Chapter Text
There was sound everywhere. It was all Angie could feel; she knew that it wasn’t carpet or hardwood or anything, but in a way it was all that she knew. It was fragrant and pertinent in the air and in her fingers. She still felt the sticky, sugary syrup from the margaritas she had to pour for the obnoxious Bachelorette party in the back corner, currently yelling out a new dirty word or penis reference every five seconds.
Angie despised Fridays. Every other day was fine, busy, but manageable. It was whenever that delicious end of the week Friday night came round that Londoners flocked to Hammond’s on Main like mayflies in the middle of summer. Ready to be dead come sunrise.
“And I’ve got this new project at work and, my god, it’s like hell, fuck, I’m branding snowman decorations in the middle of this godforsaken hell humidity–” she heard from one of the men at the bar, an already drunk lightweight corporate finance bro. His (cuter) blonde friend was ‘mhm’ing him quickly.
“Here we are gentlemen, your requested shots. Better knock ‘em down fast, or I may have to steal one for myself,” she served them two vodka shots on the auburn hardwood bar top. The mushy brown ‘90s carpet squished beneath her feet as she made as little eye contact with them as possible. She was a good bartender, but god knows she wasn’t one to be personable.
The two chuckled at her wit. “I could see why, it’s busier here than a mansion on Boxing day,” the brunette one commented. He smiled, laughing at his own joke, his teeth nearly yellow in the red-orange ambiance of the bar. His shit-eating grin made her uneasy in her non-slip shoes.
The blonde one just smirked a little, his expression easing and familiar. He wasn’t annoyingly conceited like his friend; he was a real man, the kind who knew just how many customers were in the bar tonight and how many minutes that she had to put up with this kind of crap. He handed her a few euros as a tip and said, “Get yourself one before night’s end, love. Thanks for the drinks.”
She took the tip from him and continued about her rounds. Even though business was crazy, in moments like this, she could get into the swing of it. The gentle rumble of conversation, the back and forth banter, the laughter that sparked between groups that sometimes lead to heaving, choking and even throwing up out of hilarity.
The craziness was calming, in a way. Slowly, over time, Angie learned to identify home as the sound of shakers, the smell of whiskey and the murmurs of drunks.
She just finished serving someone when she heard steps coming in from the back. A wave of relief ran through Angie once she realised that Sammy was coming in to help with the rush. Angie held her drinks tray to her side as she went over to see her friend.
Sammy smiled at her, a piece of kale stuck in one of her bottom teeth from her dinner break. She was coercing long pink stray strands of her hair back behind her ears, failing unsuccessfully a few times before she finally got them to cooperate. The rest of her hair was her natural colour, black, and stayed in a sloppy ponytail to squish and swirl about as she walked. Her face was heart-shaped, her cheeks were slim and her nose had a new piercing in it. Angie had always been a little envious of her friend–Sammy could easily slip in and out of invisibility, fading into the crowd with her sleek, refined appearance, while Angie’s copper-red hair made her noticeable to anyone, at any time. Sure, Sammy could stick out, and she did, multiple times a day, but she always loved the attention it brought. Angie felt the opposite; the mere fact that people could always spot the ginger in the corner made Angie chronically paranoid and anxious.
Back from her break, Sammy squinted to see which seats were filled and which weren’t. “It’s crazy again, isn’t it?” she asked, her smile fading as the people started to pile up in the bar. Every table they had was gone, and bar spots were disappearing by the second.
Angie decided to run with it. “Nah, it’s really calm. I mean, why would we be busy on a Friday night? It’s so dead right now, in fact, I had begun to chip off my nail polish out of pure boredom,” she shot for full deadpan, but it ended up landing a little rudely. She knew better to use sarcasm when she was this tired; when you didn’t go all in, you ended up seeming impolite.
Sammy gave her a glare of retribution and poked her arm. “What tables do you have?” she asked, looking out onto the floor as she sanitised the countertop with a cloth.
“A bunch, can you take a few gin and t’s to Tables 5 and 6?”
“Yes,” Sammy answered, and Angie let out a sigh of gratitude. She went to deliver to a couple in the corner, tallying off customers one by one.
Sammy had started the drinks when she came back behind the counter. She accidentally clanged a glass against the countertop before she asked, “So which man are you going to hurt tonight?”
Angie made a gruff noise in frustration. “I don’t ‘hurt’ them, Sammy, they’re consenting adults that make their own choices. It’s not my fault that they want to sleep with me and I have to kick them out in the morning when they get clingy. That was all of their own volition, okay?”
“Sure, sure,” Sammy replied, her tone incredulous. “Tell that to the guy who left our apartment nearly crying last time.”
“He was… sensitive. He thought that I was going to be the girl he’d take to meet his mom.” Angie had to turn her face away to keep Sammy from seeing her blushing beet red cheeks.
Sammy laughed suddenly, the high pitch sound jumping out of her. “Oh God, that’s even worse, Ange. Do you have a soul underneath that skin or are you just pure cruel?”
“I-I’m not cruel!” Angie’s defensive mechanisms flew in to protect her, shielding her from the blame. She put a few drinks on her tray and turned to Sammy, her walls up. “I just don’t enjoy romantic affection, alright? There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Sammy put her hands up in surrender. “Hey, babe, whatever floats your boat,” she shrugged, biting her tongue to keep from laughing. “Anyways, which guy is it today? I’ll have to go pity the poor fool.”
Angie closed her eyes and tried to envision a way out of answering the question. Somehow she couldn’t find one. She put a tray of drinks on her shoulder, going to deliver them, after whispering, “The blonde at the end of the counter.”
Angie heard the giggling behind her as she walked away.
It was the truth. She had never enjoyed someone’s hands all over her, manipulating her, keeping her locked in their hold. All she ever needed was a nice face and some good long fingers to keep her satisfied. She didn’t need the ooey gooey sappy emotions, and tried to leave them out as much as she could.
The only person she ever allowed to see her, the vulnerable her, was Sammy. They’d met here, at the bar, when they were both just teens who had no idea what to do with their lives. Angie was never smart enough to go to uni, after all, and she couldn’t go home. The girl they knew back there existed only in their picture frames.
Sammy was her only family. Most everybody else was just an audience to cater to.
It sounded sick, and maybe she was cruel, but the most that Angie could hope for in the world was to survive it her best and this was the way she chose to do that.
Hysterical laughter in the corner and a crashing spill brought her back into the moment. The blonde man was getting up, calling Sammy over, getting the bill. The bearded man who had made the spill was unsuccessfully trying to wipe the mess down with his shirt. She needed to move quickly.
She was about to sneak by the blonde and drop off her number when she felt a tap on her shoulder. It was irritating just how gentle it was, just how close she was to getting away.
She turned around with a hostess’s smile on her face. “Yeah?” she felt the irritation collect in her throat and quickly tried to shove it down.
The face she came across was different and new, not a familiar like most of the bar’s customers. His steel cut black hair was slick and dark as a rainy driveway in the city, gelled to the extremes. He was neat, clean. He looked like someone out of a magazine that didn’t seem like they actually existed inside the real world. The collar of his navy blue blazer was a little crumpled, but she assumed as soon as he noticed, he’d fix it immediately. He was one of those men, obsessed with his own arrogant self-aggrandized appearance.
“Could I get a Tom Collins on the rocks, please?” he asked. He didn’t smile the way some customers would; he simply stood, waiting for her to drop everything and serve him.
He was attractive. Angie couldn’t deny that. He had brown eyes that seemed as strong as black coffee, deep roasted almonds that accented his pale white skin.
He seemed like the kind of man who preferred an up-scale bar, with fancy machines and bartenders trained on techniques that made their drinks unique and overpriced. This wasn’t his usual bar. He was here for a reason, Angie hypothesised.
“Sure, you want to start a tab?” she replied.
“No, the one drink will be alright, thank you,” he took a seat at the bar, moving his attention away from her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the blonde lad standing up with his friend. They were gathering their coats to leave the bar, and he was eyeing her as if to say ‘come on’.
Her focus didn’t dip, though. This mysteriously neat man kept her attention like a fly buzzing around in one’s ear. The curiosity would annoy her until it was squashed.
“Celebrating anything? Or just drinking away a feeling?” her mouth moved faster than her mind and asked him. He was too handsome for a trashy bar like this; he wouldn’t have come unless something had thoroughly wrecked him.
His laugh was a little fake before he responded, “You could say so, yes.” It was strange the way he spoke, with manners and grammar and grace somewhere anyone could forget all of the above.
Sometimes, people came in here and forgot about boundaries. They spill all their secrets to her, letting her in on their deep dark late night thoughts and their long lost departed loves. This man, however, was keeping them all in. He didn’t want to vent; he just wanted a nice escape that wouldn’t ask any questions.
She could give him that. She didn’t answer questions for strangers either.
She handed him his drink, meeting his eyes. The air changed in a single second. The hot, sweaty, far-too-packed bar suddenly felt cool and calm. Like a sudden breeze on the beach during a hot summer, Angie was placated back into her normal, slow tempo and forced to just take in what was in front of her, not the million other tasks she had to do. A pretty sunset overtook her view, and rendered her unsteady.
As she locked into his intense, paralysing gaze, she was finally able to see him, his slumped shoulders giving away what his mouth wouldn’t. She understood, somehow. He wasn’t transparent in his face or his words, but she could read him. They were the same. Their ghosts followed behind them, ever present, yet unseen to the untrained eye.
She brushed two strands of her copper-colored hair behind her ears and hoped that he wouldn’t be able to see the broken girl the ghosts left behind, the little girl who only ever needed her papa, her brothers and her fishing pole to keep her happy. That girl was destroyed when the ghosts came rushing in, stealing all of her life to take it for themselves.
She wished she could hate them, but all she ever felt was numbness. She wondered if the man in front of her ever felt the same.
She cleared her throat, causing them both to immediately look away. She took a moment to collect herself before she scurried away from the bar to find that the blonde had already left with his friend a minute ago.
She mistakenly walked with her head to the floor around the corner of the bar and ran straight into Sammy. “Sorry, babe, sorry, I’m just flustered,” Angie quickly mended, and went about making the Tom Collins for the guy. Her customer, she reminded herself.
Sammy made a shrug gesture with her hand. “It’s alright. You missed blondie, before he left he asked if I would mind grabbing you, but you seemed busy. What’d that lad want?”
Angie’s mind froze for a second as she stared down at her plain nails and overpoured the liquor in the drink. “Shit,” she realised, throwing it out in the drain and beginning to remake it. “What was that?” she asked Sammy before she remembered the question. Angie shook her head, trying to clear the grey fog that filled her brain as soon as she looked at that man. “He wanted a Tom Collins, no tab, just the one drink,” she echoed what he said to Sammy.
Sammy squinted her eyes interrogatively, “Why’d it take you so long, then?” she asked. She looked behind her at the guy again, and turned back to Angie smirking like the devil. “Is it because he’s handsome? Handsome enough to wipe the brain of our dear Angeline?”
Angie scoffed, finishing off the drink with a sharp clang of the metal shaker hitting the glass. She moved quickly, barely leaving Sammy the time to catch up with her.
“Here you are,” she said to the guy, not looking at him as she laid his drink down on the bartop.
He fought to keep his eyes off her, too, but whispered a ‘thank you’ before she sped away from him.
Once she was safely behind the bar, she allowed herself to look at him. He was drinking very slowly, taking slow sips before staring into the wall for several minutes. He looked like a dream. He looked like he was in the middle of a nightmare.
Angie felt a funny, sickly, need-to-throw-up-now feeling in her stomach. She wanted to help him, she wanted to make him forget whatever his demons were. She felt something inside of herself, maybe it was that unbroken little girl from long ago, pulling her to him like a magnet. All she knew was that he was so pretty and if he kept sitting there she was going to crack.
It didn’t help that the chaos had calmed down and things in the bar were slowing like a hot chocolate loaded with ice cubes.
“Hey, you see that girl in the corner? The one with the blue hair?” Sammy commented, her voice enthusiastic, pulling Angie out of her head. “Isn’t she cute?”
Angie was too wrapped up in her own mind she only looked for a second and hmmed an affirmative.
“I’m gonna go flirt, will you watch my tables?” Sammy’s mouth curved up in a half-smile, half-smirk kind of thing and her eyes shined with determination. Angie couldn’t even protest before Sammy was off, sneaking into the woman’s booth with ease.
She was good, that one.
Angie sighed and pulled out another bottle of whiskey, wiping it clean before placing it carefully on the shelf. She went about the procedures–cleaning, checking in, refilling. She could feel the man’s eyes on her at times, but as soon as she looked up, they were gone.
He was still there, even after an hour. He hadn’t even finished his drink.
“Hi-ya, ma’am, I think we’ll need a few more beers over at our table, please,” a man with a rich southern accent came up to her to ask.
“Oh, yeah, of course, I’ll bring them right over. On the tap or in the bottle?” Americans were the few who ordered beer, but when they did, they had a number of ways to consume the beverage. Angie never enjoyed the taste of it, she rather preferred a gin and coke or some nice down-the-gullet shots. She was a hard alcohol kind of girl.
“Is that even a question, sweetheart?” He smirked, his eyebrow twitching.
She smiled politely, trying to will the sarcasm back down her throat so it wouldn’t come out of her mouth. “Tap, it is.”
The brown haired fancy man stared her down as she delivered the beer, making her feel uneasy. She nearly dropped the tray before the Americans ran up to her, grabbing the beers so that they could quickly choke them back. She had a laugh at their nonchalance before she came back to the man staring into his now empty glass.
Angie sat down next to him, letting go of all barriers. “Do you need a beer or a shot or any drinks that I can quickly arrange for you?”
“No,” he quickly choked out, “No, I’m fine,” he looked anywhere but her eyes, avoiding them like death.
“Okay, then, why are you here?” she spat out emphatically. She didn’t know why, but the curiosity was beginning to bite at her heels and to spike up frustration instead. He and his neatly packed head of hair had been here staring at her, without a word, driving up her emotions and deflecting her focus.
His eyebrows melted together to form separate sideways question marks on his face. “Does my presence warrant that question? I thought this was a place of business.” She didn’t know how to explain herself, her obsession with his presence bordered on slightly stalkerish. He continued, “Well, then, this is a wonderful girls gone wild party, I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit. Hopefully next time we can get a nice grand ol’ keg for the Americans so they don’t have to drink that god-awful tap–”
She nudged him in his side, effectively stopping the sarcasm and getting him to crack a teeny, tiny smile. Despite her reluctance not to, her face broke out in a small one as well. She corrected it, straightening her face.
“You. With the jacket, and probably the job, and the nice hair. You’re a pretty boy, one with a trust fund, so why are you here?” As soon as the question came out of her mouth, his brows furrowed once again. She clarified, “Here being, yes, a place of business, but a place of business that serves tap beer and only semi-good whiskey and Americans with backwards caps on.”
He cleared his throat, his eyes bulging out trying to think up an answer to the question. “Well, uh, I don’t think I owe an explanation to a stranger. You barely know me.”
“I’m just curious, can’t you humour me for a second? I live a very sad, sad life full of dullness and monotony. Pity me,” she begged, pouting her lip a little.
The man shrugged, reaching for his glass and realising its emptiness. He stared at it for a second before his eyes sparked to life again, “What do I get out of it?”
She went silent, putting a finger to her lips in thought.
“A pat on the derriere on your way out,” she remarked, his smirk enticing another smile out of her. She laughed to get the butterflies out of her stomach. “I don’t know, what is this, an underground cocaine deal? You need an incentive?”
He sighed. “I need something, at least. I’m not going to start spilling out my personal details to someone I can’t trust.”
“Wow,” she gaped at him for a second, her mouth open. “Pretty boy has some trust issues, huh?”
He audibly sputtered. He took a breath and smoothed down his already perfect hair, collecting himself. “No, no, it’s not that. It’s just– it’s unreasonable of you to ask me to give you so much information when I just met you. Why don’t you start with, ‘Hi, sir, what’s your name?’ or ‘Isn’t the weather lovely today?’” he shook his head as he drank down the last ice cube in his glass. He put it down, “Did your parents ever teach you manners?”
Angie’s eyes bugged out and she gestured largely with her hands. “Do we live in the 1800s? The weather isn’t lovely; in fact, the world is on fire and dying out. And I have manners, I’m just rather fond of spinning situations with my magnificent personality and wit.”
“Hmm,” he let out. He had a bizarre expression on his face. It almost looked like fondness, but she barely knew that emotion on her own face, let alone someone else’s. “I’m afraid I’m gonna need a little bit more than that to make the deal, darling.”
Angie slouched on the bar, deep in thought. She knew she had to give him something in order to get the details she wanted, but she didn’t know exactly what. She wondered if he would just go and tell his rich friends about the crazy stalker-y bartender he had. If she told him her name, he would only have more detail to his story.
It was even worse what it would mean for her. It would mean another person would know her, just a little bit, and would be a player in her story instead of simply an audience member. She would have to give up a little bit of herself again.
She had always hated this part, the awkward getting-to-know-you stage that everyone had to go through with every new person or thing. She avoided it at all turns.
This was an unavoidable situation, though. She would need to swipe her own vulnerable card before he would swipe his.
“Hello, sir, what is your name? My name is Angeline, but I go by Angie. I work at Hammond’s and I’m 23. I like assisting people in their quests to get drunk and happy, and I enjoy the occasional one night stand,” she said dryly, shooting for the vaguest introduction ever made. Even still, at the end, she gave a little gesture, opening up her hands as if she had just done a magic trick.
He looked rather pleased with himself after that, turning his body to fully face hers. She could see it in his eyes, the pride. It was that god damn pride that almost made her regret her decision to open up to him. She turned away in embarrassment, her pale cheeks flushing under his gaze.
Then he chuckled.
“My name is Lucas. Koh, in fact, if you needed to know what’s on my birth certificate. I’m a physiotherapist in the uptown area which probably doesn’t lend me in the best light, I know. Richy rich boy in the city with a fancy title, but I promise you I’m not that snobby. I’m nearly 26, and the one serious relationship that I’ve ever had is heading to the loo. That’s why I’m here, actually, because, uh,” Lucas reached for something in his coat pocket, fishing it out. He put a velvet box down on the bartop. “She gave me back the ring.” Angie’s eyebrows went all the way to the moon. “Do you know what to do when that happens? Because I don’t.”
“My god, you are a shocking book to crack open, Koh,” they both laughed nervously. “What did you do?” she asked, opening the box and taking a look at the ring. It was a carat diamond that looked like it would cost her three years' salary.
His jaw cracked open as he began to sputter, “Nothing, nothing…but…”
She smirked, her hazel eyes sparkling a little bit. “There’s always a but with you men folk.”
He rolled his eyes and she sat, waiting for the explanation with a knowing look on her face. “Well…. She has this friend. He used to be her longtime crush. She waited for a year for him to get out a relationship with this one girl and he sort of used her as a rebound and she was really hurt by him and then she got over him by getting with me and we got engaged and-and-”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “Take a breath, pretty boy, you’re going to faint if this explanation contains another ‘and’.” She felt the breath in his shoulder, his chest heaving up, and then relaxing into a sigh, a sharp release of CO2. He glanced down at her hand on him and his muscles tensed. She immediately flicked her fingers away from him and down to her apron.
She played with the strings on it as he continued, “It’s tough, you know, when you’re not the person they wanted in the first place. She was trying to repair her relationship with him, said that their friendship was really important to her, but, I could just tell. She’s always wanted him that way. She’s always going to want him in that way.”
Lucas stared off into the distance, and Angie sympathised with him for a moment. She never knew what it was like to be serious with someone, but she could imagine it was soul-wrecking to be vulnerable and then get passed up for something, someone “better.”
It gave her even more justification for her casual relationship philosophy.
“She had a night out with the friend, ran into him at a bar, and hung out with him for a few hours. She came home the next day and we had a fight. A big one. She accused me of being unnecessarily jealous and crazy, seeing something that wasn’t there. She said that she loved me, not him.I just… I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe. I left, came to the closest bar and here we are.”
Angie gave him a sympathetic smile when he looked at her. His head met the bartop as he buried his face in his hands, holding out a long, aggravated sigh that had clearly been growing over the past few days.
Angie felt a strange sensation in her suddenly anxious, twitching fingers. Watching him so defeated like that did something to her. She wanted to touch him, put her hand on his shoulder for him to lean into, do anything to provide some sort of comfort to the man. Something was expanding in her nervous, fragile heart, making it impossible for her to think clearly or make smart decisions.
She laughed awkwardly, searching her brain for something comforting to say. “Hey, I mean, she’s not gone. She chose you, right? Her word isn’t meaningless; she probably knows her own feelings and knows that she loves and wants to be with you. The only problem in the situation is… your feelings. You can’t trust her properly the way things are, and you need to communicate that if you want to stay with her.”
His head came off the bar to once again stare into the wall. His hair was a little ruffled, the messiness making Angie smile. Her heart did another backflip; she wanted to tease him for it.
His eyes were still blank, but there was less hopelessness in his face than there was a minute ago. He didn’t respond, but he did sit up a bit straighter. He combed his hair back with his fingers, resolving Angie’s internal dilemma.
“You have to understand, Koh, that you don’t really have any control over how she feels. Maybe she’s lying to herself saying that she doesn’t have feelings for him. Maybe she’s being 100% truthful with you when she says that she only has feelings for you but… we don’t know. You have to just either trust her, or leave the relationship at that. And the only way to have a relationship is to…communicate, to trust and to respect each other.” She was about to continue, but then remembered that she was giving this advice on zero relationship experience. She rubbed a hand over her face, laughing a little at herself. “Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard. My relationships tend to consist of sex and… nothing else.” She chuckled and then deflated, realising her own patheticness. “I guess I’m not very good at this either, Koh.”
He chuckled a little, too, his expression brightening. His brown eyes had finally moved up to meet hers again and there was a new clarity to them, a new light. She figured maybe her pathetic advice helped, and that was enough for her to smile.
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to figure it out then, won’t we, darling?”
Then he grabbed her chin, tilted her head to face his.
And kissed her.