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She hummed. “Sounds like this goes a lot deeper than one summer.”
He rubbed his forehead. “Yeah. It does.”
“And now do you understand why our stars didn’t align?”
Archer hesitated. When he was dating Janelle, he kept quiet about her love for astrology and zodiac signs and reading the stars, because he thought it was all a bunch of bull. Yet now, as she looked at him with a serene and, dare he say, smug expression, he wondered if he’d written it off too quickly.
“Sure,” he admitted. “I guess our stars don’t align.”
“Do your stars align with her?”
“No fucking idea.” He shifted back and forth. “But in my opinion, they would align in every universe.”
“Then it sounds like you know what you need to do.”
He squinted at her. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
She shrugged. “Just because we didn’t work out doesn’t mean I don’t care for you, Archie. I will always want the best for you.
He looked into the fluorescent-lit fridge. “We never used to talk like this.”
“Probably because it was never really meant to be.”
They stood there in silence, both staring ahead.
“You know when you finally open that school, I’ll be the first one to sign up for a class.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’ll need it. You can’t make a cocktail to save your life.”
She laughed. “Your margaritas are way too weak! I want double the amount of tequila.”
“Sadist.”
She laughed again. The sound of it brought a smile to his face.
“You’re still going to do that, right? The cocktail school?”
He exhaled. “Yeah. I think I am.”
He didn’t bother talking to Tea when he got home that night, or the following morning when he saw her take off in his sailboat with her mom. He gave them their space; they hadn’t seen each other since last year. Molly meant a lot to Tea, to the point where she was ready to give everything up so her mother wouldn’t be alone. He watched from his cabin window as the two of them returned from their morning sail, smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes.
Later that day, he received an email.
To: Archer Vincent
From: Lyle Thorne
Archer! Broski!
So good to hear from you, dude, what a crazy time it’s been. Reaching out to let you know I’ll be opening up Hermes Lounge this fall. Things are going to look a lot different. We’re going to utilize outdoor seating with heaters until people physically cannot handle the cold anymore, and plexiglass dividers between tables indoors. More details to come, but would love to have you back around. When do you return from up north? I think you told me this is the weekend you usually head back?
As for your cocktail classes, I had an interesting idea. Given that we can’t have as many customers in, and who knows how long we’ll be able to utilize the outdoor patio, I was thinking…what if we did the cocktail classes online? Great way to make some dough during the winter. They could log in to classes you teach on Zoom. We’ll have to talk through details on how to get them materials and whatnot, still bouncing this around in my head.
Shall we meet next week? Excited to get back into things. Missed you, man.
