Bar Crawl (11 page)

T
he night before Regan and Georgia’s wedding, I found myself surrounded by old friends at Finnegan’s. It wasn’t a private party sort of thing, like when our friends, Josh and Monica, had gotten engaged a few years before. This was more G and Regan’s style than one of those stuffy rehearsal dinner things, anyway—just hanging out with music, beer, and friends.

All of the people I considered “friends” at all were there. Regan and Georgia, of course, but, also Bo and Ember—who Regan had toured professionally with for a while as part of Ember’s parents’ band—and Josh and Monica. Josh used to manage Finnegan’s, before he started managing Bo and Ember when they got a record contract that most musicians would have killed for. I grinned as I looked around at everyone, knowing they’d all had parts—in one way or another—in the short stories in
Bar Crawl.

“What are you staring at?” Ember challenged from a few barstools down. She was among my original detesters.

She’d seen through my earliest bullshit, and threw it right back. The daughter of hippies, and educated in the Ivy League, November really was every guy’s wet dream. Brains. Beauty. And a hell of a rack.

“Nice…assets.” I raised an eyebrow and playfully gestured to her chest.

Ember smiled as she scrunched her nose. “Pig. You’re a pig. These are
working
breasts
, CJ. I feed my
son
with these!”

“Lucky him,” I teased.

Ember leapt off her stool and raced over to me, smacking me in the shoulder.

“Uncle!” I laughed, pretending to fight off her pitiful attack. “How is Jackson, anyway?”

From the other side of Ember, her husband, Bo—who was the most authentic guy I’d ever met in my life—spoke up. “I’m surprised you remembered his name.” Bo stuck out his hand, and I granted the high five. “He’s one, and the coolest kid on the planet.”

Bo smiled proudly as he slid his arm around Ember’s slender waist. As she leaned her head on his shoulder, I fought the thorn bush turning in my stomach. I wanted that. I could have had a chance with Frankie, I’d thought, but, I’d blown it.

“What’s the matter?” Ember asked as she tilted her head. “You look…serious.”

Ember and I had a playful—if dysfunctional—relationship. We’d never really talked about
things
. The way she looked at me made me feel convicted of some emotional crime.

“He’s just whiny because he fucked it up with a girl. A
good
girl.” Georgia—never one to come to my rescue in social situations—piped up from behind me as she put her arm around my shoulders.

Ember’s eyes became more invested, darting to Georgia. “Fucked up how? Like…didn’t call her the next day?” The teasing was there, but I knew by her serious gaze that Ember understood Georgia meant something more.

“No,” Georgia huffed, “didn’t even sleep with her. They had dates and everything. Then this one,” she pointed to me with her thumb, “panicked.”

Bo and Ember eyed each other before Bo took a deep breath and spoke. “Panic…it never really works out in these kinds of situations.”

I rolled my eyes and swigged my beer. I knew that. I spent years watching Bo and Ember develop from an insta-love cliché to the real deal. There were some dicey fucking moments between those two that had even me holding my breath. And panic, it seemed, was at the root of a lot of their misguided actions. While their story served
my
story well, as I wove it into different characters of my book, I couldn’t tell any of them that I’d been paying attention on that level. I stayed in character in the bar, and around all of my friends. It was too risky to let people in. At least, it had been. Georgia was the only one who knew about the book.

Besides Frankie.

I couldn’t get the look out of my head. The one of anger and confusion when I stumbled frantically out of her house that night two weeks before. The night I’d accused her of things she hadn’t done, all because everything was too real for me. It was the hurt that was most in focus. The downturn of her lips as she followed me helplessly down the stairs, marinating in the verbal attack I’d sent her way. She hadn’t deserved that, and I was too chicken to show my face to her again. It had been two whole weeks; I hadn’t seen her at a single show, and I hadn’t sought her out. Stalemate. Or coward.

“It’s fine,” Georgia said, apparently in the middle of a conversation I’d zoned out of. “With any luck, Frankie will show up tomorrow and you can all move on nicely.”

I turned my head to Georgia, already massively uncomfortable with the amount of attention my personal life was receiving this evening. Any other night, about any other girl, it was fine—standard even. Really, I just wanted to leave Frankie alone, even if she wasn’t there, because I’d been the perfect asshole. More than that, I respected Frankie way too much to have a discussion about her, or whatever
us
there was, without her present. I was tripping my way through this new territory I’d put myself in.

“What do you mean
with any luck
? Why, in God’s name, would she come? She doesn’t even know where—what did you do?” The slow, hysterically menacing grin on Georgia’s face—one only she could pull off—stopped my words.

“I invited her to the wedding,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Nice,” Ember stated flatly, sipping a Guinness.

“Uh oh,” Bo murmured under his breath.

“What?” Regan asked as he muscled his way into the conversation, kissing Georgia on the top of the head.

With my neck on fire, I fixed my eyes on Georgia’s. “I hate you,” I spit out in a tone I’d typically reserved for Georgia’s ex-boyfriends from high school.

As if on cue, Bo and Ember moved aside, pressing their backs against the bar—not saying a word—as I barreled through the now-vacant space and made my way to the back door, toward the freedom of the sand and water.

“Stay here,” I heard Georgia call over her shoulder, presumably to Regan.

Not wanting to break either of my hands—because twice is enough—I shoved them in my pockets and growled as I paced the sand. When I looked up after a few seconds, I saw Georgia standing on the back deck of the bar, which was littered with loud drunks. The skirt of her bright red dress whipped in the rather strong wind.

“Go away,” I snapped.

“Fuck off with that tone, CJ. Honestly.” Georgia sounded bored and irritated.

I stopped my lateral path and marched toward her, index finger out. Since she was standing in heels on the slightly raised deck, she was just eye-to-eye with me, given our severe height difference.

“No.
You
fuck off.”

My vile tone garnered the attention of a nearby patron, who was outside drinking with his friends. He paced over to Georgia, eyeing me cautiously as he asked her if she was okay.

She waved her hand. “He’s a kitten. But thanks, seriously.” Turning her attention back to me, Georgia navigated the questionable stairs in her more questionable heels, and met me in the sand. The lunatic didn’t remove them, causing her to sink a little on the pointy black heels. “Listen here,
Corbin
,” she whispered violently, using my birth name, which meant she was dialed all the way up on the pissed-off meter. “You and I look out for each other. That’s what we
do
. Don’t you
dare
lose your shit on me now. Especially on the night before I marry the best man I’ve ever known. The guy you looked out for me with, the guy you saved me from walking away from.”

Georgia’s eyes were fierce and watery as she pressed her manicured index finger into my chest. “
Don’t
tell me you hate me.
Ever again.
”

“Don’t be so dramatic.” I rolled my eyes. “Frankie is
not
Regan.”

Georgia threw her head back in a mocking chuckle. “You have no fucking clue, do you? I feel bad for myself, honestly, if this is how pitiful I looked when Regan and I first started seeing each other. At least I have daddy issues to blame. And mommy ones, for that matter. What’s your excuse? Huh?” She put her hand flat on my chest and held it over my heart. “You afraid to grow up, Peter Pan? Afraid to actually
love
someone?”

Georgia dropped her hand to her hip, staring at me not in anger, but in something else that was rarer for her. Pity, it seemed. She knew. More than anyone in my life, she would know how it felt to keep people away and then fall so ridiculously in love that she couldn’t remember why she even avoided it for so long. And I’d encouraged her. It was easy to help her story move forward when she had first taken an interest in Regan. I saw their happy ending before they did, and yes, they were a fine example of a relationship clusterfuck before they each got their act together. And yes, maybe she had a point. Just because Frankie and I had started awkwardly, and were currently not even in a relationship, basically meant nothing as far as relationships were concerned. Regardless, I was never interested in autobiographies.

“Whatever,” was the only—wholly immature—thing I could come up with. I turned for a walk down the beach. It was something I’d heard of people doing when they were pissed or sad, but nothing I’d ever done for myself despite a lifetime of living on the east coast.

Two steps into my intended contemplation, and just as Georgia called after me, I was startled when I spotted Frankie standing where the corner of the gravel parking lot met the sand.

Perfect.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t meant to interrupt anything. I didn’t hear—you know what? I’ll just go.” As she turned, she tucked her hair behind her ears and crossed her arms in front of her.

I looked over my right shoulder for Georgia, but found myself alone. She’d disappeared in a vapor, it seemed, and left me to my own shitty devices.

“Frankie, wait.” I said her name with a slight frustrated growl. I didn’t know what she
had
heard, and even though there wasn’t anything directly about her as a person, I wasn’t my best self during my verbal altercation with Georgia.

Jogging up the small slope that separated the cars from the ocean, I caught up to Frankie as she turned around. I placed my hand gently on her shoulder, having forgotten how different her skin felt beneath my hand. It wasn’t just skin. It was hers.

“Look,” I started, having no plan of what my further words might be.

She shook her head and smiled politely, showing no signs of a pending crazed meltdown. “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have come here, really. It’s the night before your friend’s wedding. It’s just that, even though she invited me to it, in what was the most bizarre afternoon of my life, I figured if I
were
going to go…I didn’t want that to be the first time we’d seen each other in this long. You know?” She bit the inside of her lip as she looked over my face.

“Stop.” Moving my hand from her shoulder, I watched as my thumb grazed her chin. She didn’t flinch. “I’m glad you’re here,” I admitted.

“You are?” Frankie dropped her hands to her sides and let out a forced exhale.

I simply nodded, a grin brewing from deep inside me. Georgia and I didn’t need to have a knock-down, drag-out like the old days, nor did I need to have a weepy
soul searching
, up-till-one-am session like Regan and Ember sometimes did, to know that the muted explosion in my chest was exactly what Georgia had accused me of. The lost boy in me. The one who never wanted to grow up. And he was breaking free.

“Come,” I nodded behind me to the beach, “take a walk with me.”

I held out my hand as I took a step back and, without a word, Frankie placed her hand in mine and followed me down the sandy hill. And there, on the beach I’d written into more paragraphs than I could count, I began my own story.

T
he wedding was beautiful.

Georgia embodied the style that was so clearly
her,
even though I’d only seen her twice before. She had a netted veil over her eyes, which was attached to a white flower and pinned in her hair at the side of her head. She was certainly the most fascinating woman I’d met in a long time, and I certainly hoped to get to know her more.

He hadn’t told me this was the plan before the ceremony, but CJ walked her down the aisle. That got the tears going early for the modest crowd of fifty, or so, people that gathered on Martha’s Vineyard for the nuptials. After handing Georgia off to Regan, CJ took his spot next to Regan as his best man. A woman who I hadn’t seen before, but CJ later identified as Ember, stood up for Georgia, and dabbed at her eyes through the ceremony, smiling broadly at the bride and groom. The whole scene gave me chills. I didn’t know CJ well enough yet to know the details, but was startlingly clear that there were intricate—and likely complicated—webs of history between the five of them. Love ruled over it all, though.

Regan and Georgia had vows that were equally light and heavy, evenly somber and sweet. They laughed through tears and kissed what was absolutely the most romantic wedding kiss I’d ever seen. Beautiful and not uncomfortably passionate, it sent sonic waves of love through the crowd and left all of us in tears.

At the reception, CJ and I were seated with Ember and her husband, Bo. I’d had to suppress a squeal when I met him. Their names rang a bell, but CJ had only mentioned them a time or two. As soon as I saw him, I recognized him from various music blogs I follow. My recognition of Ember clicked in soon after, of course, but Bo was one hell of a dreamy package.

Meeting them let me gain some more insight to CJ’s complicated brain. Between our dining partners at the reception and his cousin, all incredibly well-known and prosperous musicians, Georgia, whose bakery was readying itself for a one-hour special on the
Food Network
, and his own—oddly undiscussed—history with that “large social media site,” CJ was part of a truly hip crowd. These twenty and young thirtysomethings were part of a major entrepreneurial buzz that’d been circling their various industries for years. And he was totally at ease with it all, interacting with them and others as if they were normal people. Which they were, of course, but the CJ I’d judged early on in the bar struck me as someone who would name-drop more than he said actual words.

Had he walked into the bookstore when I was working there, I’d have gotten his selections all wrong. While I typically made it a habit not to judge a book by its cover, CJ seemed to hand out the first pages of his personal story to every girl he flirted with at the bar. I was wrong. Gratefully so.

“I don’t know why I got all choked up at that ceremony,” I said to Ember after the champagne toast. “I don’t know anybody here.”

She shrugged. “Love is no respecter of persons, I guess. It’s real when you can feel it, not knowing any backstory of the couple.”

“Like you and Bo.” I nodded to the man she gazed longingly at as he stood at the bar.

She smiled wistfully. “Like me and Bo.”

“How long have you two been married?”

“Forever,” she said in complete seriousness, her cheeks still tight with a broad smile.

I decided not to ask for specifics. Her answer was perfect. There was one question, though, that had nagged at me since the first mention of her name by CJ weeks ago.

“Why do you hate CJ?” I asked bluntly.

Mid-sip of champagne was, apparently, the wrong time to ask Ember that question. She sputtered some of the liquid back into her glass and laughed as she wiped under her eyes, tears inside the laugh. “Did he tell you that?”

I nodded, grinning as I eyed Bo and CJ making their way back to the table.

Ember sighed lightly, recovering from her fit of laughter. “I knew he was more than the shithead he pretended to be. I didn’t really have any
proof
of that, other than the genes I knew he shared with Regan, and his talent. I know people with talent can be assholes. Hello, I’m in the music industry. But…there was just something about the care he took with his craft that made me certain there was something…more. And, I don’t
hate
him. At least not anymore. Our relationship has never lost its zest for dysfunction, though.”

“How’d I miss that? The
something more
.” I questioned, almost under my breath. I’d always prided myself on being a decent judge of character, but, again, I’d been so wrong about CJ.

“He must have liked you immediately,” Ember replied. “You know, dialed up his perv self to half keep you looking and half push you away.”

I stared at the auburn-haired beauty in awe. “Are you, like, an oracle or something? That’s exactly what his behavior did.”

Ember grinned. “I like that you look at him like that.” She gestured to my face. “Like he’s a predator and you’re not sure where you sit on the food chain. But,” she sighed as the men sat down and handed us our non-champagne drinks.

I blinked rapidly, wondering how it was that this stunning, enigmatic woman could have possibly read my thoughts on CJ from two weeks ago.

Predator.

As if she continued to read my thoughts, she spoke again with a wistful smile. “I think you’ll both be fine. He’s not so scary.”

“Who’s not so scary?” CJ asked, looking comically panicked.

“You.” I laughed. “What was it Georgia said last night? You’re a kitten?”

“You heard that? How long were you standing there?

“Standing where?” Bo chimed in, completely lost.

I grinned. “Second star to the right, and straight on till morning.”