Maybe Once, Maybe Twice(14)

“It’s blueberry beer, and it’s delicious.”

Garrett shook his head at me and turned to Summer. “Can I get you something? Maybe something less offensive?”

Summer’s eyes were pointed across the bar, at the bartender with a tattoo sleeve and long red hair.

“No thanks. I’m good,” Summer said, not breaking eye contact with the bartender.

We watched Summer float around to the other side of the bar, where the redheaded bartender shot toward her like a magnet, taking her drink order.

“It happens wherever she goes,” I noted as Summer leaned her head back in a cackle, charming the bartender. “I wonder what it’s like to be that beautiful.”

Garrett leaned in closer to me.

“Tell me. What’s it like?” he asked, his eyes dead-set on mine.

I gripped one hand onto the counter to keep from falling over, as his hardened stare unscrewed every joint in my body.

“What do you want?” I heard a voice ask.

Him. I want him.

I couldn’t look away. Garrett tugged his eyes off mine and turned to the impatient bartender, ordering our drinks. Meanwhile, my mind went into a free fall. Had Garrett just implied that I was beautiful? Had he just looked at me, here in public, like he wanted to take me somewhere private?

My phone pinged, bringing me back to earth. I pulled my phone out of my crossbody, seeing a text message from Craig.


Stuck in traffic, almost there xx



I swallowed the guilty lust in my throat, glancing to the ceiling. I had forgotten about Craig. Garrett did that: made me forget about the world outside his smile. In public, Garrett and I had other people who looked at us the way Garrett had just looked at me. I didn’t definitively “have” Craig, but we spent a couple nights a week together, and he had asked me if I was sleeping with other people last week, and seemed pleased when I said no, and even happier when he asked if we could keep it that way, and I said “of course.” Even worse, Garrett was in a year-long serious relationship with a speech pathologist. Maybe he needed a reminder, so we could cool down before Craig walked in on us tearing each other’s clothes off in the middle of the bar.

Garrett handed me my beer, and I broke eye contact quickly, looking down at the drink in my fidgeting fingers, wondering how to seamlessly bring up Other People. Masochistically, I wanted to know everything about Quinn Parker. Garrett rarely brought her up, but when he did, he called her affectionately by her last name, which made me hate her blameless existence even more. The less I knew, the less I could hold on to and tear apart in my head. The more I knew, the more it hurt my heart.

“So, I thought…I thought you might bring Quinn tonight. I really want to meet her,” I said in a high-pitched voice that made my statement wildly unconvincing to absolutely anyone with ears.

Garrett shot me a one-sided grin, which called “bullshit” louder than he could have said it.

“Quinn and I broke up.”

Oh.

He pursed his lips together in a blank expression. He wasn’t even referring to her as Parker anymore. She was just Quinn. Dead-to-him Quinn. My heart beat faster as I stared wide-eyed up at Garrett, the way you’d look at someone who had gone from a fantasy to a possibility.

“I’m sorry.”

I was not sorry.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine. Honestly. It was a long time coming. It’s kind of…” He trailed off, and I watched his strong jaw twitch.

The guy who had the perfect response for everything was suddenly having a hard time finding the right words. Garrett seemed to effortlessly turn a phrase, with a bright smile to go along with it. Here, he was missing both: the words and the smile. He looked down at his beer bottle, unpeeling the sticker with his fingers, until his eyes settled back on me.

“It’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said.

“You wanted to talk to me about your breakup?”

“No. I wanted to talk to you about why I broke up with—”

“Garrett Scholl, to the stage,” an MC said over the loudspeaker.

Garrett drew a deep breath of air and set down his beer.

“Hold that thought,” he said.

He turned and hustled toward the stage as Summer sidled up to me. I glanced at her flushed face.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“Azi.”

Summer tilted her head, watching Garrett climb onto the stage.

“This guy really does it for you?”

“Summer.”

“He’s just…” Summer shrugged her shoulders dismissively.

“He’s objectively very attractive.”

“Not my type.”

“Well, yeah, he has a penis.”

“Speaking of, he wants to use it to fuck you.”

“Ew. Can you say that nicer?”

She crouched down to my eye level, speaking slowly the way you would to a toddler. “Maggie, do you see that guy onstage? He wants to make sweet, sweet love to you.”

I smiled like an idiot at the thought, doe eyes watching Garrett unfold the songbook, staring longingly at him as he ran a hand through his thick blond hair.

I wonder what those fingers would feel like running up my thigh?

I swallowed the thought, realizing that I shouldn’t be openly drooling over a man.