Then she’ll catch me looking, and the spray of the tide pulls me in, pulls me closer, pulls me down into something I can’t find the will to escape.
“Hey, pervert. You think this is a free show?”
Ah, there we go. Magic moment over.
“I thought it was an appreciation dance for me cutting your lemons.”
“That was your, uh...What is the word for when someone does something bad so you make them do something for you?”
I move closer to the bar and squint while I think. “Punishment?”
She bobs her head. “Yeah. The lemons were your punishment.”
She plucks one of the slices out of the garnish station and sucks it between her teeth.
Another DeeDee quirk: she loves lemons. I’ve seen her go through an entire lemon’s worth of wedges in one shift.
“Good thing I cut extra for you.”
“Aww.” She bats her eyelashes after tossing the rind into the trash. “You know me so well.”
I wish I knew you better. I wish I knew everything.
I don’t say it. I never do. I let the opportunity float right by us and get swept away, just another magic moment I didn’t have the guts to seize.
I lost count of all those missed moments a long time ago.
The sound of the door opening cuts through our momentary silence. DeeDee’s co-bartender for the night, Renee, calls out a greeting, and DeeDee rushes over to hug her and start chatting away.
The next few hours pass by in a steady rhythm I’ve come to know as well as a favourite song. Even on the nights we’re totally swamped, the staff at Taverne Toulouse always have time to joke around and tease the shit out of each other. I laugh more at this place than anywhere I’ve ever worked before, and the people I spend my nights laughing with have become so much more than coworkers. We’re like a big family of misbehaved cousins that still somehow manage to successfully operate a bar together every night.
As the shift winds down, the kitchen closes and the other staff trail out until it’s only me and DeeDee left on the clock. We’re waiting on a big group clustered on a couple couches to finish their last round before we close up.
“Ben là. We used to be on close all the time together,” DeeDee muses as I help her put some clean glasses away behind the bar. “It feels like it’s been forever. I missed you.”
Her voice softens, and she gives me a small smile. If I didn’t know better, I’d even call it shy.
I lower my voice to the same level. “I missed you too.”
She pauses, a glass still in her hand, and I stop moving on my way to grabbing another one. It might just be the dim lighting, but I swear her eyes have gone all big and wide, her warm brown pupils flaring with surprise.
Or anticipation.
But I’m being insane. My heart’s hammering in my chest, getting carried away just like it always does. I shake my head and clear my throat as I pick up a new glass.
“Yeah, I’m, uh, not working too many of the long shifts now that my business is picking up speed,” I comment as I avoid her eyes.
She slaps me on the back, and all my senses go on high alert at the contact. “Soon you will be a millionaire.”
“I’d settle for making enough to get my own apartment.”
“Why would you want to leave Paige? Paige is so cool!”
“Paige is cool,” I reply, referring to my roommate, who works as a DJ, “but I’m almost twenty-three. Feels like I should be getting my own space soon. I don’t want to be one of those people who has to live with roommates until they’re, like, thirty.”
DeeDee scoffs. “Everyone has roommates when they’re twenty-two. You’re so young! You have time. Maybe Paige will get famous and let you live in her fancy condo or something.”
“Ha. Yeah. Maybe.”
I force a laugh, but I can’t help the sinking feeling when she talks about my age. I’ll be twenty-three in a few months, and she’s only twenty-five, but sometimes I think she sees me as a kid.
“Ah, enfin! I think they want the bill.”
DeeDee jerks her head toward the group of customers, who are scanning the room like they want my attention. I head over and get them all settled up. Once they’re gone, we finish our final tasks together and joke about all the ways we used to pass the time during the long closing shifts while waiting for the stragglers to head out.
“Remember when we used to do the origami competitions?” DeeDee asks.
“Yeah, and you always beat me.” She can make swans out of napkins. I can make lumps. “Do you know how many YouTube tutorials I watched? A lot, that’s how many. I swear the whole world is trolling me. There’s no way you can actually make that stuff out of paper.”
Her laugh follows me down the hall as I take the garbage out. When I get back from dropping the trash bags in the dumpster behind the bar, she already has her coat on.
“You good to go?” she asks.
“I’ll just grab my jacket.”
Once we’re out on the sidewalk, DeeDee gets the door locked up while I take a few deep breaths of night air. Taverne Toulouse is on Avenue Mont-Royal, one of Montreal’s best streets for eating, shopping, and sitting in bars. Everything on our block is closed for the night, but there are lights and people swarming around farther up.
“It’s actually kind of warm out.”
For the end of March, which is still a winter month in Montreal.
“Ouais, I think all the snow will be gone after this weekend.” She tucks her keys into her pocket and smiles at me. “I can’t wait for summer.”
She is the summer. With her candy-coloured hair, bright brown eyes, and jacket hanging open to reveal a sliver of bare stomach, she’s all heat and sunshine and ice clinking in glasses filled with something sweet. Sometimes I think her parents must have made up a last name for her instead of giving her their own.
Beausoleil. Beautiful sun.
“Do you, uh, want me to walk you home?”
“Aww, that’s sweet.” She grins again. “I’m okay, though. I’m meeting X at a place up the street, and we’re going home together.”
Right. X.
The boyfriend.
The boyfriend who wears muscle shirts every day of the week and whose party trick is crushing beer cans against his forehead.
That boyfriend.
Another thing I’ve learned about DeeDee during the many hours we’ve spent at Taverne Toulouse together: there’s always a boyfriend.
Two
DeeDee
FREE POUR: the act of making mixed drinks without a measuring device
“DeeDee, you always have a boyfriend.”
I glare at my friend Roxanne where she’s sitting on the other side of the bar, a plate of nachos in front of her.
“Pas vrai. Not true. I do not always have a boyfriend, and anyway, I’m the one who’s bad with names. You don’t have an excuse for forgetting his.”
I put down my bar towel and grab one of the nachos off her plate. Her eyes get all big and wide like I did something terrible, and I’m about to tell her she owes me when Monroe shows up, putting a hand on Roxanne’s shoulder and looking between the two of us.