I greet Tristan with a welcoming smile, but I feel my lips twitch and he apprehensively returns it. “Just the person I wanted to see,” I say.
He has on a Bloomfield Fire Department T-shirt and gray sweatpants. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t an attractive look. Especially the gray sweatpants, which I quickly avert my eyes from. Sometimes I wonder if I never found out about that idiotic bet if we would be together now. He sets his bag with his work clothes down by the bar, taking a seat before he has to go change.
“Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing?”
“I just wanted to ask you something,” I say, wiping down a glass.
“And what is it you wanted to ask?”
I try to think about how to phrase it: Have you received your eulogy lately? Just doesn’t sound like something a sane person would say. “Have you gotten any strange notes recently?”
“Strange notes? Like what?”
Yeah, Sloane, like what? “Like, I don’t know, strange. Anything you’d look at and be like, what the hell? You know?” But he does not know. I had a thought last night that maybe Ryan wasn’t the only one to get a page from my journal. What if they all did? I had to know for sure.
“No? Have you?”
“Yeah,” I lie, trying to think of a reason why I would ever ask this. “I think one of the regulars wrote a story about me and left it on my car after my last shift.”
“What the hell?”
“Exactly! Yes, my reaction exactly. And in this story, I died. So I was curious to know if you got one too.”
“No, but that’s so creepy. You should tell Jess,” he says, picking up his bag. Although Jess, our manager, would probably think it was funny.
“Right, I will. But just let me know if you ever get a note like that, will you?”
“Sure, Sloane, you will be the first to know.”
I decide to surprise my friends out at the bars when I’m cut from Cantine early. But as I look around Ray’s, our usual first stop, they aren’t here. I text Annica and Dani while I sit at the bar to see if anyone shows.
“Solo drinking tonight?” a voice says from behind me. I don’t need to turn around to know it’s Wesley. He takes a seat beside me and orders a draft.
“Looks that way,” I say, sitting up in my seat. When I turn around, I realize he’s alone. Our group isn’t with him. Marissa isn’t with him. “Where is everyone?”
“Jake invited over some girls from Ivy Gate for a pregame but they’re all so hammered I don’t think they’ll make it out. I think Annica and Dani are at the hockey house for a party. Did they not mention it?”
“I was working tonight but ended up getting off early. I just texted them,” I say.
“So that’s why you smell like french fries,” Wes teases, and my cheeks turn pink. I didn’t stop home to shower or change. I’m still in my jeans and the fitted white T-shirt I wore today, which, yes, now that I think about it, smells like fries.
“No Marissa tonight?” I ask, because I need to be prepared to get my feelings hurt these days.
“No, she’s studying tonight. It’s just me.”
“Hm.” Just him. I sip my vodka soda and try to quell the butterflies in my stomach over the idea of just me and Wes out tonight. Where that might lead.
“Hey, remember the end of sophomore year, and we were the only two out of the group to not have our fake IDs taken, so before the semester ended we tried to do the rounds and see if we could make it without getting caught?”
I laugh. “Yeah, and we only made it to three bars because you threw up and they kicked us out.”
“What? No, we got kicked out because you thought you could dance on the table.” He playfully nudges me and his touch is electric the way it sparks up my arm and I feel it everywhere.
“What’s an elevated surface for if not dancing?” I say, taking a drink, trying not to cringe at the words that just left my mouth.
“Let’s finish the rounds,” he says. “Tonight. Just us.”
The rounds he’s referring to are the order of bars that are customary at Pembroke. Everyone knows you start at Ray’s and finish at 157. There are five major ones you need to get to in a night; a lot of times we only make it to three.
