Page 47 of Forever & Always You
“Just take the damn tip, Abby!” Divorcee snaps, and I glare at her despite Buck being within ten feet, because it’s really time we ought to call her a cab and send her home.
I grab the bill and stuff it into the pocket of my apron that’s already rammed full of tips from tonight’s shift, and work my way back and forth along my end of the bar. Ever since I decided to give Carly a chance and get to know her, we’ve been in much better sync, to the point where I even enjoy working these hecticshifts with her because we do it so perfectly. We have the fine art of bartending as a two-women team down to a tee.
As it nears last call and the bar gradually empties, Austin calls it quits on any more beers, which honestly, I respect. As someone who now spends my life serving the drunk, there is nothing I hate more than dealing with wasted adults. Thank God Austin knows where to draw the line.
At two-thirty, Buck rounds up the final stragglers and sends them out the door. I ask very nicely if Austin can hang out here while we finish cleaning up for the night, and maybe my improved work ethic is winning me some favors with Buck, because he agrees.
And I have never mopped the floor so fast in the six months I’ve worked here.
Buck empties the cash register, Carly takes care of the dishes, and I wipe down the tables at lightning speed. We have the lights out and the doors locked just fifteen minutes after closing.
“Good work,” Buck acknowledges on the way out.
“See you guys tomorrow!” Carly says, and it will forever amaze me how constantly chirpy she is, even at nearly three in the morning after a grueling fifteen-hour shift.
Austin follows me to my car parked in the alley out back, and the very first thing he says once we’re inside is, “Now I understand where Carly Buck the Cactus’s name came from.”
I grin as I start to drive. “Funny, right?”
“You’re just .?.?. so goofy.”
As I head home to my apartment, somehow with Austin Pierce in tow, I become increasingly worried that I left the place a mess this morning. I can’t remember if I made the bed, or picked up dirty laundry from the corner of my room, or washed the bowl I ate my Cheerios from. Austin’s home was immaculate. Mine is not.
“I’m technically a college student again, and that correlateswith being a slob, okay?” I warn him as I park up outside my building, my tone defensive in fear of the judgment I’m about to have cast upon me.
“I seriously don’t care,” Austin says. “My dorm at school was .?.?. Well, let’s just say my bed was less of a bed and more a mountain of Red Bull cans.”
That makes me feel a little better.
We head up the stairs together and it takes me a couple of tries to get my door unlocked, because is there anything in this apartment thatisn’tbroken? I flick on some lights and am relieved to see that, actually, I’ve left my apartment in much worse states than this.
As I watch Austin scope out my place, it feels like I’ve stepped into a parallel universe. Austin Pierce, my childhood best friend, here in my crappy Durham apartment many years later in our mid-twenties. Something I never for a second thought would ever happen, but alas, here we are.
“This is weird. You being here,” I say out loud.
“I know you’re coming back to Wilmington next weekend, but I just couldn’t wait another week,” Austin says, meeting my eyes across the living area. “Besides, now that you’re definitely going back to school for another year, I guess I better get used to the drive up here. You couldn’t have studied at UNC Wilmington, huh?”
“You couldn’t have opened your firm in Durham, huh?” I shoot back with a rivaling pout.
“A few weeks ago, I’d have said one hundred and fifty miles wasn’t enough distance between you and me,” he says. “Now it’s one hundred and fifty miles too many.”
“How are you single when you’re this much of a sweet talker?” I ask, and it’s not even hypothetical. I have no idea how Austin, this gorgeous, charming, successful man, is single.
“Maybe I’ve just been waiting for you.”
“Ooookay.I think those beers are getting to you now,” I say with a laugh. I cross over to him and take his arm, pulling him with me to the bathroom. I raid the cabinet beneath the sink and brandish a pack of spare toothbrushes. “Here. Teeth, then bedtime.”
We brush our teeth side-by-side, our gazes locked in the mirror and silly, sleepy smiles on our faces. It’s after three, and I’m exhausted.
“I need to wash off the bar,” I tell him, shoving him out of the bathroom before he can even make the age-old classic joke about joining me in the shower.
I can never climb into bed after a long shift. It always seems like that cigarette scent clings to my skin and I can’t bear it. So even at this hour, I pull back my hair and hop into the shower for a quick refresh. When I walk into my bedroom a few minutes later, wrapped in a towel and on the hunt for a set of pajamas, I find Austin sprawled on his stomach on my bed wearing nothing but his boxers. His clothes are folded in a neat pile on my dresser. He lifts his head from the pillow with a dopey grin.
“Hi, Gabby.”
“Hi, Austin.”
I turn my back to him as I drop my towel to the floor and pull on some gym shorts and a tank. When I face him again, I see the suggestive glint in his eyes and it kills me that I’m this exhausted, because God, I’ve missed him.
