Bar Crawl Read online

  “Sure.” Georgia replied as she followed me, her heels knocking loudly against the floor. “It smells great in here, by the way. I’m so used to the smell of butter and sugar, I sometimes forget how inviting savory things can smell.”

  “Oh, that’s right, you own a bakery…right?” Somewhere along the way, CJ did give me that tiny piece of information about his best friend, though other details about her—besides her impending marriage—were largely left out of our conversations.

  “Thank you,” Georgia replied when I handed her a glass of wine. “Yes, I own Sweet Forty-Two in La Jolla, California. It’s been open for a couple of years.”

  “That’s so exciting. CJ also told me that you’re marrying his cousin?”

  From behind Georgia, Bradley stood, mouthing, “Why is she here?” I gave the tiniest shrug I could without calling Georgia’s attention to it.

  Georgia smiled. “Yes, Regan is his name. Our wedding is on Saturday, which brings me to why I’m here.”

  “Oh?” I lifted my eyebrows and swallowed some wine. A little more than intended, but I figured that was better than less than intended.

  Georgia nodded as she sipped from her glass, leaving blood-red lip prints across the rim. “As I’m sure you can imagine, I know about what happened here two weeks ago. Before you get all snatchy,” Georgia pointed at me, correctly reading my impatient look, “let me direct your attention to your gay boyfriend, over here, who has the same unsurprised look I do.” She stuck her thumb behind her where Bradley let out a huge laugh.

  “Okay,” I sat across from her at the island, “can I ask where CJ is?”

  Georgia rolled her eyes. “Getting his head surgically removed from his ass by Regan as we speak. We got off the plane this afternoon, and one look at his sorry face told me something major happened.”

  “He didn’t tell you until today?” I don’t know what I’d expected from him, but given how fondly he spoke of Georgia and their relationship, I guess I’d expected more transparency.

  For the next few minutes, Georgia caught me up on what CJ had told her. Surprisingly, it was very accurate in detail. Georgia didn’t seem to pour any of her assumptions or opinions into the retelling of the story—if she had any.

  “He opened up to you, Frankie. Way up. It took him two years to tell me about the book he’d written in high school. That aside, he was ready to be a grown up with you. Then…he panicked.”

  “That’s what I was going to say!” Bradley cut in. “Before you showed up at the door.”

  Georgia held out her hand, and Bradley high-fived it. “He said some shit he shouldn’t have. What you were doing here two weeks ago, I tried to explain to him, wasn’t treating him like all the other ones do. You were opening up to him just as much as he was opening up to you. Maybe more.”

  Bradley slapped his hand on the granite. “Yes! Maybe more!”

  “Calm down,” I shot dryly. “That doesn’t explain away his inability to contact me for the last two weeks. And what he said hurt.”

  Georgia nodded. “He told you he would screw up. Now, he didn’t imagine it would be, like, an hour after he said it…but he did say it.”

  I leaned back, crossing my arms. “So he sent you to do his dirty work? Is he thirteen?”

  Georgia ran her tongue across the front of her teeth with her mouth closed. “Are you kidding me? He doesn’t know I’m here. “

  “Then how did you know where I live?” I challenged.

  She shrugged. “Internet.”

  “Jesus,” I huffed, “are you two like Bonnie and Clyde or something?”

  Georgia threw her head back and let out the most ridiculous laugh I’d ever heard. It didn’t match her at all, with its high pitch and piercing crack. “Oh my God,” she said as she caught her breath. “It’s been years since someone’s called us that. Please come to our wedding on Saturday. If you don’t want to come to the ceremony, just come to the reception.”

  Bradley, who’d been quietly entranced by Georgia’s presence for the last several minutes, finally spoke up. “Why should she go if he’s not man enough to come talk to her? I’m not taking right or wrong sides here, but shit…”

  “I know, I know. The fact is, though, this grown up thing is new for CJ. We’ve all had over twenty years to mature into adults. He’s trying to grow up all at once, and there aren’t enough Eat Me biscuits in the world to make it happen fast enough.”

  I scrunched my eyebrows at her bizarrely placed Alice in Wonderland reference, deciding against questioning her on it since the evening was weird enough as it was.

  “Look,” Georgia cut into my thoughts, “you don’t have to have some dramatic, romantic make-up with him. The least you two can do for each other is give each other closure, if that’s what it needs to be. He’ll need it, Frankie, if he’s going to have a chance of growing up at all.”

  “And you want this all to happen at your wedding?” I questioned skeptically.

  “It’s not like I’m going to step aside and give you the altar. Get a grip.” Georgia waved her hand, and then pointed to my oven. “Whatever’s in there is about to burn if you don’t take it out.”

  Looking over my shoulder, I noted the timer. “It’s got five minutes left, according to the recipe.”

  With a sigh, Georgia left her stool, reached into a drawer she’d never been into, and pulled out a pot holder. Hinging at the waist, she reached into the oven and pulled out perfectly roasted vegetables. “The nose knows,” she said, almost to herself, as she set the pan on the stovetop and turned off the oven.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  “Anyway,” Georgia turned around and met my gaze, “consider Saturday. Please. It’s on the Vineyard. Here are the details.” Georgia reached into her clutch, which she’d left on the island, and produced a formal wedding invitation.

  Taking it in my hand, I shot a look to Bradley, who shrugged. Looking back to Georgia, I took a deep breath before I spoke. “Do you always carry around an unaddressed wedding invitation?”

  She took her clutch under her arm, shrugged, and, with an endearing smile, said, “You never know who you’re going to meet along the way.”

  Georgia turned on her heels and, with knocking steps, showed herself out, driving away before I could even close my mouth.

  “What the hell was that?” I addressed Bradley with the wedding invitation still clasped in my hand.

  He grinned broadly. “Looks like you’re going to a wedding on Saturday. Come. Let’s start planning your wardrobe.”

  CJ

  The night before Regan and Georgia’s wedding, I found myself surrounded by old friends at Finnegan’s. It wasn’t a private party sort of thing, like when our friends, Josh and Monica, had gotten engaged a few years before. This was more G and Regan’s style than one of those stuffy rehearsal dinner things, anyway—just hanging out with music, beer, and friends.

  All of the people I considered “friends” at all were there. Regan and Georgia, of course, but, also Bo and Ember—who Regan had toured professionally with for a while as part of Ember’s parents’ band—and Josh and Monica. Josh used to manage Finnegan’s, before he started managing Bo and Ember when they got a record contract that most musicians would have killed for. I grinned as I looked around at everyone, knowing they’d all had parts—in one way or another—in the short stories in Bar Crawl.

  “What are you staring at?” Ember challenged from a few barstools down. She was among my original detesters.

  She’d seen through my earliest bullshit, and threw it right back. The daughter of hippies, and educated in the Ivy League, November really was every guy’s wet dream. Brains. Beauty. And a hell of a rack.

  “Nice…assets.” I raised an eyebrow and playfully gestured to her chest.

  Ember smiled as she scrunched her nose. “Pig. You’re a pig. These are working breasts, CJ. I feed my son with these!”

  “Lucky him,” I teased.

  Ember leapt off her stool and raced over to
me, smacking me in the shoulder.

  “Uncle!” I laughed, pretending to fight off her pitiful attack. “How is Jackson, anyway?”

  From the other side of Ember, her husband, Bo—who was the most authentic guy I’d ever met in my life—spoke up. “I’m surprised you remembered his name.” Bo stuck out his hand, and I granted the high five. “He’s one, and the coolest kid on the planet.”

  Bo smiled proudly as he slid his arm around Ember’s slender waist. As she leaned her head on his shoulder, I fought the thorn bush turning in my stomach. I wanted that. I could have had a chance with Frankie, I’d thought, but, I’d blown it.

  “What’s the matter?” Ember asked as she tilted her head. “You look…serious.”

  Ember and I had a playful—if dysfunctional—relationship. We’d never really talked about things. The way she looked at me made me feel convicted of some emotional crime.

  “He’s just whiny because he fucked it up with a girl. A good girl.” Georgia—never one to come to my rescue in social situations—piped up from behind me as she put her arm around my shoulders.

  Ember’s eyes became more invested, darting to Georgia. “Fucked up how? Like…didn’t call her the next day?” The teasing was there, but I knew by her serious gaze that Ember understood Georgia meant something more.

  “No,” Georgia huffed, “didn’t even sleep with her. They had dates and everything. Then this one,” she pointed to me with her thumb, “panicked.”

  Bo and Ember eyed each other before Bo took a deep breath and spoke. “Panic…it never really works out in these kinds of situations.”

  I rolled my eyes and swigged my beer. I knew that. I spent years watching Bo and Ember develop from an insta-love cliché to the real deal. There were some dicey fucking moments between those two that had even me holding my breath. And panic, it seemed, was at the root of a lot of their misguided actions. While their story served my story well, as I wove it into different characters of my book, I couldn’t tell any of them that I’d been paying attention on that level. I stayed in character in the bar, and around all of my friends. It was too risky to let people in. At least, it had been. Georgia was the only one who knew about the book.

  Besides Frankie.

  I couldn’t get the look out of my head. The one of anger and confusion when I stumbled frantically out of her house that night two weeks before. The night I’d accused her of things she hadn’t done, all because everything was too real for me. It was the hurt that was most in focus. The downturn of her lips as she followed me helplessly down the stairs, marinating in the verbal attack I’d sent her way. She hadn’t deserved that, and I was too chicken to show my face to her again. It had been two whole weeks; I hadn’t seen her at a single show, and I hadn’t sought her out. Stalemate. Or coward.

  “It’s fine,” Georgia said, apparently in the middle of a conversation I’d zoned out of. “With any luck, Frankie will show up tomorrow and you can all move on nicely.”

  I turned my head to Georgia, already massively uncomfortable with the amount of attention my personal life was receiving this evening. Any other night, about any other girl, it was fine—standard even. Really, I just wanted to leave Frankie alone, even if she wasn’t there, because I’d been the perfect asshole. More than that, I respected Frankie way too much to have a discussion about her, or whatever us there was, without her present. I was tripping my way through this new territory I’d put myself in.

  “What do you mean with any luck? Why, in God’s name, would she come? She doesn’t even know where—what did you do?” The slow, hysterically menacing grin on Georgia’s face—one only she could pull off—stopped my words.

  “I invited her to the wedding,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Nice,” Ember stated flatly, sipping a Guinness.

  “Uh oh,” Bo murmured under his breath.

  “What?” Regan asked as he muscled his way into the conversation, kissing Georgia on the top of the head.

  With my neck on fire, I fixed my eyes on Georgia’s. “I hate you,” I spit out in a tone I’d typically reserved for Georgia’s ex-boyfriends from high school.

  As if on cue, Bo and Ember moved aside, pressing their backs against the bar—not saying a word—as I barreled through the now-vacant space and made my way to the back door, toward the freedom of the sand and water.

  “Stay here,” I heard Georgia call over her shoulder, presumably to Regan.

  Not wanting to break either of my hands—because twice is enough—I shoved them in my pockets and growled as I paced the sand. When I looked up after a few seconds, I saw Georgia standing on the back deck of the bar, which was littered with loud drunks. The skirt of her bright red dress whipped in the rather strong wind.

  “Go away,” I snapped.

  “Fuck off with that tone, CJ. Honestly.” Georgia sounded bored and irritated.

  I stopped my lateral path and marched toward her, index finger out. Since she was standing in heels on the slightly raised deck, she was just eye-to-eye with me, given our severe height difference.

  “No. You fuck off.”

  My vile tone garnered the attention of a nearby patron, who was outside drinking with his friends. He paced over to Georgia, eyeing me cautiously as he asked her if she was okay.

  She waved her hand. “He’s a kitten. But thanks, seriously.” Turning her attention back to me, Georgia navigated the questionable stairs in her more questionable heels, and met me in the sand. The lunatic didn’t remove them, causing her to sink a little on the pointy black heels. “Listen here, Corbin,” she whispered violently, using my birth name, which meant she was dialed all the way up on the pissed-off meter. “You and I look out for each other. That’s what we do. Don’t you dare lose your shit on me now. Especially on the night before I marry the best man I’ve ever known. The guy you looked out for me with, the guy you saved me from walking away from.”

  Georgia’s eyes were fierce and watery as she pressed her manicured index finger into my chest. “Don’t tell me you hate me. Ever again.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic.” I rolled my eyes. “Frankie is not Regan.”

  Georgia threw her head back in a mocking chuckle. “You have no fucking clue, do you? I feel bad for myself, honestly, if this is how pitiful I looked when Regan and I first started seeing each other. At least I have daddy issues to blame. And mommy ones, for that matter. What’s your excuse? Huh?” She put her hand flat on my chest and held it over my heart. “You afraid to grow up, Peter Pan? Afraid to actually love someone?”

  Georgia dropped her hand to her hip, staring at me not in anger, but in something else that was rarer for her. Pity, it seemed. She knew. More than anyone in my life, she would know how it felt to keep people away and then fall so ridiculously in love that she couldn’t remember why she even avoided it for so long. And I’d encouraged her. It was easy to help her story move forward when she had first taken an interest in Regan. I saw their happy ending before they did, and yes, they were a fine example of a relationship clusterfuck before they each got their act together. And yes, maybe she had a point. Just because Frankie and I had started awkwardly, and were currently not even in a relationship, basically meant nothing as far as relationships were concerned. Regardless, I was never interested in autobiographies.

  “Whatever,” was the only—wholly immature—thing I could come up with. I turned for a walk down the beach. It was something I’d heard of people doing when they were pissed or sad, but nothing I’d ever done for myself despite a lifetime of living on the east coast.

  Two steps into my intended contemplation, and just as Georgia called after me, I was startled when I spotted Frankie standing where the corner of the gravel parking lot met the sand.

  Perfect.

  “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t meant to interrupt anything. I didn’t hear—you know what? I’ll just go.” As she turned, she tucked her hair behind her ears and crossed her arms in front of her.

  I looked over my right
shoulder for Georgia, but found myself alone. She’d disappeared in a vapor, it seemed, and left me to my own shitty devices.

  “Frankie, wait.” I said her name with a slight frustrated growl. I didn’t know what she had heard, and even though there wasn’t anything directly about her as a person, I wasn’t my best self during my verbal altercation with Georgia.

  Jogging up the small slope that separated the cars from the ocean, I caught up to Frankie as she turned around. I placed my hand gently on her shoulder, having forgotten how different her skin felt beneath my hand. It wasn’t just skin. It was hers.

  “Look,” I started, having no plan of what my further words might be.

  She shook her head and smiled politely, showing no signs of a pending crazed meltdown. “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have come here, really. It’s the night before your friend’s wedding. It’s just that, even though she invited me to it, in what was the most bizarre afternoon of my life, I figured if I were going to go…I didn’t want that to be the first time we’d seen each other in this long. You know?” She bit the inside of her lip as she looked over my face.

  “Stop.” Moving my hand from her shoulder, I watched as my thumb grazed her chin. She didn’t flinch. “I’m glad you’re here,” I admitted.

  “You are?” Frankie dropped her hands to her sides and let out a forced exhale.

  I simply nodded, a grin brewing from deep inside me. Georgia and I didn’t need to have a knock-down, drag-out like the old days, nor did I need to have a weepy soul searching, up-till-one-am session like Regan and Ember sometimes did, to know that the muted explosion in my chest was exactly what Georgia had accused me of. The lost boy in me. The one who never wanted to grow up. And he was breaking free.

  “Come,” I nodded behind me to the beach, “take a walk with me.”