I don’t know why the hell my face gets hot. I’m usually the one making sexual comments about anything and everything. If there’s an English word for the opposite of prude, that’s me, but I always feel like my face is on fire whenever anyone talks about me and Zach.
Probably because I’m mad. It’s like the people at this bar have never heard of the word ‘platonic’—which, yeah, I hadn’t heard of for a long time either, but you don’t have to speak perfect English to understand that sometimes guys and girls really are just friends.
Nobody accuses any of the cooks of being secretly in love with me, and I spend almost as much time joking around with them as I do with Zach. I mean, sure, I do call him my work husband. Yes, I can admit that he’s cute and handsome and going to be some lucky girl’s perfect boyfriend one day. Maybe I have accidentally thought about kissing him a few times over the years, especially when he looks at me in this one way of his that makes my breath get all fast and has me wanting to push him up against a wall.
And okay, if it came down to it, every Taverne Toulouse-themed round of ‘Fuck, Marry, Kill’ would end with him as the ‘marry’ option, but that doesn’t mean we can’t care about each other in a way that doesn’t involve kissing and a bit of crac crac boum boum in the storage closet.
One of these days, I’m going to get up on the bar and tell everyone in the room just that.
“Just keep it professional at work is all I ask,” Monroe says with a sigh.
“You have to admit they’d be great together,” Roxanne prods.
“I own this bar. I don’t have to admit anything.”
“Oh, and remember!” Roxanne whirls around at the last second to point at me and then Monroe. “Your bridesmaid dresses came in, and we’re having the fitting at my place tomorrow. Zach RSVP’d to say he’ll be at the wedding, so we have to make sure yours looks extra good, DeeDee.”
I flip her off as she laughs. They leave the bar, and I’m left standing there with my face still flaming and something hot shifting around in my chest.
The crowd that filters in over the next few hours is as mixed as ever. We get everything from McGill students starting off their nights out to businesspeople on company happy hours to mega hipsters who share Monroe’s obsession with craft beer.
Sometimes I miss the wild, trashy nights with all the college kids. They still come out here, and this place can shake it on a Saturday, but we’re not party central like back in the old days before Monroe took over.
Then again, we were going out of business by the time Monroe took over, so I guess I should be grateful. It’s not even the old crowd I miss; I love what Monroe has done with the place, and for the most part we have some lovely, interesting people stop by for a beer—and tip much better for it—now that our dusty tube lights have been replaced by pretty bulbs hanging in strings along the ceiling. The new Taverne Toulouse is the kind of place you can sit for hours talking about life with your best friend, but that’s the thing: you can talk.
I miss the noise. I miss the chaos. I miss how crazy things used to get.
That’s my happy place: right in the middle of a raging dance floor. That’s when everything makes sense. You stop thinking about what things could be or how they should be, and you just move. You let the night carry you. You let the music pull you under and fill up your lungs until you’re breathing it in. There’s no other high like dancing in a sweaty crowd, spotlights painting your skin in shifting colours until you’re not really yourself anymore. You’re something bigger. You’re something better. You’re that shiny happy thing people spend their whole lives searching for, and it reels everyone around you in so you can’t possibly be alone.
Or something like that.
My newest little friend—which is what I call all the trainees Monroe puts me in charge of and which always makes her regret putting me in charge of them—clocked in an hour ago, and she’s struggling to keep up with me at the bar. I take a quick look at the order chits she has stacked up and then start pulling pints, pouring shots, and popping bottles until we’ve got things under control.
I glance over my shoulder after passing the last of the orders off to a server on the other side of the bar. The trainee—whose name Roxanne would really be making fun of me for forgetting—is staring at the pint glass in her hands like it’s a dying puppy as she fills it with way too much foam under one of the beer taps.
“I don’t know how to make it stop!” she calls out when she notices me watching.
She’s a cute little thing, with big brown eyes and a freckled face that’s covered in an overworked sweat.
“Give it to Mamma DeeDee, ma belle.” I slide in next to her with a fresh glass and show her how to avoid giving the customer a pint full of foam.
“Merci,” she says sheepishly after I’ve handed the order off.
I wave my hand at her. “Don’t mention it, chérie. It’s kinda my job to train you, you know.”
She laughs and starts wiping off the counters with a rag as we wait for the next rush to come in.
“Speaking of training you, you’re doing really great tonight! I know it gets a little crazy here sometimes, but you’re killing it, lady. You even did the lemon wedges right!”
I pull one out of the garnish station and point out the little slice made down the middle to fit over the rim of a glass. Then I pop the wedge into my mouth and suck the juice out before tossing the peel away.
Trainee tries to hide it, but I see her grimace like she’s the one who just got a mouthful of lemon juice. I know it’s weird, but I could eat my way through our whole supply of lemons in one night if I knew it wouldn’t get me in trouble.
Another order comes in, this time for a tray of specialty shots, and I start lining them up before grabbing the vodka, grenadine, and schnapps. I get a little flashy with it just for fun, shaking my hips to the indie rock on the stereo and spinning around between pours.
I glance over at trainee to see her eyes bugging out of her head. “How do you make it look so easy? You’re like a full-on mixologist—a dancing mixologist. I can’t even pour a pint.”
“This is what I was made for, baby!” I joke. “You’ll get the hang of it soon.”
She might not get the dancing part. It’s kind of my thing.
We work our way through the shift until it’s just before midnight and the last server heads home. There’s still a handful of customers left talking over their beers, but they’ve all settled up, and the only thing left to do is wait for them to finish as we start on the closing duties. I have my groove on, doing all the little tasks I’ve practiced for so long I hardly even think about them. I have to keep reminding myself to explain things to the trainee.
“Okay,” I announce, once we’ve done everything we can possibly do without actually closing, “before we kick these mecs out, you wanna make a little more money?”
I make my eyebrows jump up and down. The trainee’s mouth drops open like I just asked her to strip naked, but I’m used to it by now. People tend to get a little scared when I have an idea.
What can I say? Not everyone is born with a taste for adventure.
“How...How are we going to do that?” she stutters.