Page 73 of Rise & Fall
“Just wanna drink because I’m thirsty,” the college girl says.
“ID?” Chy holds out her hand and curls her fingers a couple of times.
Lululemongirl unzips her belt bag and pulls out her ID. I turn to go fulfill some other drinks orders but Chy stops me before I can leave.
“Nope. You’re staying right here, hun. Training opportunity.” She turns to look at Steve who is watching us as he leans against the counter, snaps her fingers at him and points to the bar, which jump-starts him frantically taking drink orders. I’ve never seen our boss work so fast before. I giggle at the sight.
Then she turns her attention back to the college girl right as she drops her ID in Chy’s hand.
“Sydney Wilson,” Chy turns the ID in her hand. “Says you live in Colorado. What brings you all the way to North Carolina, dear?”
“College.”Lululemongirl hiccups as she stands at the bar. She’s getting gawked at by every man in the joint and her friends are still fucking with the waiter at the table.
“What college do you go to?” Chy asks, looking at me to make sure I’m paying attention.
“’Bama— I mean, did I say college? I meant spring break, duh.” She shifts from one side to the other, then looks at me before looking at Chy.
Her face is flushed and I can’t tell if it’s because she knows she’s been caught or if she needs to hydrate badly, seeing as she’s already lit.
Chy flips the ID in her hand again and again. “Mm-hmm.”
The air starts to feel hot, and I don’t know why I suddenly feel like I’m the one getting reprimanded for a fake ID.
“Listen here.” Chy leans into this Sydney girl and lowers her tone to a whisper. “I’m not a damn fool. I know this ID is fake. But I’m gonna let it slide tonight because I’m not in the mood to kick you and your girlfriends out and I remember what it was like to be your age.” Chy gives her the ID back, and I’m left wondering what the hell all that was for.
“Training opportunity?” I question, turning to make the tequila soda withlots of limessss.
“Sometimes you have to live a little. Sometimes the lesson is that you don’t always have to live by the rules, babe.” She winks at me, and something tells me that she is speaking about me and not about Lululemon girl.
I take a deep breath as I grab the limes to go with the drink I just made and pass it off to Sydney who then just looks at me with her bright, wide smile and skips back to her girls.
I focus the rest of the night on fulfilling drinks, taking turns with Chy at the bar since Dino and Steve are handling the floor.
We work for the next few hours before everything dwindles down and Steve turns to his iPod to play Closing Time bySemisoniclike he does after every last call. At first it was kind of cheesy, but I somehow always end up whispering the words to myself as I wipe down the countertops. Though this time, Chy joins in. And then so does Dino. It takes a few loud bars of us belting out the chorus before Steve finally joins in, his deep voice cracking on the higher notes. In no time, all four of us are obnoxiously shouting the lyrics, jamming out like nothing else matters.
That’s when Chy’s advice filters back around.Sometimes the lesson is that you don’t always have to live by the rules. Man, if I had heard that before I left home, maybe my life would be in a much different spot. Maybe I would have focused more on the things that made me happy instead of the things that I thought I needed to accomplish in order to live a happy life.
But I’m here now, and I can’t do anything about the past except…to just push forward and do what makes me happy now.
And of the many things that make me happy—my little sister, my mom, my best friend, reading books, dancing and singing like an idiot at two-thirty in the morning at my night job—Nolan is one of those things.
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. That line signals the end of the song; Steve powers the lights off before we’re walking into the parking lot, and I can’t for the life of me think of a better way to end my night.
twenty-four
Nolan
Fuckthis.
It was an awful night. I couldn’t sleep worth shit and my mind was racing with thoughts of all kinds: work, my kid, Dakota, and how fucking absurd I look in this thin blue cotton dress-thing.
But I go back to how I feel like shit for not being able to be there for Dakota yesterday. I wondered all night what could have caused her to need me so badly, what she wanted to seek comfort in me for.
But more than anything, I can’t believe I’m here right now in this stupid hospital bed. I’m so angry at myself for letting this happen. It was a careless thing to do, to get up on the scaffold with the winds as fast as they were, and the rain thrown into the mix.
The sounds of the echoed tick-tocks from the clock on the wall reverberate into my already pounding head. It feels like one of those times I’d wake up from a party Mitch took me to back when we lived together. Before any of us had adult responsibilities, after our mom died.
Those times were rough for my brother and me. And it took a while for my grandmother to wrangle us in. But when she did get us under control, it was like we were changed men, silly as it may seem.