I know what to do when a child cries, but I don’t know what to do when a grown woman cries. I stay as far away from her as I can while she drinks her coffee.
I haven’t learned much about her since she walked in here an hour ago, but one thing I know for certain is she didn’t come here to meet anyone. She came here for solitude. Three people have tried to approach her in the last hour, and she held up a hand and shot them down without making eye contact with any of them.
She drank her coffee in silence. It’s barely seven in the evening, so she might just be working her way up to the hard stuff. I kind of hope not. I’m intrigued by the idea that she came to a bar to order things we rarely serve while turning down men she never even made eye contact with.
Roman and I are the only ones working until Mary Anne and Razi get here. The place is getting busier, so I can’t give her the attention I want to give her, which is all my attention. I make it a point to spread myself out just enough so that it doesn’t seem like I’m in her space too much.
As soon as she finishes the coffee, I want to ask her what she’s having next, but instead I make her sit with her empty mug for a good ten minutes. I might make it fifteen before I work my way back to her.
In the meantime, I just steal glances at her. Her face is a work of art. I wish there was a picture of it hanging on a wall in a museum somewhere so I could stand in front of it and stare at it for as long as I wanted. Instead, I’m just getting in peeks here and there, admiring how all the same pieces of a face that make up all the other faces in the world just seem to coordinate better on her.
People rarely come to a bar at the start of a weekend evening in such a raw state, but she isn’t dressed up. She’s wearing a faded Mountain Dew T-shirt and jeans, but the green in the shirt matches the green in her eyes with such perfection it’s as if she put all her effort into finding the perfect color of T-shirt, when I’m pretty sure she gave that shirt no thought at all. Her hair is russet. All one sturdy color. All one length, right below her chin. She slides her hands through it every now and then, and every time she does, it looks like she’s about to fold in on herself. It makes me want to walk around the bar and lift her up and give her a hug.
What’s her story?
I don’t want to know.
I don’t need to know.
I don’t date girls I meet in this bar. Twice I’ve broken that rule, and twice it’s bitten me in the ass.
Besides, there’s something terrifying about this one. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but when I talk to her, I feel like my voice is trapped in my chest. And not in a way that I’m left breathless by her, but in a more substantial way, as though my brain is warning me not to interact with her.
Red flag! Danger! Abort!
But why?
We make eye contact when I reach for her mug. She hasn’t looked at anyone else tonight. Only me. I should feel flattered, but I feel scared.
I played professional football and own a bar, yet I’m scared of a little eye contact with a pretty girl. That should be my Tinder bio. Played for the Broncos. Owns a bar. Scared of eye contact.
“What next?” I ask her.
“Wine. White.”
It’s a hard balance owning a bar and being sober. I want everyone else to be sober, but I also need customers. I pour her the glass of wine and set it in front of her.
I remain near her, pretending to use a rag to dry glasses that have been dry since yesterday. I notice the slow roll of her throat as she stares down at the glass of wine, almost as if she’s unsure. That split second of hesitation, or maybe it’s regret, is enough to make me think she might struggle with alcohol. I can always tell when people are tossing away their sobriety by how they look at their glass.
Drinking is only stressful to alcoholics.
She doesn’t drink the wine, though. She quietly sips on the soda until it’s empty. I reach for the empty glass at the same time she does.
When our fingers touch, I feel something else trapped in my chest other than my voice. Maybe it’s a few extra heartbeats. Maybe it’s an erupting volcano.
Her fingers recoil from mine and she puts her hands in her lap. I pull the empty glass of soda away from her, as well as the full glass of wine, and she doesn’t even look up to ask me why. She sighs, like maybe she’s relieved I took the wine away. Why did she even order it?
I refill her soda, and when she isn’t looking, I pour the wine in the sink and wash the glass.
She sips from the soda for a while, but the eye contact stops. Maybe I upset her.
Roman notices me staring at her. He leans an elbow onto the counter and says, “Divorce or death?”
Roman always likes to guess the reasons people come in alone and seem out of place. The girl doesn’t seem like she’s here because of a divorce. Women usually celebrate those by coming to bars with groups of friends, wearing sashes that say Ex-Wife.
This girl does seem sad, but not sad in a way that would indicate she’s grieving.
“I’m gonna say divorce,” Roman says.
I don’t respond to him. I don’t feel right guessing her tragedy, because I’m hoping it isn’t divorce or death or even a bad day. I want good things for her because it seems like she hasn’t had a good thing in a long, long time.
I stop staring at her while I tend to other customers. I do it to give her privacy, but she uses it as an opportunity to leave cash on the bar and sneak out.
I stare for several seconds at her empty barstool and the ten-dollar tip she left. She’s gone and I don’t know her name and I don’t know her story and I don’t know that I’ll ever see her again, so here I am, rushing around the bar, through the bar, toward the front door she just slipped out of.
The sky is on fire when I walk outside. I shield my eyes, forgetting how assaulting the light always is when I step out of the bar before dark.
She turns around right when I spot her. She’s about ten feet from me. She doesn’t have to shield her eyes because the sun is behind her, outlining her head like it’s topped with a halo.
“I left money on the bar,” she says.
“I know.”
We stare at each other for a quiet moment. I don’t know what to say. I just stand here like a fool.
“What, then?”
“Nothing,” I say. But I immediately wish I would have said, “Everything.”
She stares at me, and I never do this, I shouldn’t do this, but I know if I let her walk away, I won’t be able to stop thinking about the sad girl who left me a ten-dollar tip when I get the feeling she can’t afford to leave me a tip at all.
“You should come back tonight at eleven.” I don’t give her a chance to tell me no or explain why she can’t. I go back inside the bar, hoping my request makes her curious enough to show back up tonight.
