Page 28 of Forever & Always You

“Austin!” I gasp in surprise.

It’s Saturday night, the only time of the week Buck’s Tavern is packed, yet Austin is so distinguishable through the crowd of faces that I’m drawn to him the second I glance up from rinsing shot glasses.

He slides onto an empty stool at the bar, wedging himself between the biker with a raging attitude problem and the wasted divorcee who’s been snapping at me all night for not topping up her double vodkas quickly enough. Brave man, Austin Pierce.

“Can I just get a soda from you, please, Gabby?” he asks, waving his car keys.

I shake my head in disbelief at his presence as I immediately default to autopilot, grabbing a glass. “What are you doing here?”

“I know you’re taking some time to get things together, but it’s been two weeks since you pouted at me and it’s becoming unbearable.” He smiles, and it’s so innocent and simple and really damn gorgeous, I think I might die.

“So, you drove two hours to see me pout?” I ask, the butterflies in my stomach batting their wings.

“I’d drive ten.”

How? How does he make me blush so easily with only a handful of words?

That’s what’s truly unbearable. Although I’ve missed Austin the past couple weeks, I haven’t missed the feeling of being one smoldering wink away from a heart attack.

We call each other every day, but it’s not the same as having him sat here in front of me now.

My chest squeezed tight, I set his soda down on the bar between us. “On the house.”

“Excuse me!” the divorcee next to him wails, slapping her hand on the bar to steal my attention. “My glass is empty, Abby!”

“It’s Gabby ,” I remind her for the third time tonight. “With a G.”

Austin stifles a laugh and crosses his arms on the bar as he gets comfortable. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Buck watching me from across the room, and that’s my reminder to keep myself in check and be nice to the customers before I slip into my old habits of losing my temper with them.

“ Bear with me ,” I mouth to Austin, because as much as I’d love to stand around and catch up, I’m in the middle of my busiest shift of the week and I can’t be caught slacking. I’m on thin ice already, and I doubt Buck would be keen to give me a third chance if I screw this up again.

The vodka is down to its final dregs, so I make my way down the bar to fetch a new bottle, squeezing past Carly. “That’s him,” I hiss under my breath. “That’s Austin.”

Carly looks up from the cash register, instantly spots the gorgeous man whose eyes are trained on me, and swoons. “Yeah, I’d let him throw it down with me on a desk, too.”

“Carly!” I whack her arm as I laugh.

“It’s quiet down this end of the bar. I’ve got you covered for five minutes,” she says, plucking the bottle of vodka from my hands and cracking open the seal. “Who are you taking care of?”

“Who do you think?”

Carly groans and I follow her back down the bar. She sees to the divorcee demanding her double vodka, and I see to Austin.

“Hi,” I say, pressing my hands to the edge of the bar, locking out my elbows and leaning forward. “I can talk for five.”

“I like watching you work,” Austin says, gaze smoldering so dreamily, my knees buckle. “You look cute with your little apron.”

“You’re so distracting,” I say with a quick roll of my eyes, but I’m blushing and there’s no hiding it.

The weekend I spent with Austin felt like such a fever dream, so surreal with a thousand different emotions at play, that I worried with some distance, he’d see clarity and decide he still does, in fact, despise me to the bone.

But now he’s here in the dive bar where I work, flirting, and it’s like one giant sigh of relief.

“Is this weird?” Austin asks. “That I drove here just to see you? Because now I’m thinking maybe it’s weird.”

“It’s not weird,” I say.

“Obsessive?”

I smile. “Possibly.”

Austin groans and lowers his head onto his folded arms on the bar. “You see what you’re doing to me, Gabby? Turning me to fucking mush,” he mumbles. “How embarrassing.”

“Is this jackass having a mental breakdown?” the biker next to Austin mutters, eyeballing him in concern.

Austin lifts his head. “If I am, you can blame her,” he responds, playfully gesturing toward me.

“Come with me,” I say with a pointed nod to the end of the bar.

I leave the entire bar full of customers in the semi-capable hands of Carly and meet Austin down by the hatch. I dip underneath and straighten up in front of him. I glance at my watch. It’s nearing midnight.

“Last call’s at two, so I’ll probably be clear around three,” I explain.

“If you want to hang out and have some drinks until then, you’re welcome to stay at my place tonight.

There’s not much space, but I promise the plumbing is rock-solid.

” A smile teeters onto my lips, hopeful that he’ll accept the invite.

“In that case,” Austin says, “can you grab me a beer?”

“My boss is currently watching us, so of course I’ll get you a beer, darling. ”

“ Darling ,” Austin repeats, testing the word on his lips. “I like that.”

My cheeks heat up again, so I disappear under the hatch and resume working the bar with Carly.

Austin slinks into the stool he left and I slide a beer over to him.

He opens a tab and gets comfortable as I try my damn hardest to get back into a working rhythm, but it’s seriously difficult with such a gorgeous human watching my every move.

Every time I pop open a new beer for him, he tips me ten dollars.

“Can you stop?”

Austin raises an eyebrow as he takes a swig of his beer. “Admiring you?”

“Tipping me so much,” I say, throwing his ten-dollar bill back at him. “A buck is fine. It’s just a beer. All I do is pop the cap.”

“But you do it so attractively,” he flirts, pushing the bill back toward me. “You’re working hard, and I’m enjoying watching you work hard, so let me tip you to show some appreciation.”

“Just take the damn tip, Abby!” Divorcee snaps, and I glare at her despite Buck being within ten feet, because it’s really time we ought to call her a cab and send her home.

I grab the bill and stuff it into the pocket of my apron that’s already rammed full of tips from tonight’s shift, and work my way back and forth along my end of the bar.

Ever since I decided to give Carly a chance and get to know her, we’ve been in much better sync, to the point where I even enjoy working these hectic shifts with her because we do it so perfectly.

We have the fine art of bartending as a two-women team down to a tee.

As it nears last call and the bar gradually empties, Austin calls it quits on any more beers, which honestly, I respect. As someone who now spends my life serving the drunk, there is nothing I hate more than dealing with wasted adults. Thank God Austin knows where to draw the line.

At two-thirty, Buck rounds up the final stragglers and sends them out the door. I ask very nicely if Austin can hang out here while we finish cleaning up for the night, and maybe my improved work ethic is winning me some favors with Buck, because he agrees.

And I have never mopped the floor so fast in the six months I’ve worked here.

Buck empties the cash register, Carly takes care of the dishes, and I wipe down the tables at lightning speed. We have the lights out and the doors locked just fifteen minutes after closing.

“Good work,” Buck acknowledges on the way out.

“See you guys tomorrow!” Carly says, and it will forever amaze me how constantly chirpy she is, even at nearly three in the morning after a grueling fifteen-hour shift.

Austin follows me to my car parked in the alley out back, and the very first thing he says once we’re inside is, “Now I understand where Carly Buck the Cactus’s name came from.”

I grin as I start to drive. “Funny, right?”

“You’re just .?.?. so goofy.”

As I head home to my apartment, somehow with Austin Pierce in tow, I become increasingly worried that I left the place a mess this morning.

I can’t remember if I made the bed, or picked up dirty laundry from the corner of my room, or washed the bowl I ate my Cheerios from.

Austin’s home was immaculate. Mine is not.

“I’m technically a college student again, and that correlates with being a slob, okay?” I warn him as I park up outside my building, my tone defensive in fear of the judgment I’m about to have cast upon me.

“I seriously don’t care,” Austin says. “My dorm at school was .?.?. Well, let’s just say my bed was less of a bed and more a mountain of Red Bull cans.”

That makes me feel a little better.

We head up the stairs together and it takes me a couple of tries to get my door unlocked, because is there anything in this apartment that isn’t broken? I flick on some lights and am relieved to see that, actually, I’ve left my apartment in much worse states than this.

As I watch Austin scope out my place, it feels like I’ve stepped into a parallel universe. Austin Pierce, my childhood best friend, here in my crappy Durham apartment many years later in our mid-twenties. Something I never for a second thought would ever happen, but alas, here we are.

“This is weird. You being here,” I say out loud.

“I know you’re coming back to Wilmington next weekend, but I just couldn’t wait another week,” Austin says, meeting my eyes across the living area.

“Besides, now that you’re definitely going back to school for another year, I guess I better get used to the drive up here.

You couldn’t have studied at UNC Wilmington, huh? ”

“You couldn’t have opened your firm in Durham, huh?” I shoot back with a rivaling pout.

“A few weeks ago, I’d have said one hundred and fifty miles wasn’t enough distance between you and me,” he says. “Now it’s one hundred and fifty miles too many.”

“How are you single when you’re this much of a sweet talker?” I ask, and it’s not even hypothetical. I have no idea how Austin, this gorgeous, charming, successful man, is single.

“Maybe I’ve just been waiting for you.”

“ Ooookay. I think those beers are getting to you now,” I say with a laugh. I cross over to him and take his arm, pulling him with me to the bathroom. I raid the cabinet beneath the sink and brandish a pack of spare toothbrushes. “Here. Teeth, then bedtime.”

We brush our teeth side-by-side, our gazes locked in the mirror and silly, sleepy smiles on our faces. It’s after three, and I’m exhausted.

“I need to wash off the bar,” I tell him, shoving him out of the bathroom before he can even make the age-old classic joke about joining me in the shower.

I can never climb into bed after a long shift.

It always seems like that cigarette scent clings to my skin and I can’t bear it.

So even at this hour, I pull back my hair and hop into the shower for a quick refresh.

When I walk into my bedroom a few minutes later, wrapped in a towel and on the hunt for a set of pajamas, I find Austin sprawled on his stomach on my bed wearing nothing but his boxers.

His clothes are folded in a neat pile on my dresser.

He lifts his head from the pillow with a dopey grin.

“Hi, Gabby.”

“Hi, Austin.”

I turn my back to him as I drop my towel to the floor and pull on some gym shorts and a tank. When I face him again, I see the suggestive glint in his eyes and it kills me that I’m this exhausted, because God, I’ve missed him.

“I see what you’re doing,” I tell him, “but I’m .?.?. so tired.”

“What am I doing?”

“Giving me sex eyes.”

“These are not sex eyes,” Austin says, pushing himself up from his stomach. “This is just how my eyes look when I’m wondering how it’s possible you became even more beautiful than how I remembered you.”

“It’s three in the morning, please stop flattering me.”

Austin groans dramatically and says, “If I must.”

I kill the lights and blindly find my way over to my bed, pulling back the comforter. Together we snuggle up underneath, facing one another in the dark.

“We never had sleepovers when we were kids,” Austin murmurs in a low voice.

“Probably because you were a boy and my mother hated you.”

He’s so close to me that his gentle laugh dances over my face. “I know you’re tired, so I won’t talk.”

“You can talk.” I shuffle closer to him, molding my body around the contours of his and pressing my face into his warm chest, eyes closed as I focus on the slow beating of his heart. “You can talk until I fall asleep.”

Austin wraps an arm around me, his hand resting in my hair. “I hate it,” he admits.

“You hate what?”

“How easily I’m forgiving you.”

Silence pulses between us in the dark. Everything feels so heightened with our bodies intertwined like this, and I hold my breath, waiting for more.

“I hate that I always dreamed of you apologizing one day,” he whispers, “but I hate it even more that I dreamed of forgiving you. I hate that this is exactly what I wanted.”

“It’s okay,” I say, pressing even closer into him. “It’s okay to forgive me.”

“Gabrielle. Can you promise me something?” His whispers send chills down my spine.

“Anything.”

His body stiffens around mine as he draws his mouth close to my ear, his breath hot against my skin. There is fear embedded in the request as he says, “Promise me you won’t break my heart again.”

In the silence, I’m certain he must hear the thundering beat of my heart. I want to grab hold of him and never let go, I want to shake my promises into him, I want to be the best friend he always deserved. So I say, “I promise.”

And this time I mean it with every fiber of my being.