Page 1 of Forever & Always You

He did not just mouth what I think he just mouthed. Oh, boy.

“Fired?” I repeat across the bar, slamming down a glass. “ Fired, Buck? Please confirm I’m a terrible lip reader, because there is no fucking way you just fired me.”

Buck fiercely sets his eyes on me as he storms closer, pressing his hands to the sticky bar top, the wood infused with decades of vodka. “You cannot say to a customer, and I quote , ‘Touch me again and you’ll never be fertile again after I kick you in the balls.’ What the hell, Gabby?”

I whip a towel over my shoulder and press my hands to the other side of the bar to mirror Buck, doubling down on my indignation. “Oh. So, you think it’s okay for your patrons to touch your staff? That creep has been leering at me all night! He touched my leg.”

“Maybe it was an accident.”

“Don’t be complacent, Buck, or I’ll take you down with him.” I smile sweetly, but I’m not kidding about that. I’m just scared he means it when he says I’m fired.

“If anyone is being inappropriate with you, you tell me, and I’ll deal with it,” Buck says with about as much conviction as a golden retriever puppy.

He should be enjoying his retirement, golfing with his buddies and taking senior cruises around the Bahamas, but instead he’s still running this dive bar for the ten customers a day it gets, and probably will until he drops dead of a heart attack in the back room one day.

His hands shake when he pours a drink, goddamn it.

In what world would this senior citizen survive some rough and tumble with handsy, drunk boozers half his age?

“Fine,” I huff, then grab the towel from my shoulder and start wiping down the bar, silently seething. When did self-defense go out of fashion? Can’t a woman protect herself without repercussions?

Buck clears his throat. “You’re still fired.”

“Buck, c’mon!” I spin back around, pointing the towel at him. “You need me here. Carly takes twenty seconds to pour one drink. I do it in five.”

“Maybe,” he agrees, “but Carly also shows up on time, doesn’t give me attitude, and treats customers like more than just dirt on her shoe.” He cocks an eyebrow, daring me to argue.

And okay, fine, whatever. Maybe my timekeeping isn’t the best, and maybe my attitude is rather pessimistic, and maybe I do think the drifters who frequent this bar are exactly that—drifters—but I do my work well.

My shoulders sink when I register the determination in Buck’s eyes. His mind is made up, and something tells me it has been for a while—he’s just been waiting for one last slip-up.

I glance around the dim bar. It’s late, just after midnight on a Thursday, so it’s quiet.

The guy who can’t keep his hands to himself and his buddy drink at a high-top by the door.

Carly plays personal bartender to the lone woman at the end of the bar who’s been sipping wine and texting aggressively all night.

There is no atmosphere, just the quiet musing of the six people in here and the musical notes of the slot machine in the corner.

It’s always smelled so stale in here, like the windows have never once been cracked open to allow fresh air in, and honestly?

They probably haven’t. I’ve grown accustomed to the stink of cigarettes that seems to cling to the walls, but that doesn’t mean I worry any less about the effects on my physical wellbeing and if one day I’ll die young from lung cancer.

If I never stepped foot in this place again, it’d be too soon.

But shit, where else am I supposed to go?

I’m a college dropout in a small town with zero career prospects.

I need something that pays the rent with no frills.

I don’t want to beg for my old waitressing job back, because I used to internally shrivel up and gag every time I carried dirty plates back to the kitchen.

One time, my thumb slipped into a pile of half-eaten mashed potatoes on someone’s plate and I instantly threw up in the bathroom.

Don’t even get me started on washing the dishes.

I required rubber gloves up to my elbows just to get my hands anywhere near the sink water. Pouring whiskey is the easier gig.

“Buck, I need this job. Please.”

Buck frowns and, for a fraction of a second, he almost seems sad to be forcing me out the door. “I know, honey, but unfortunately I no longer need you.”

I stand numbly behind the bar as Buck joins me, pulling open the register and shuffling through dollar bills.

He gathers a small stack and slips the cash into my hand to pay me what I’m owed this week, and I don’t even bother counting to check it’s correct.

I untie my apron from my waist and throw it onto the bar.

“Good luck out there, Gabby,” says Buck.

Yeah, I’ll need it.

As I shuffle past Carly, she asks, “You’re getting off early?”

“No, permanently. Bye, Carly.” But I also think: Damn you, Carly. If only you weren’t a model employee, then maybe I wouldn’t have looked so terrible in comparison.

In the back room, I grab my phone and keys from the shelf Buck considers a secure locker and then shuffle back through the bar with my head hanging low in shame.

“What’s wrong, honey?” the predator calls over to me, mockingly pouting his lips to mirror my sullen expression. It’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

Instantly, I pivot on the spot and stride toward him with fists clenched. “I just got fired, so now there’s nothing stopping me from—”

“You got fired from this dump?” he sneers, exchanging a cruel chuckle with his buddy next to him.

Realistically, I am absolutely not going to fight this balding middle-aged man, but I so, so badly want to smack him.

“What kind of loser can’t hold down a minimum-wage job in a place this like? That’s pathetic.”

“You know nothing about me,” I spit.

“Oh, but I do,” he says, resting his elbows on the table and hunching forward toward me with a nasty smirk.

“We see you in here all the time. Rolling your eyes behind the bar, thinking you’re all that.

But look at you crawling out the door. You’re nothing.

” He waves me off with a dismissive laugh.

“So go on, sweetheart. Get out of here.”

Those two words make me flinch from the sting of recognition.

You’re nothing .

I’ve heard those words before. The only difference being they came from my mouth that time, and I have waited far too many years for this exact moment—for the karma of having my own words thrown back at me. It’s what I deserve.

I lower my shoulders in quiet defeat and simply respond, “Thank you.”

As the man screws his face up in confusion, I turn my back on him and walk away, straight out of the door.

Even after midnight, the air is still warm and humid outside, so I hop into my car parked in the alley out back and crank up the AC.

At this hour, the streets are quiet around the rough edges of Durham, North Carolina.

While still enrolled at Duke University, I lived in the cutest dorm on campus, surrounded by gorgeous forestry and with downtown just a stone’s throw away.

Now my current apartment complex has questionable characters as neighbors and a couple of stray cats that someone keeps leaving cans of tuna out for in this July heat.

As I drive in silence, my mind spins with a thousand thoughts, like what the hell I’m supposed to do now and how much I’ll miss the free tequila slammers, but there is one thought that takes priority over the others—a memory that has tortured me for years, stored deep in the crevices of my brain with a tendency to rear its ugly head more often than I can handle.

*

Austin Pierce collapses into the passenger seat of my car with a groan, and I quit lining my lips with a second coat of gloss in the rearview mirror and fire him a sideways glance.

“What’s up, grumpy?”

“Coach is killing me this week,” he says, slowly stretching out his legs in front of him. “My quads are destroyed after those one-hundred-meter intervals he had us running yesterday, and he’ll probably put me through hell again later.”

I roll my eyes at him and say, “That’s the price you pay for a full-ride college scholarship.

Stretch off those legs and you’ll be good to go again.

” My hair dances in the breeze as I accelerate out of our street, because now that it’s April and the weather is warming up, I enjoy having the roof down on the drive to school.

“I can’t wait to get the hell out of here,” Austin mumbles. “Crunching both numbers and miles at Alabama State, baby. It’s going to be amazing.”

I sense his gaze on me as I drive, and after a moment’s pause, his voice softens. “The only thing that will be missing is you.”

“But we’ll keep in touch,” I remind him, “and I’m sure we’ll bump into each other when we both come home for the holidays. I’ll tell you all about the Duke frat parties I attend, and you can tell me how spongy the track at Alabama is.”

“You make me sound so lame.”

“You are lame, Austin,” I tease, pouting my lips at him.

“You may suck half the time—most of the time, actually—but I really will miss you,” he says, and my playful expression instantly falters into a somber, guilty frown.

I’m a terrible, terrible friend to Austin and I absolutely don’t deserve to be missed when we go our separate ways after graduation.

I’d love for us to stay in touch, but deep down, something tells me he’ll head off to Alabama State, meet nice, genuine friends, and then never associate with me again. And it’d all be my own doing.

“I’ll miss you, too,” I manage to force out.

As we near our high school campus, I contemplate leaving the car roof down for the first time ever, but the second we approach the parking lot, I just can’t do it.

I need the privacy when dropping Austin off, and before I even realize it, I’ve already pressed the button and the roof seals shut above us.