Page 18 of Love & Other Drunken Mistakes
“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 whodid? 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 orsomething. 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.
