32. Maya
“It must feel good not to be behind the bar,” Sara said to Willa who was sitting on a stool on their side of the bar for a change.
“You have no idea,” she answered. “Not that I don’t love it, but it’s nice to have a break.”
“Yes, it is.” Dev walked up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. It was his first night outside of the kitchen, as well, but no sooner did he join them, she popped up out of her chair. “Hey! Where are you off to?”
“I need to get something,” she called out over her shoulder as she went behind the bar. “We need to update the photo wall, so tonight,” she dropped down below the bar then resurfaced with a camera, “everybody is getting their pictures taken.”
She was met with groans from her friends, but she didn’t let that deter her at all. She just smiled instead. Her bar, her rules.
“Well, you better do it sooner than later before someone has celebrated too much.” Reed tilted his head toward Dustin who was already drunk with two hours to midnight still.
Maya glanced back at Reed who was standing behind her and grinned. She was always pro-giving-Dustin–shit, especially when Reed was the one doing it.
“I’ll get you two first,” Willa said pointing to Dustin and Sara, “and then you two.”
Maya’s grin faded when she realized she was the one being pointed at. “No, I’m not really part of all this,” she stammered while motioning at the tight circle of friends. “Why don’t I take the pictures for you all instead?”
“Nope,” Willa responded, unwilling to hear any of that.
“But I’m not from here,” Maya argued.
She remembered seeing those pictures above the bar for the first time, imagining the hours and hours these people had spent there, some just for a meal and some to celebrate. They had earned their place on that wall, and she didn’t feel right being among them. Not when she would be leaving all of this behind tomorrow.
“You’re here now,” Willa insisted.
Reed gave her a nod, calling her off, and assuring her that he’d take care of it somehow.
“Babe, you think maybe we should take care of something else first?” Dev asked.
“I was gonna wait until closer to…” Willa trailed off and nodded toward the large clock on the back wall.
“Now might be better,” he urged, giving a nod to Dustin who was on his way to party animal mode.
By this point, the rest of the group were looking at each other suspiciously, wondering what was about to go down.
“What are you two up to?” Sara asked, focusing her eyes on Dev.
“Yeah, spit it out,” Dustin demanded.
Willa and Dev shared a long look then began to smile as he nodded at her. She reached below the bar again, and pulled out a picture frame then placed it on the bar. Everyone leaned in to get a closer look at the blurry black, white, and gray picture in the frame. It took a moment to sink in, but as soon as it did, there were gasps then awws and happy laughter.
“Holy shit,” Dustin shouted, drawing all of the eyes in the bar their way. “We’re havin’ a baby!” He reached into his front shirt pocket and pulled one of the two cigars that he had planned on smoking throughout the night, then handed one to Dev.
“Get over here so I can hug you,” Sara demanded of Willa.
Maya felt tears prick her eyes as she watched the old friends celebrate this milestone together. She watched Reed, smiling and laughing with his friends. He gave the mother-to-be, a hug and kiss on the cheek then stepped back to congratulate the father-to-be who was beaming as he gazed upon his wife.
“I’m happy for you,” Reed said as he patted Dev on the back. “Everything is falling into place for you two. This is your year.”
“Thanks, man.”
“When?” Sara asked as she held Willa’s hands and looked down at her non-existent belly.
“I’ll be twelve weeks tomorrow. I’ve been dying to tell y’all. I figured you were on to me.”
Sara shook her head, but the pieces started to come together for Maya. The quick offer of crackers and fries when Maya was hungover, drinking ginger ale, and the specific cravings all screamed morning sickness and pregnancy in retrospect.
Reed found his way back to Maya’s side and slipped his arm around her shoulders. “How about that?” he asked quietly, the smile still on his lips.
“It’s great. I’m really happy for them,” she whispered back. She leaned into his side and returned her focus to the celebration going on in front of her. At least there was something to celebrate tonight.
* * *
Maya sat in the back corner of the bar on a table whose chairs had all been stolen by other patrons. She looked across the room that was now almost filled to capacity with only an hour to go until midnight. There were some older folks, groups of younger people, and couples in between who had probably left the kids with grandma and grandpa for the night so they could ring in the New Year together. She found herself looking at the pictures that hung above the bar, trying to match the faces with those in the crowd, but she had no luck except for one very familiar face who was somewhere out there, probably catching up with neighbors or old friends from high school.
She watched Willa flit in and out of the crowd, stopping to chat and check on people’s drinks and food on her way back to the bar where she went straight over to the stereo system. She made a few adjustments, and the classic rock song playing in the background faded out and was replaced by the slow strum of an acoustic guitar and a soft, twangy female voice. Willa left the bar and made her way back through the crowd as the music swelled and filled the room.
“You tryin’ to run people out of here with this crap?” Dustin called out to her, fist still in the air mid-pump from the previous song. His voice carried over the idle chatter of the crowd and the song playing through the speakers.
“My place, my music,” she spat back. “Go get your own bar if you want to play DJ.”
Maya laughed to herself, taking particular delight in the exchange as she watched Willa embrace her husband. They whispered a few words to each other while they stayed in close hold and swayed to the music.
No one aside from Dustin seemed to mind the change of pace. A few of the couples joined Willa and Dev for an impromptu slow dance, and a table full of girls somewhere around her own age crooned the song to each other with hands over their hearts and beer bottles held to their lips in place of microphones. She didn’t mind it. It wasn’t her style, but it was a pretty song, with lyrics about makin’ plans with the one you love that were hitting a very raw nerve tonight.
“You’re always ditchin’ me at parties.” The man who was on her mind more often than not lately walked up with a small grin.
“That’s not true.”
“I think it is.” He slid onto the table beside her.
“Then maybe we should stop having parties the night before I leave town.”
“Yeah, I think you’re onto something.”
They managed to share a small laugh, albeit a slightly sad one, considering the circumstances. He grabbed hold of her hand and they sat there quietly for a moment.
“You look like a baby in that picture,” she said finally, nodding up at the photo of him and a pretty redhead hanging above the bar.
He squinted as he searched for the photo, finding it among the others after a few seconds. “I was. Probably nineteen or twenty. I didn’t realize that was still up there.”
“Is that the woman from the boutique?” she asked, noting the passing resemblance and considering the odds since this was a small town after all.
“Yeah. That’s Joanna.”
She hummed quietly. There wasn’t much more to say, the woman was a part of his history just like she would be tomorrow morning.
“We were high school sweethearts,” he volunteered. “She stayed here and worked while I went to college. And when I came back, she was ready for a ring and proposal. She’d been ready for a long time and was just waiting on me. But I didn’t have the money, so I started putting some away every paycheck, and after about a year of working is when everything happened and I met Al. I really hurt her when I started talking about going to law school when we were supposed to be talking about weddings.”
He paused for a moment and grimaced, looking frustrated with himself. He looked out over the bar and then back at her.
“I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that I get it,” he said, finally finding his words. “I didn’t go away like you did, but I get needing to do your own thing. Nobody understood what the hell I was thinking except for Emmett. Not my friends, not my parents, and definitely not my girlfriend. But I knew there was more I needed to do.”
“Do you regret it?”
“No,” he said without hesitation. “It wasn’t easy, but I ended up where I was supposed to and I think Joanna would probably say she did, too.”
She understood what he was trying to tell her, the freedom he was trying to give her to walk away from this thing they had started with a clear conscience. And that would have worked if it was only the guilt over leaving him that ate at her, but there was the matter of missing him that he couldn’t make go away.
“I look at Dev and Willa and see how happy they are,” she said.
They never left home, married young, worked together, and were about to start a family together. And it all seemed so right. She had wrongly judged people like that from afar for their seemingly sheltered lives, but up close, it was a beautiful thing.
“But what’s right for them doesn’t mean it is for you. It wasn’t even right for me.”
“I’m trying to get you to talk me into coming home,” she admitted with a small laugh, “and it feels like you’re trying to send me packing.”
He didn’t laugh at her sad joke, but he did squeeze her hand a little tighter. “I just want you to figure out what’s right for you. And if there’s still something between us after that, we’ll figure out how to be together.”
If there was a better man for her than him, she’d certainly like to meet him, but she wouldn’t waste her time looking. “Do you have any idea how I feel about you?”
“Yeah. Because I’m right there with you.”
She leaned into him and rested her head on his shoulder, her eyes drawn to their intertwined hands. The watch on his wrist read eleven-thirty. She didn’t want to spend their last hours in a crowded bar, sharing him with the rest of the world. For one last night, she wanted him to be all hers.
* * *
Maya woke up not by the sunlight shining through the windows or an alarm clock sounding, but with a start. That nagging internal clock that had been on a countdown to the end of their time together finally sounding in the form of a deep, sharp sense of dread in her chest. She didn’t have to look at the clock to know that it was absurdly early. The sky was still pitch black and only the crickets chirped outside because even the birds weren’t foolish enough to be awake yet. As much as she didn’t want to, she needed to get up because she had an afternoon flight and owed her parents the final few hours of her time in town.
But those arms that had been wrapped around her all night long and that sweet, handsome face sharing her pillow made it so hard. She lifted her hand to his cheek, cupping it as she regarded him with a sad smile for just another minute. She traced her hand up over his forehead and raked her fingers through his messy curls. This was going to be so incredibly hard, and it started now.
“Hey,” she whispered as she continued to gently comb her fingers through his hair.
His eyes fluttered open and he frowned, knowing what this meant. “Hey,” he whispered back, his voice thick with sleep.
“I need to get going.” He started to pull the sheets off of him, but she moved her hand over his to still him. “Don’t get up.”
“I’ll see you out,” he said, beginning to move the sheets again.
She gave him a sad smile and shook her head. It had to happen at some point, and she’d rather this be the image lingering in her mind instead of the sad sight of Reed in her rear-view mirror, standing there alone as he watched her drive off.
He nodded and pulled her closer to him, then cupped her cheek with his free hand and leaned in to kiss her goodbye. Their lips pressed together tightly, breathing each other in and savoring the feeling of coming together like that for perhaps the last time. After a few moments, they broke apart, resting their foreheads against one another’s, delaying the inevitable just a little while longer.
She pulled away from him first, taking another long look at his face before slipping out from under the covers and sitting up on the edge of his bed. She reached down to the floor and picked up her bra and panties. After sliding them on, she walked to the center of the room where her dress had landed the night before. She slipped it on and stepped into her heels. When she reached the door, she glanced over her shoulder at him lying in bed, the white sheets strewn over his middle, leaving his chest and legs bare. She gave him one last smile and he did the same.
This was goodbye.