We wound up agreeing to go to a bar called Aztecs in downtown Albuquerque. I didn’t know much about the bar, other than that a search for “grungy bars” turned it up. It was my kind of scene, anyway; off the beaten path, catering to my kind of crowd, but not so dingy and dirty as to appeal to Garrett’s kind of crowd.
And the reason for that was pretty straightforward. Garrett’s kind of crowd included Mason, and the longer we could avoid him, the better.
When I arrived at Aztecs, Garrett was already seated at a table near the back. The bar, which looked like a former tiki-torch, Polynesian style place before being redone into this purple-hued, purposefully graffitied location, was barely crowded. Garrett sat in the back, a bit of a contorted look on his face.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” I said. “You ask out a pregnant woman, and the place that you take her to is a bar.”
“Hey, you picked it, and I’m more than happy to do a shot for me and a shot for you.”
“Why? So you can tolerate being around me?”
I’d said it as a joke, a sort of low-key taunt of Garrett. But for a reason I had not yet figured out yet, Garrett almost seemed offended by it. Granted, nothing we had done had felt comfortable or normal, but there was a difference between that and this.
“I’m just here to get to know you better, mother,” he said, a sly smirk on his lips.
“Funny man,” I said. “I guess you won’t mind if I call you father, then?”
“Not at all!” Garrett said, though it was punctuated by a gulp of a drink that he’d kept hidden from me, on his lap. “That’s what I’m headed to, right? Being a daddy?”
I smiled and gently rubbed my foot on his leg underneath the table.
“And now maybe you’ll even start the process of being a boyfriend.”
I’d meant the words like Garrett was going to both be a good father and a good partner. But as soon as I saw the grimace form on his face, I knew I’d pushed him just a bit too hard. The word “boyfriend” especially, had seemed to trigger some sort of negative reaction. I knew Garrett loved the bachelor lifestyle, but I didn’t love the fact that the potential of losing that lifestyle seemed to bother him that much.
“I owe it to you after you saved my ass,” Garrett said.
That landed badly. This date was not off to the greatest of starts.
“You know you don’t owe me anything romantically, right?” I said, trying to keep a smile on my face in the hopes that I wouldn’t totally torpedo everything this early.
“Of course not,” Garrett said dismissively.
“Do it because you like me, not because you feel obligated to.”
Garrett nodded, but I wasn’t convinced by that reaction that he was doing so because he agreed with me. I felt like there was a lot going on in that guy’s head, that he could very well have had romantic feelings for me on some level…but also wanted that freedom and also asked me out only out of some sort of bizarre obligation to me.
“Do you?”
“Do I what? Want to take another shot? Always!”
He stood up at that and went to the bar. I let him go; I wasn’t going to forget what I wanted to ask him, no matter how long he spent yakking it up with the bartender about the best drinks to make. As soon as he came back, wiping his lips, I let him take a breath before I pressed on.
“Do you want to be here? Or are you here out of an obligation to me? And please be real—don’t bullshit me.”
Garrett chuckled and smirked at me, like doing so would just make the problem go away.
“I’m here for a good time,” he said. “Just as I am whenever I go anywhere else!”
He chuckled, grabbed my hand, and kissed it. It was flattering enough, I supposed, but it was painfully obvious that he wasn’t going to answer my question. It was a bit of a turnoff, but given this was the father of my child, I wasn’t going to let it go so easily. So, begrudgingly, I changed the subject.
“And are you having a good time here? Do you like Aztec?”
“It’s no Reapers,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “In fact, why don’t we fucking go to Reapers? That’s where the booze is.”
Reapers. As in, the bar my brother got arrested at?
“Didn’t you get arrested with my brother the last time you were there?”
