Chapter 3

Bar Fights and Bummed Smokes…

NOW

(Leith)

It was actually the easiest thing in the world to do.

To turn and push the door open. Leave the bar. Get into my car. Drive home. Spread the lesson plan out on the table. Use my wireless speaker for a little eighties hair metal background noise. Drink a beer. Try to sing. Eventually call it a night. Probably talk to Amy somewhere in there. Where I'd sing in a high screeched voice and she would tell me how much she hated that sound.

Instead, I went to the bar and told Jessie that Beth and her friends were going to be leaving. To give them a second to get their shit in order. Jessie thanked me for the tip and then gave me a strange side-eye glance.

I was not going to open a new tab.

I was not going to have a drink with Beth either.

But in some sense, it just didn't feel right to see her and not talk for a few minutes.

I kept to my side of the favor and casually slipped into the corner of the bar. I stood near the glow of the neon lights and watched the busy crowd. This was sort of my thing too. To hang back and be invisible and observe. I used to tell everyone I did it to help me write characters in books. And in whatever kind of irony that lingered in the air, there was only one person who made it so I wasn't invisible.

The one that unlocked the crazy inside me.

Instead of Leith, they'd call me Krazy Keith.

Since my name got messed up so many times, I guess when I had too much to drink or got too wild, I turned into Keith.

There would be no Keith tonight.

Hell, there shouldn't have been Leith either.

Or Beth.

I saw her cutting through the crowd as my phone buzzed in my pocket.

I checked, just out of care and worry.

I wasn't keen on Amy being in the city by herself. Or that she would find the oddest places to explore. Maybe she had me watching too many cop shows or something, but I feared the call that something had happened to her.

It was a picture of her standing under the moon. The angle of the picture made so it looked like she was holding it up. I had seen pictures of that pose before. It wasn't all that good but Amy was smiling, bursting into laughter in the picture. I could hear her laugh in my head.

She looked happy.

Really happy in fact.

The kind of happy that wasn't here.

The kind of happy that wasn't with me…?

"Another pee break?" I asked as I closed the text message without responding.

I turned the screen off my phone but it lit up a second later, a very clear and close up picture of me holding Amy. My arm around her in a snowstorm last winter, her hand against my chest as she smiled. Her eyes super blue and everything about her super opposite to Beth.

I saw Beth's eyes look at my phone and then at me.

I tucked my phone into my back pocket.

We weren't doing anything wrong.

I wasn't doing anything wrong.

Nothing was wrong.

"Nice picture there," she said.

"Where?" I asked.

Beth tilted her head. "Seriously?"

"It's not nice to look at someone else's phone."

"Deal with it then."

"That's Amy," I said, feeling almost awkward saying her name.

"Okay then. Tell Amy I said hello."

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," Beth said.

She shook her head and rolled her eyes.

"Where's your phone?" I asked. "Who's on your screen?"

"Nobody," she said. "Maybe my ex-husband."

"Ex-husband?" I asked. "Whoa."

Beth snorted. "Whoa? That's the reaction. What am I… tainted now?"

"Not at all. I mean, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to hear that. Sorry."

"Are you sorry?" she asked.

I sighed. "Okay. I'll shut up."

"Look. I married Joel. Okay? I married Joel. It was good. Then it was bad. Then it was over. Here I am."

My head started to spin.

Joel? Honestly? You fucking married that guy? The first guy you ran to after us and you fucking married him?

I nodded. "Well, whatever the story is, I'm sorry you went through that."

"It's not like I have to wear it on my shirt, right? It is what it is."

"Of course."

"So tell me about Amy," Beth said. She had that sly, vixen grin about her. Just like many times before if I had a girlfriend and she wanted to push her limits. "And tell me about that diamond ring on her finger."

Fuck.

"So I haven't seen you in all these years and that's what you want to talk about?" I asked.

"Why not? What else do you want to talk about? You know my dirt. I was married. Now I'm not. My friends aren't really friends. They're work friends. I work in a bar. I'm a bartender. Big career for me, huh? What about you?"

"I'm a teacher," I said.

"Really? A teacher who hangs out in a bar?"

"I don't live near here, Beth," I said. "And I came for a couple beers and some wings. Minding my own business. I don't think that's against any rules."

"You sure about that?"

"Not sure," I said.

"So you're a bad boy teacher?"

"Doubt it," I said.

"Can't imagine someone like you being my teacher."

"Oh yeah?"

"I'd end up in serious trouble," Beth said.

She winked.

My heart crushed itself.

"I don't teach that age, Beth," I said. "I teach third grade."

"Ah, right. I'm sure they all look up to you though."

"Well, I am taller than them."

Beth playfully laughed. "I bet you get all the single, horny moms ready to devour you. Looking for a baby daddy. Or looking for you to throw them to your desk to grade their paper."

"What the hell does that mean?" I asked.

Beth giggled. When she did, she put the back of her ring and pinky finger of her right hand to her lips. She always shut her eyes too for a couple seconds as she giggled.

"You're crazy," I said to her.

"Some things never change," she said.

"Except your last name."

"Wow. Way to bring up a painful memory for me, Leith. Should we keep going with painful memories?"

My eyes cut away from her for a second.

Sometimes Beth was crazy enough that you'd forget she did have a heart. That underneath all the attention wanting bullshit she was a beautiful woman with a beautiful heart and wild, old soul.

"I'm messing with you," she said. "Now tell me more about you."

"Nothing to tell. It's not exciting at all."

"So you teach kids and then sneak away to a bar for beer and wings?"

"That's my night."

"And what about…" Beth raised an eyebrow and looked down.

I looked down, wondering for a second what exactly she was looking at.

She meant my phone. She meant Amy. She meant the picture. The ring. The story. What it implied. What it really meant.

I lifted my gaze, unsure how to start saying anything without approaching a line that nobody needed to cross.

There was the sound of a glass breaking.

Beth turned her head and started to run.

The thing with Beth… it didn't matter how pretty she was…

If she was running and you followed her, you were going to get into trouble.

Her friend who was getting married had some other woman by the hair. They were turning in a circle, screaming at each other, their words inaudible.

Beth wrapped her arms around the other woman and started to pull her away. At the same time, another one of Beth's friends grabbed the bride-to-be and pulled her away.

Then came the wild punches and kicks.

Another woman entered the fight, going right after Beth.

She pushed Beth to the side as Beth let the woman she was holding go.

Without hesitation, Beth turned and threw a punch.

There was never any hesitation with Beth. She would hit first, ask later. That was the way she lived her life. Always wild. Always free.

As her fist connected with this random woman's face, I thought about her getting divorced. Not the right time to do it. There probably never was a good time to do it either.

But I couldn't image Beth getting married. I couldn't imagine her in a wedding dress, walking down an aisle, saying I do .

Unless it was with me…

The woman Beth hit let out a wild cry.

From the corner of my eye I saw a guy jump into the frame.

He had his right fist already tightened up into a ball.

He moved at Beth with force.

And Beth stood her ground.

She wasn't afraid to fight a man.

But I wasn't going to let that happen.

As I jumped forward and grabbed the man's arm, I envisioned myself sitting across from Charlie (the principal of the school I worked at) trying to explain why I had been arrested for a bar fight.

"Don't fucking touch her," I growled into the guy's ear as I drove my shoulder into his and knocked him away.

I let him go and he turned, throwing a quick punch.

I stepped back and he hit nothing but air.

I drove at him again, pinning him against a table.

"Don't fucking do that again," I said. "Or your face will be kissing the floor. Got it?"

I twisted his arm as though I knew what I was doing.

My heart pounded inside my chest.

"Get her out of here," the guy said to me.

"Deal," I said.

I broke away and he didn't try anything funny.

I turned and saw Jessie at the bar with her arms open, looking right at me.

"The bitch!" someone yelled. "I'll kill her! I'll fucking kill her!"

I turned my head and looked at Beth.

"We gotta go," she said.

"Yeah, I can see that."

"Thanks for that."

She grinned at me again.

She started to walk and paused. She faced me and looked up at me with a stare that could destroy everything I knew in life.

She licked her bottom lip, which she only did when she was nervous about something.

God, why do I still remember that about her?

Her left hand fluttered as though she were going to touch me or something.

"Thursday's," she said. "Beer and wings."

She walked away, hooking her arm into the bride-to-be 's arm as another one of her friends had the other arm.

They left and I stood there in a daze.

I felt high.

Not drunk.

"Leith!" a voice echoed in my head.

A hand touched my shoulder.

It was Jessie.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "But you should go too. Please. I don't want any trouble."

"Yeah, sure," I said. "Am I allowed back?"

"Of course," Jessie said. "Just not tonight. Go home. Call Amy. Tell her I said hey."

I laughed.

So did Jessie.

I got the hell out of the bar and made it ten steps before stopping.

I faced the street and put my head back.

I wanted to laugh and scream at the same time.

Being near Beth for all of ten minutes and I was almost in a bar fight.

That was us… all the time…

I smelled smoke and turned my head.

Two guys were standing together, talking and laughing.

They were drunk.

"Hey," I called to them.

They both looked.

"Mind if I bum one?"

"Have at it, brother," one guy said.

He offered a cigarette.

I hadn't smoked since my first date with Amy. She was pretty adamant about not smoking. I had been planning on quitting anyway. I figured with the pretty blue eyes of Amy on me, and me wanting to impress her, I threw my cigarettes out that night. That got me a nice first kiss with her that led to a hell of a lot more.

Yet, in the blink of an eye, a brown-eyed, black-haired wild vixen that used to carry my heart had me smoking as though I had never quit.

It didn't taste good. It burned my throat. My stomach felt a little sick like it was the first time I ever smoked all over again.

I started to laugh.

Alone.

To myself.

What the fuck just happened?