couple of cocktails and didn’t close out your tab.
Not that I’m complaining, since we get tips anyway.
” He jabs his thumb at a sign behind him that says:
20% Gratuity Will Be Added to All Open Tabs at the End of the Night
“Then sometime around nine, two separate pub crawl groups came through.”
“Pub crawl!” Alex exclaims, grabbing my arm and squeezing. “That explains the T-shirts! Do you know who the organizers were? Maybe they can connect us with the witnesses or the officiant.”
“No. The whole thing was unplanned, which meant I was the sole bartender trying to serve fifty people.” His eye twitches at the memory. “You can see why you two weren’t my biggest problem. You weren’t rowdy and you stopped ordering, so I didn’t really care how you spent the rest of your night.”
My phone buzzes again and this time I fully ignore it. “How long did the pub crawlers stay?”
“An hour? Two? I have no idea.”
I look around the bar, trying to remember which booth we sat in. There’s a blind spot by the back corner where two people could easily sneak away for some privacy. I vaguely remember guiding Alex into one of those booths. It’s not surprising that the bartender lost track of us.
But in any public venue, privacy is only an illusion. Once I shift my position and my focus, looking up instead of across, I spot a small black half-sphere on the ceiling. “Is that a security camera?”
The bartender follows my gaze and sighs. “Yes.”
Alex perks up immediately. “Can we see the video?”
“You got a warrant?”
“Well, no, but—”
My phone buzzes a third time, more insistently to signal an incoming call. I excuse myself, though Alex is too busy arguing with the stone-faced bartender to notice, and walk a few feet away. Nick’s name flashes across the screen. I answer it with a simple: “What?”
“Oh, thank god, you’re alive,” Nick says, genuine relief suffusing his voice.
It’s the first time we’ve talked since he dumped me.
We usually talked multiple times a day—though we both preferred video to see the other’s face—so just the sound of his voice evokes emotions the simple text messages hadn’t.
My heart squeezes and I close my eyes against the confusing mix of warmth and hurt rising in my chest. It’s like I’m both Pavlov’s dog, drooling at the hint of something that used to bring me joy, and a lab rat, wary of pressing the button that has shocked me before.
“Is there a reason I wouldn’t be?” I ask, keeping my tone neutral.
“Well, you didn’t reply to any of my texts. You kind of didn’t … react at all.” He’s quiet for a long time before admitting, “I waited up all night for you to say something.”
“You said quite enough for the both of us.”
“I know you’re upset—you have every right to be—but you could have told me you found somewhere to stay or you were going back home or something.
At first, I was like ‘okay, he’s mad, that’s reasonable.
’ And then I was like ‘what if he’s stranded at the airport with no way to get home.
’ But then I looked it up, and saw there were other flights out that night, so I figured you could change your ticket to one of those, so maybe you did that and had to immediately turn your phone back to airplane mode.
Except you still didn’t text me this morning and I thought ‘oh god, what if his plane crashed,' So I’ve spent the last two hours scouring the news for any crashes.”
If I don’t interrupt him now, he’ll walk through a hundred what-if scenarios.
He once went on a half-hour spiral about the potential repercussions of being rude to a patron, and how it might lead to him being fired.
From the sounds of it, he also ‘what if’-ed his way right into our breakup, so I don’t have much patience for his spiraling right now. “Nick.”
He cuts himself off with an audible click of his teeth. “Sorry, I was rambling again.”
“Yes, and I’m busy right now.”
“Oh … umm, but did you get home okay?”
“I’m still in town.” As soon as I say the words, I regret them, because I know exactly what he’ll think.
“You are?” His surprise only lasts for a second before he exclaims, “That’s great!
As soon as I sent those texts, I regretted them.
I still wanted to meet you, to be friends, but I didn’t want the romantic feelings hanging over us like a storm cloud the whole time, waiting for the eventual downpour. ”
“Friends.”
“Of course! I still love talking to you and—”
“You left me alone in an airport for over an hour and ignored my calls and messages until you gathered enough courage to dump me over text.”
There’s a long, drawn-out silence, and then he says, “Yeah, I guess I did. I didn’t know how to tell you I wasn’t ready to be who you wanted.”
The confession makes me pause. It sounds more sincere than any apology he’s given so far. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I still don’t really know how to explain it, but I think we weren’t on the same page, and I didn’t want to waste your time.”
As if I didn’t waste my time on this trip. I pinch the bridge of my nose. “As I said, I’m busy. If you don’t have anything important to say, I’m hanging up.”
“Can you text me when you get home safe? Just so I know coming out here didn’t lead to your untimely death or something.”
It’s not really my problem if he works himself into a frenzy over scenarios of my imagined death. I inhale deeply, thinking of all the horrible things I could say about his behavior. Then I exhale, blowing them all away. “Yeah, I’ll text you.” I hang up before he can say anything else.
When I turn around, Alex is sitting on a stool at the bar, his back to me. The bartender is serving another customer at the other end of the counter. One of the soda cans is missing and Alex clutches the other in both hands.
“No luck, I presume,” I say as I sit next to him.
He shakes his head, then says, “Sorry, I drank your soda.”
I pointedly look at the one he’s still clutching.
He purses his lips. “I already drank from this one. It has my germs on it.”
My gaze drops to his mouth. That’s not much of a deterrent. Though having experienced the real thing, the idea of an indirect kiss pales in comparison. “It’s fine, you can have it.”
Alex sips his soda, working his way up to the question I know he wants to ask. “So, that was your ex?”
“Nick, yeah. He wanted to make sure I didn’t die in a fiery plane crash.”
Alex’s brow furrows in confusion. “Why would you—never mind.” He shakes his head as if he doesn’t care to slide down that particular spiral. “You’re braver than me, I guess, since I’m still ignoring mine.”
“Has she texted you again?”
“Yeah, asking when I’ll be available to talk. I haven’t replied yet.”
Since we’re in a bar, my first thought is to order a drink and vent about our various breakups, but we already did that last night. At some point, we have to do our healing sober. “Did the bartender say anything else?”
Alex scowls. “No. Even when I explained the whole scam angle, he said we need to file a police report and let them handle it.”
“We could,” I agree.
Alex groans and drops his head onto his hand. “It’s such a stupid thing to go to the police for. ‘Hey, we got drunk and now might or might not be married. Can you help us investigate and maybe get our money back?’” He shoots me a guilty look and corrects, “Well, your money.”
“I’m not sure they’d do much beyond taking our information and telling us they’ll ‘keep an eye out.’”
Alex mutters something under his breath, then chugs the rest of his soda like he’s slamming back a shot. “I don’t know what to fucking do at this point.”
“A legal license needs to be filed with the county.” At Alex’s surprised look, I explain, “It was part of the information included in the email they sent. So, our next step would be to stop by the County Clerk’s office this week.
They might even have more information on the legality of online weddings. ”
Alex perks up and pulls his phone out, typing something in quickly. “They open at seven-thirty tomorrow. We can stop by before I go to work and talk to them. On the off chance this isn’t a scam, maybe we can intercept the paperwork before it’s official.”
I grin at his sudden eagerness. All it took was a new plan to lift his spirits. “Should I meet you in the lobby at seven tomorrow?”
“That works.” He hops off the stool and leads the way out of the bar, but when he reaches the lobby, he hesitates. “Oh, my jacket is still in your room.”
“Come on up,” I reply.
In the elevator, he’s fidgety. Shifting from foot to foot. Glancing at me before quickly looking away. “So, what are you doing for the rest of the day?” he asks with studied casualness. “Anything fun planned?”
“Not really.” Sunday was always supposed to be a rest day, one where Nick and I could get to know each other in the quiet of his home.
Alex nods continuously for a long moment. He’s still nodding when we step out of the elevator.
I unlock the hotel room door and gesture for him to precede me.
He grabs his suit jacket and places it over one arm, then stands there, looking shy and uncertain.
Finally, he asks, “Do you want to hang out a little longer? I’m afraid that as soon as I go home, Theresa will have this sixth-sense premonition that I’m alone and vulnerable and she’ll swoop in with whatever attack she’s planning. ”
I arch an eyebrow at the description. “Is she a bird of prey?”
Alex snorts. “She’s been called an eagle before.”
I wish he wanted to stay to spend time with me rather than avoid his ex, but I won’t reject him when I don’t want to be alone either. “Sure, we can hook my laptop up and watch a movie.”
He smiles, and there’s a hint of the man from our wedding photos, so vibrant and full of joy. “Sounds like the perfect Sunday afternoon to me.”
It doesn’t take long to set up the movie.
We both settle on the bed with a few feet between us, nowhere near as close as we were earlier.
A little disappointment snakes through me, but I ignore it and focus on the positives instead.
Alex’s rich laughter. The way his shoulders relax with every new scene.
He’s right, it’s the perfect Sunday afternoon. I can easily picture us having a thousand more like it.