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“Boss!” Rey pitched her voice to cut through the chatter of the bar’s usual Friday night crowd. “We’re getting low on olives again!”
Plutt’s return grunt didn’t actually include words, and Rey rolled her eyes and made a mental note to make sure that olives made it onto the restock sheet - both the usual cocktail pimentos and the fancy garlic-stuffed monsters. Plutt wasn’t known for his efficiency in placing supplies orders.
She went back to mixing drinks and bantering with patrons. Working behind the bar at The Earl of Sandwich Tavern wasn’t a bad job - a little hectic, sometimes, and Rey (and everyone else) was constantly making up for Plutt’s shortcomings - but the pay was just this side of decent and customers tended to tip pretty well. Sandwich-themed cocktails were popular - who knew?
The only major flaw (besides Plutt) was the way the ambient music tended to get stuck in Rey’s head. It was a quirk of her brain; whatever Top 40 hit was playing on the sound system, the awful singing on the rare karaoke nights, the irregular rhythms of the monthly open mic poetry slam. But she had her workarounds, and when she got home she’d put on The Hu or Capercaillie or some Indi-pop and fill her ears with a language she didn’t understand until the repetitions faded away.
Her watch beeped, and Rey quickly finished the double Yellow Submarine someone had ordered - vodka, rum, Creme de Banane, and a slice of banana cut in a torpedo shape - and started setting out ingredients for a PB&J. Her favorite regular was due.
Ice. Rum. Simple syrup. Lemon juice Rey had squeezed herself. Strawberries delivered that afternoon. Sugar for the rim, and cocktail peanuts ready to be crushed.
Professor Solo liked his drink fresh. And he tipped really, really well.
Rey was quite aware that the relationships she had with the tavern’s regulars were superficial. She might tease and laugh and flirt, she might know someone’s favorite drink and the number of kids they had and the name of their dog, but at the end of the day it was all in passing. They probably forgot about her as soon as they left the bar, and she didn’t spend a thought on them once her shift was over. It was just part of the job.
Occasionally, though, someone stuck. Finn, for instance - he’d come in one night, confused enough to think the place was actually a sandwich shop, and after a couple of BLTs (Bloody Marys garnished with lettuce and artisanal bacon) he and Rey had decided they were the equivalent of long-lost siblings. Or whatever it was for kids who grew up in the system.
Professor Solo was another. Rey still wasn’t sure what he was doing at what was basically a hipster bar - it was an odd place for a university lecturer who taught upper-level astronomy courses - but she certainly wasn’t going to shoo him away.
She did the glass first, using a spice grinder to reduce the peanuts to fragments and adding just enough sugar, then combined the rest of the ingredients in the blender, pulsing it to get the correct texture. Some bartenders hated blender drinks, but Rey was willing to put in the effort for an appreciative patron.
That was also the job, after all.
Rey was just pouring the last dollop into the perfectly decorated glass when Professor Solo slid onto the corner stool where he always sat. She dusted the top with more crushed peanuts, flourished a cocktail napkin into place, and set the daiquiri in front of him. “What’s up, Doc?”
He gave her a dry look. “My blood pressure.”
But a smirk belied the words, and he sipped his drink and sighed in satisfaction, tongue flicking out to swipe a trace of sugar from his lips. Rey snickered and propped her forearms on the bar top. “Exams?”
“Exam prep.” Professor Solo - Ben, he’d told her more than once - mirrored her position with a sigh. “Every day there’s another student panicking in my office. Excuses so far this year range from dead grandmothers to, and I quote, ‘mutant influenza’.”
He unfolded one arm to take another slow sip. Rey, who had never come close to going to college, couldn’t quite picture it, but she’d heard enough of his stories to be amused. “So what do you do?”
Ben shrugged, gaze falling and a hint of color touching his cheeks. “Offer extensions. If they’re telling the truth.”
Rey felt her heart melt, just the slightest bit. She pushed up from the bar and reached for an extra strawberry, slitting it with one quick move and popping it onto the rim of Ben’s glass where the decoration was gone. “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”
He snorted. “You’re not old enough to remember that.”
Someone called for Rey’s attention, and she grinned over her shoulder as she slid away. “Neither are you!”
She fell into their usual pattern, like a dance; Rey would stop to chat whenever she had a moment, about his students and her coworkers, his studies and her hobbies. The professor would sit and slowly finish his drink, sometimes watching her, sometimes using a fountain pen to write in a small and battered notebook. He wasn’t interested in socializing with anyone else; occasionally someone would try to chat him up, and he was never rude, but he would draw solitude around him like a cloak until they gave up.
Rey occasionally wondered why he wanted to talk with her, but she wasn’t going to ask. That way lay awkwardness, and possibly the loss of not only someone who basically tipped a hundred percent, but a patron she was actively glad to see.
She was going to miss him during winter break. Professor Solo always left town, and Friday nights were dull until he returned.
Rey was hit with a big order - a table of six all wanted High Teas (gin, simple syrup, cucumber slices, sprig of dill), and while they weren’t hard to make, it did take a bit of time. By the time she was done, the corner stool was as empty as the daiquiri glass, a twenty-dollar bill folded under its foot along with a scrap of paper torn from the little notebook. Have a great holiday, it read in the professor’s beautiful handwriting.
Rey sighed, disappointed and touched at the same time. The bill went into the register; but the paper went into her pocket.
She missed him a lot. More than she expected, really. Things at the Earl tended to slow down around Christmas as it was - a lot of the patrons were associated with the university in some fashion, and Ben wasn’t the only one who went home over the break.
Rey missed seeing him take up space on that corner stool, missed bantering with him, missed the little glimpses of vulnerability he offered from time to time. And she missed looking at him. Rey wasn’t afraid to admit she found him attractive.
But tenured science professors didn’t date bartenders who’d barely managed a high school degree, never mind their age gap.
However, Rey had enough to distract her. The slow time, unfortunately, was about the only thing that could stir Plutt into action. He tended to get paranoid about any drop in sales, and no matter how often his staff explained that things would pick up in January, every year he would come up with some over-the-top scheme to bring in more customers.
That year it was a Christmas-dinner-themed drink menu. Plutt called a pre-opening meeting to brainstorm ideas for dishes that could be turned into beverages, and while there were plenty of ideas, the bartenders exchanged silent glances agreeing that very few of them were practical. Or palatable, for that matter.
“We could just have a peppermint schnapps tasting maybe?” someone suggested weakly, but Plutt steamrolled right over them. Rey gave a silent sigh.
Not sure turkey belongs anywhere near a cocktail. Unless it has “Wild” in front of it...
In the end Plutt ordered a bunch of holiday ingredients and told the bartenders to come up with ways to use them, which was usually how his schemes ended up. Rey didn’t think they did too badly, under the circumstances; cranberry sangria, hard cider drinks and a pumpkin milk punch, the Moscow Mash (Luksusowa mule, with a side of Pringles). Her favorite for sheer ridiculousness was the Side Dish (rum, ginger beer, garnish with marshmallows and serve with sweet potato fries). Since the Earl’s method of making the fries was opening a bag of frozen ones and putting them in the microwave, nobody ever ordered that one twice, but Plutt was satisfied.
Christmas rolled past; Rey spent it with Finn and his roommates, pigging out on pizza and playing games. New Year’s Eve was a blur of customers and champagne corks, and Rey spent most of New Year’s Day asleep, but the tips were good.
And then Friday came.
The monthly poetry slam was on, and the January theme was limericks, for some reason. The flow of patrons was just about constant, and the mic speakers were loud enough to override the music system, so Rey bounced around the bar mixing and pouring and trying to keep her thoughts from falling into rhyme patterns.
She kept an eye on the clock so she’d know when to start the professor’s PB&J, warm with anticipation at seeing him again. At P-minus fifteen minutes Rey served four Hair of the Hot Dogs (club soda, whiskey, dash of brandy bitters, cocktail weenie on a stirrer) to a party of birthday celebrants, and laid out the strawberries, the rum, the juice. When she reached into the box for a pack of cocktail peanuts, though, there was only one left.
Rey frowned, making a mental note to harass Plutt about restocking, and tore the bag open, pouring the peanuts into the spice grinder. Then she frowned more deeply. What the hell?
The weird mottling on the peanuts was mold. Rey dumped them into the trash and washed out the spice grinder, grimacing and wondering what to do.
A frantic search through the tavern’s small storeroom confirmed what she already knew; there were no more peanuts. Ben was due in a few minutes, and there were no peanuts. And she couldn’t send anyone out for them; everyone was busy.
A weird panic crinkled her nerves. Rey hated to disappoint a patron, and Ben was special. She rummaged quickly through the shelves, looking desperately for a substitute, and came across a small can of nuts left over from Plutt’s holiday buy. It’ll have to do.
Rey was a professional. Despite the delay, she had the cocktail poured, rimmed, and garnished the moment Ben reached his stool. She set down the glass and opened her mouth to explain, but the birthday group broke into loud song at just that moment, and Rey turned up a hand in mute apology.
Ben shrugged, smiling a bit, and tipped the glass towards her in a toast that made her pulse skip a beat. He took a drink - then froze, brows snapping together in puzzlement as he licked his lips. Rey’s stomach dropped a little.
The singers trailed off, and Ben leaned forward, looking baffled. “What in the name of all that is holy is this drink?”
Panic combined with the rhythms that had been pounding on her ears all night, and Rey gulped. “It’s a hickory daiquiri, Doc! The boss ran out of stock. The box had one, but the nuts were done.”
Her face had to be crimson. “I’m sorry,” she added. “I know it’s a crock.”
Ben’s eyes went wide with astonishment. Rey braced for she didn’t know what - anger, condemnation, laughter - but a bellow cut across the bar. “Hey! Can we get some beer here!”
Rey tossed up her hands and spun away, almost grateful to escape Ben’s incredulous stare. Idiot, she castigated herself. You should have just made a regular strawberry one and told him you were out of peanuts. Now you’ve probably ruined his tastebuds and he’ll never come back.
The beer was followed by a cookie sandwich martini (vanilla vodka, pineapple and lime juice, rim with crushed cookies and top with whipped cream) and three rum and Cokes (boring), and two people settling their tabs. By the time Rey made it back to Ben’s corner of the bar, his stool was empty, though the glass was still full.
A lump rose in her throat. She reached mechanically for the glass, belatedly spotting the twenty beneath it, and the bit of paper folded within the bill.
The note was brief, as beautifully written as always.
The daiquiri wasn’t that great,
But my admiration does not abate.
And so I will dare
To lay myself bare -
Might you consent to a date?
A phone number was printed neatly beneath the poem.
Rey’s heart rose so fast her head spun. She scanned the room, but there was no sign of Ben, so she tucked the note away and made a dozen more drinks, chatting with patrons on autopilot as her mind worked furiously over his words.
By the time she had a moment to pause, the words were ready. Her return text was swift and simple.
The drink’s a mistake, I agree.
I should have made it nut-free.
But as to your query
The answer’s YES VERY
Pick me up Sunday at 3?
Date One was a nice little restaurant very far away from the Earl. Rey found that they had plenty to talk about even without constant interruptions.
Date Two should have ended at about ten p.m., but they started making up limericks, and Rey found that Ben couldn’t resist her rhymes for “Doc”. Especially when she got to “c”.
Date Three was breakfast.
After that...they stopped keeping count.