Page 5 of Bar Down Baby!
“I bet him forty bucks that I would have a real date tonight.”
“And to think I was about to accept twenty.”
“You were?”
“Yeah, you probably could have had me with twelve,” I admitted, and now it was Barry’s turn to laugh like I’d surprised him. “Okay, maybe fifteen, enough at least to cover this very sad meal.”
Barry’s eyes were bright as they moved across my face, as if getting to know every feature and pleased to be able to do so. His brother’s voice droned on from the stage, scattered laughter around us. I worried about what Barry saw when he looked at me. I didn’t even try wearing makeup because it would dissolve in the city’s unseasonably warm May heat, my hair was flat and probably dried to my forehead from how sweaty I’d been during the day, and my face and neck always get really red when I’m nervous, and he was making me nervous.
Good nervous, but still nervous.
“Do you want to go somewhere with me after this?” he said.
“Like to make out?” My jaw was agape. “You don’t even know my name, oh my God, is that even your brother?”
Barry laughed again, and I couldn’t not grin because I had hardly talked to another human being in three days and now I was making one laugh in a big scary city.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“Hannah.”
Barry took another onion ring. “Good to meet you, Hannah.”
“Never have I ever broken a bone,” I said.
Barry took a drink from his bottle of Gatorade. I’d wanted to get wine, but he argued that we should pace ourselves if we were going to get kebabs after one a.m., when they tasted the best.
I felt like I was fourteen at my first house party, when the parents still made all the snacks and the closest thing we had to alcohol was the two cinnamon flavored shooters that someonepoured into a liter of SunnyD. Instead, we were sitting on a bench at the Promenade, looking out over a pitch-black river, the water gently lapping at the dock’s legs.
My insides felt just as fizzy as they did back then—new crush, a whole night of possibility. Only this time, I had no curfew.
“I’ve broken many, many bones. First one was my wrist when I was eleven, playing hockey, and some fingers when I was fifteen. Same reason. My nose a couple times. And my ankle when I was in high school,” Barry said. “I wasn’t even playing hockey that time, I just stepped wrong.”
“You stepped wrong?”
“Yeah, you know, you miss a curb and suddenly things are very dangerous.”
“You have a complicated relationship with your joints. You should start wearing elbow pads just in case,” I said. I was trying to be charming, and I will dare say that he was falling for every bit of it.
The comedian was indeed his brother, his name was Scotty, and he did not look thrilled to see me after the show. He wanted to know where we met (I said Hinge), if this was really a date or just some sort of weird arrangement, and told me to blink twice if I was in danger. The last part was funny and redeemed him slightly in my eyes.
“Never have I ever broken up with someone,” Barry said. I looked to make sure he wasn’t lying before taking a drink from my bottle.
“Scotty was right that I am, in his words, chronically single, but in my defense the last woman I was really with, Monica, I had been with for five years, and she dumped me because I proposed.”
I gasped. Could literally not help it.
“Yeah, it was bad.” Barry took another sip of his neon green drink. “She said she thought we were on the same page about being untethered, no kids, no need to bring the government intoit, etcetera. I was twenty-eight and very sad, and now I am thirty-one and not even really mad at her anymore. She had to do her thing, you know?”
“Sure, but ouch.”
“Yeah,” he agreed and looked at me expectantly. I hadn’t wanted to get into it, but he’d just been so vulnerable withmeand what is Never Have I Ever at midnight with a stranger other than free therapy and a chance to spill your guts? Plus, Barry looked like someone you want to tell your secrets to because he’d never do anything nasty with them.
“I’ve been the breaker-upper a few times,” I shrugged. “Okay, most of the time. High school and college relationships are funny and sweet and stupid, and I think I was worried that they would break up with me first, so I always ended things.”
“Makes sense,” he said.
“I guess I still do. Like a couple of years ago, I dated this girl—I date girls and guys,” I added, and he nodded in easy acceptance. Green flag. “She was so, so nice and she kept talking about wanting to move in together and get a cat, and she was always encouraging and pushing me to be better or whatever.”
