“No, just busy,” Jeri replied flatly. She pointed at his glass. “Need another one?”
“Oh, yeah… sure.”
She could feel Chip’s stare burning into her as she turned and filled his pint glass. It wasn’t the first time he’d sat there trying to decipher her mood and formulate the best way to shake her out if it. This was Chip the professor, Chip the problem solver, and Jeri knew he was looking at her now the same way he would have looked at an archeological site. He was reading the jagged landscape and judging where to dig.
“Here you go, old man,” she said as she placed a fresh pint of beer in front him.
“Thanks, Jeri.”
“Any time,” she replied, a hint of warmth into her voice.
Chip latched his hand around the sweating glass and glanced around the room. “Kids,” he said irritably, as if reading Jeri’s earlier thoughts. “They turn twenty-one and what’s the first thing they do? Come running to the bars looking for a drink.”
“Don’t tell me you weren’t doing the same thing when you were their age.” Jeri retorted sarcastically.
“No, I was,” he mumbled, looking at the crowd over his shoulder. “I just don’t think I looked that young. Or that stupid. Christ, just look at what they’re wearing.”
Jeri smiled at Chip. Even in her current mood it was hard not to give in to his cynical sense of humor. “Right. Well, obviously no one else around here is as together as you are, or I should say were, Chip. But most of us have to start somewhere.”
Chip turned and stared thoughtfully at the amber-colored beer in his glass. “True. But you know, I never worried so much about where I started. I’ve always believed it’s where you end up that counts.” He looked up at Jeri with a shrewd smile. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
Jeri felt the color flush to her face as Chip’s icy blue eyes smiled back at her. The digging had begun.
“It’s probably the wrong night for this conversation, Chip.”
“Why’s that?”
Jeri shrugged and shook her head. What could she even say? That the night before she had blown yet another potentially great relationship? That she had once again found a single grain of fault in a handsome, intelligent man and turned that lone grain into a swirling sandstorm of doubt and disinterest? That it wasn’t him, it was her that didn’t quite fit right, though really in the hidden corner of her mind, an all-too-familiar voice was always blaming him, him, HIM!? Would Chip, or any man for that matter, really want to know that, without ever intending to, she had become a man-mashing, hope-killing, love-doubting, over-analyzing, alarmingly cynical bitch?
She tucked a loose strand of coppery hair behind her ear and looked up at Chip with wet, hazardous eyes. Chip met her stare, quietly reading the landscape of her face before shaking his head and dropping his gaze to his beer.
“Never mind. None of my business.”
Jeri noticed a tall young man standing the far end of the counter and immediately moved towards him, happy for an excuse to end the conversation. She forced her mouth into a smile as the man leaned over the bar and nodded.
“Get you a drink?” she asked quietly.
“Sure,” the man replied with a grin. “Whiskey and coke, please.”
Jeri avoided eye contact as she poured the black and caramel-colored liquids into an ice-filled glass. She could tell the man was watching her from her peripheral vision, his eyes tracing slow lines from her hands to her face. Despite her current disposition, his stares were managing to stir a warm blush on her face. The man was extraordinarily good looking, with a dark complexion and short, tousled curls of ebony hair. But he was young. Way, way too young.
She set his drink on the bar and looked at him, her smile coming easier this time.
“There you go. That’ll be five bucks, or you can start a tab.”
The young man’s grin stretched into a broad smile of brilliant teeth as he reached out and handed her a crisply folded bill. “Thanks Jeri. Keep the change.”
She looked at him with surprise. The warm blush on her face flared with new heat. “I’m sorry– have we met before?” she asked.
His eyes, as enticingly dark and liquid as the cocktail, widened in a mock expression of shock as he took a long sip of his drink. He studied her for a moment before waving his hand towards the wall next to him.
Jeri glanced at the wall. There, pinned to a large bulletin board made of wine corks, hung the letters and Polaroid photos from her unknown writer. Taped across the top of the board was a printed banner that read “Tales from the Last Stander”, while along the bottom, another banner read “Reveal his identity and get a free t-shirt!” Wrapped limply around the board in a final tasteless gesture only Joe himself could have conceived, a single strand of silver Christmas tinsel sparkled in the dim light.