Page 6 of Come Back To Me

“Ouch,” he said.

I pursed my lips, rearranging my hair back into my clip. Did he look disappointed?

“Are you in a band?” I asked.

I wiped the counter as I spoke: circle, circle, circle. He had long fingers with calluses on the tips. You couldn’t see them, but when he’d reached for his drink our fingers had brushed. I imagined they’d feel scratchy if they ran along your skin.

“Yes. I sing. I play too, but mostly I sing.”

“Sing me something now,” I said.

He didn’t even hesitate. His mouth opened and right there in the bar, surrounded by a dozen or so people he sang the chorus to “When a Man Loves a Woman.” His voice was husky and deep; an intimate voice. The girls with the fur jackets turned around in their seats to watch him. I felt his voice. It moved something in me. But, I wasn’t going to do that again. I was done.

I didn’t have time to respond. The doors to the restaurant opened and a group pushed into the bar in a loud clatter of voices. Regretfully I walked to greet them, leaving David Lisey on his bar stool staring after me, a slow molasses grin spreading across his face.

Nope. No more artists.

We got another late rush after that and for a while, I forgot about David Lisey who stayed rooted to his bar stool nursing the Jack and Cokes I poured for him. He watched me, and sometimes he watched the television, which was showing highlights of a Seahawks game. And even while he watched, I knew he wasn’t entirely in the bar, he was somewhere in his own head. Occasionally I saw him pull out his phone to send a text, and that’s when I watched him. One of the servers, a girl named Nya, stepped over to talk to him. They knew each other, not well, but there was familiarity. From the corner of my eye, I watched as her hand strayed to his arm, over and over. She was laughing in that whorish, flirty way girls do when they want to fuck you. The hostess came to get her. Her tables were looking for her. I made my way back over to check on David Lisey. Maybe I also wanted to know what Nya was saying.

“My band’s playing at The Crocodile tomorrow, Yara. You should come.”

“Is Nya going too?” The moment the words were out of my mouth I regretted them. Now he knew I’d been watching.

David’s eyebrows crept together as he tilted his head to the side in mock exaggeration. “I didn’t take you for the jealous type, but I like it.”

“Ha!” I said—then another—“Ha.” Then I took my tray of dirty dishes to the kitchen where I let my face burn red from embarrassment.

“Hey Yara, wait up,” Nya called to me. She was waiting at the line for a cook to hand something over. A plate slid through the window and she turned and yelled, “Pick up.” I lingered in-between the doorway to the kitchen and the rest of the restaurant waiting to hear what she had to say.

“That guy at the bar—David Lisey.”

“Yeah?” I said too quickly.

“Are you into him?”

“No. Why?”

She switched the tray of food from one shoulder to another. “Because I am,” she said, before walking away.

Nice of her to check. When I got back to the bar, David was sitting backward on his stool watching a couple make out at a table near the window.

“Creepy,” I said.

“Shh,” he shushed me. “I’m writing a song.”

I made him another drink and watched the back of his head. And then he suddenly turned around and said: “So what do you say? Will you come?”

“I thought you were writing a song.”

“You think you’re good at changing the subject, but you’re not,” he said. He took a sip of his drink. “You made this stronger.”

“You think you’re good at pretending to be about me, but you’re about you,” I told him.

He shrugged. “Aren’t we all?”

“Maybe next time.”

I busied myself covering the garnishes with Saran Wrap and setting them in the fridge. The bar had emptied out in the last hour, spitting the last of my customers into the freezing rain where they dashed off down the sidewalk. I had the urge to run with them, disappear into the mist. David was the last one left. I glanced at him as I counted down my drawer. He was less drunk than I expected him to be, smiling at me and tossing back the last of his drink, his eyes bright and alert under the bar lights. I tried to talk myself out of liking him. Maybe I was lonely.Am I lonely?I considered myself a loner, perfectly content to drift through life as an observer rather than a partaker. I had a friend here, just one. Her name was Ann and she lived in the apartment below mine.

---