I really didn’t want to be there that evening. My friend Marissa suggested it and I Wasn’t Allowed to refuse.
Bars aren’t the place I feel most comfortable. Even at four o’clock in the afternoon, with the sun piercing right through the window that faces the street, it isn't bright enough for me. Natural light usually is too dim. The other thing is that I don’t like windows that don’t open, like the one big one in the bar. It is almost suffocating, seeing the world turning out there and feeling like you’re being imprisoned from it.
But because I needed to meet new people, or so I was told, I had to go to the bar. Marissa looked sloppy, like she was going to a trashy nightclub. Her shirt left no curve to the imagination, and her skirt was too sparkly for all the light that bounced off of it. Every little sequin was like a mirror and reflected their own thought of the midday sun. The room began to light up in all different directions. It really was a pretty skirt, even if it was a little snug. She got mad, though, when I kept touching it as we were sitting side by side at the bar. I had to flip the sequins back and forth. I tried to explain that to her and she swatted my hand and rolled her eyes. Then she ordered me a drink.
Marissa and I had met as kids when in fourth grade James Garfile made fun of me for only walking on the blue tiles in the hallway. I skipped the yellow ones and this apparently called for some sort of Weird Kid intervention. Marissa was a big girl at the time, if you know what I mean. No one dared mess with her, because her attitude had more mass than her body. She wore bright red lipstick and a t-shirt from some camp over cargo pants everyday, but even that baggy outfit wouldn’t have fit her attitude.
Anyways, she was walking behind me that day and I guess she had been copying my “game”. So when James taunted me and laughed when I couldn’t complete his dare---to step on the yellow tile---she walked up to him with a sneer and punched him in the back of the head. We were best friends ever since, me and Marissa. Well actually, she was my only friend.
She really liked my games, although she got annoyed sometimes. We all get annoyed sometimes so it didn’t really bother me, except when she called me stupid. Like one time she discovered the game with the TV remote. Sometimes I didn’t watch TV because of that remote. When you pressed the button, because it was made of rubber and not plastic, sometimes it clicked on one side. Like the button would click unevenly. Whenever I turned the TV on or off, if the button didn’t pop down and up all evenly, I would click it again. She thought this was fun, and sometimes would take the remote out of my hand to try herself.
But one time she wanted to play video games and I couldn’t get the remote to click right. Marissa is really impatient. She grabbed the remote out of my hand to turn it off and clicked it wrong. So I grabbed it back and turned it on again and off again. And on again and off again. On and off. On. Off.
Stop It! I can’t. What Do You Mean You Can’t. It didn’t click right I have to try again. That’s So Stupid It’s Just A Game!
She was right it was just a game. She tackled me for the remote and remembering James I let her have it. Then I got up to close the drapes over the glare of the sun. When I sat back down her lipstick was smeared but she was calm, and she passed me a video game controller. I sucked in the game, and she did a braggy dance after all five of her consecutive wins.
So she liked my games and we stuck together through the rest of elementary, middle, and high school. I wasn’t going to college and she was at the community college down the street. I could have gone to college, my GPA was high enough. But Marissa was never a good student. Whenever someone told her so she’d spit in their face and turn on her heel. I know because she did it to three people, including me. She couldn’t get into a real school, so she told everyone she couldn’t afford to go away yet. She was right, she couldn’t. But she was never a good student. And so we stuck together to our current drinking age.
The bar was a polished wooden box facing a main drag. It was sort of set up like a coffee shop, with the bar against the far back wall, tables circling around to the front, in which there was that big window and a heavy wooden door. It was a light wood too, and sometimes I liked to pretend it was all made of the wood of a bowling lane. I told this to Marissa and she got a gleam in her big brown eye and suggested that maybe it was, and we were really just specks of dust on the floor of a cosmic bowling alley. When I suggested perhaps we were actually the pins she rolled her eyes again and called over the bartender.
He was really cute and Marissa knew it. That’s probably why we came to the bar. She grabbed both our licenses out of her plastic clutch and slapped them on the bar with six bucks.
“A round of tequila for us,” she ordered. I didn’t like tequila, or alcohol really. But she was paying, no one was here, and I Had No Choice.
The bartender turned away and she stared at his ass, which wasn’t really that spectacular in the gray slacks he was wearing. He was tall, tan, and strikingly handsome, but his pocket wasn’t tucked in nicely and this bothered me. I turned to tell Marissa, but she was busy pulling her boobs even further out of her shirt.
“What are you doing,” I asked, looking around to see if anyone else saw. There were only two other people in the bar, both middle aged men who weren’t paying attention.
“Well,” she started, “ I don’t plan on leaving here sober, and those six bills are all I have.” I was confused. I stared at her blankly and she leaned forward, which I knew meant she was about to explain. But then the bartender came back, jawline splitting the beckoning sun beams, and she leaned away and jutted out her chest, flipping her mousy hair and smiling a crooked flirty smile.  I’m pretty sure the bartender took a step back. She started giggling and kicked my shin really hard, so I started giggling too. It was really dumb stuff. He looked like he was going to say something, but then turned and carefully started straightening the bottles on the shelf behind him.
There was his pocket again. His back pocket, plainly and clearly folded up weird, illuminated by the sun from the window. I started to reach out and then turned to ask Marissa if it would be stupid to just reach over and fix it because it was really bothering me, but she had already downed her shot and was eyeing mine. She leaned over and whispered Don’t Worry I’ll Get Us Through This. Then I realized she was going to try and flirt with the daytime bartender so he would give us free booze. I almost laughed. Then I shifted to grab my shot and he had backed up closer to me and the pocket was right in my face. I couldn’t help it. I don’t know why, but I swear I couldn’t.
I reached out and stuck my hand in his back pocket to straighten it out. He clenched, shocked, and I pulled my hand away quickly.
He turned abruptly, and we locked eyes. He had beautiful blue eyes that sparkled like sun on the waves of the ocean. His brown hair dipped into the sea. I could not tell whether he was mad or not. I expected him to be because people normally get mad at me and my Dumb Games. But he wasn’t yelling. Instead he grinned and cleared his throat, stepping back.
“Another round for you, ladies?” he asked mostly to me, and then Marissa laughed boisterously and said yes. Then she grabbed my shot already on the table and drank it, shaking her head after swallowing like she was copying a person in the movies. I looked at her, confused, and she leveled her gaze.
“What?” she asked. “Princess, you can clearly get your own drinks.” I felt like I made a mistake and started explaining to her that I was just trying to fix his pocket, but she put her palm in my face which meant Stop Talking and so I did. Then she told me she was going to find a way to get some better booze and then got up and walked over to the two men, sitting on their table and eliciting eerie stares from both of them. They wore nice clothes and had on expensive watches, and were both sipping something that looked like whiskey, but I wasn’t really sure. Marissa probably knew.
I knew in that moment though, when Marissa chose to saunter over there, that I had sort of lost her. It wasn’t a game anymore. She kept looking over at me distastefully and I began to wonder if something was wrong with my appearance. My clothes were neat and I wasn’t wearing any makeup to smudge, which I made sure of by checking my reflection again and again and again.
I didn’t want to stay but the bartender, his name was Xavier, kept giving me more and more booze. I started to feel really good. I explained to him that I was just trying to fix his pocket because it was bothering me and he said that he was happy that I did. Then he messed up his pocket again and so I fixed it and he laughed but it wasn’t funny. I was feeling better though and so I didn’t mind too much when he flipped up his collar and had me fix it or undid his fly and had me fix that the whole time laughing and looking me up and down. So much alcohol I had never been drunk before and here I was as day turned to night and the sun went away dancing as more and more people came in and didn’t get free booze. Marissa left with the men at one point and she didn’t even look over but instead strutted out with one of their hands on her ass and I thought Serves You Right. Xavier was technically off his shift but started taking shots with me and at one point right after the sun had gone fully down I found myself putting down the glass again and again and again and again and again.