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Cedar Falls, Finger Lakes Region, NY
The world was my oyster.
It was one of those nights, a Friday to be specific, when everything just fell into place. It was spring, the unofficial start to tourist season, and the bar had been busier than usual since opening. The tips were flowing with at least two prospects to cap off the night. One brunette. And her friend, a blonde. If I were lucky, I wouldn’t have to choose.
“Have you decided?” Cole asked dryly as I slid my friend’s Scotch across the bar. He was in a good mood, courtesy of the secret stash of Macallan I’d kept on hand behind the bar, just for him.
“Maybe I’ll let them fight it out. Or not,” I added with a laugh, my meaning evidently clear. Cole only shook his head back and forth like that when he thought one of us, usually me, was being absurd.
Leaving him, I made my way down the bar, humming to the music. O’Malley’s Pub and Eatery wasn’t a huge place. Our dance floor was only made possible courtesy of a few tables which I shoved in the back room on weekend nights. Bands with more than three members found it a tight squeeze. But what we lacked in space we made up for in an intimacy that came from being the only “Irish”-style pub in our small town. Plus good food and cold beer, of course.
“Hey, man, can I get a round for my friends?”
Before I could respond, the douchebag shoved himself in front of an older woman who’d just made her way to the bar. She reminded me of my Aunt Kay, the only family member I liked besides my sister, so I noticed her right away.
“Sure,” I said, more good-naturedly than I would have if I weren’t behind the bar. “As soon I get the young lady’s order first.”
I simultaneously made her smile and pissed off douchebag. Good.
“Martini, extra dirty, please.”
“How dirty would you like it?” I asked suggestively, her smile widening. She was way too old for me, and married by the looks of it. I only had two rules when it came to picking up women. That they were over twenty-one. And single.
“As dirty as you can make it.”
Winking at her, one I’d perfected working behind the bar since college, I made an extra-dirty martini. Serving her, and pissing off douchebag even more by handing him his drinks with a “here you go, boss,” I headed back to Cole just as Parker sat down.
“I heard you were up here already. When did you get in?” Parker asked Cole, who looked as approachable as a professor mid-lecture… brilliant, unreadable, and not in the mood for small talk. Since he was actually a college professor—an Ivy League one at that—the shoe really did fit.
We, of course, were an exception. Parker, Mason and I had no qualms about pushing Cole’s buttons. It was a favorite pastime of mine.
“Don’t let him fool you,” I said, pouring Parker’s beer. “He’s excited to be home for the weekend. Right before you came in he was telling me how much he missed us.”
“Like I missed grading forty-three essays on the symbolism of the American dream.”
Parker chuckled. “Better you than me. I still think the whole thing is pretty cool.”
I left them to tend bar, not needing to be in the conversation to already know how it would play out. Cole hated any mention of the scholarship that brought him to Cedar Falls for the weekend. He would try to change topics, and Parker would continue to bring it up for that reason.
I shook my head. Even after all these years—Mason and I met in Kindergarten and we picked up Cole as a friend a year later—I couldn’t quite figure him out. Why offer a college scholarship to his hometown high school, one Cole hadn’t even graduated from since his family moved away Freshman year, but then refuse to accept accolades for it? I was surprised he agreed to come in person to present it to the recipient this weekend.
A problem for another day.
“Refills, ladies?”
Time to seal the deal.
They looked at one another. One that didn’t bode well for going home with both of them. There was a competitive glance in the brunette’s eyes and a deferential one in the blonde’s. So they’d decided.
“Sure.” The brunette gave me a smile. The smile.
I grabbed their glasses, refilled and returned a few minutes later. “This one’s on the house,” I said to her specifically. “You ladies aren’t from around here?”
I already knew they weren’t. Born and raised in Cedar Falls, only leaving for four years of college, I knew everyone in this town.
“We’re from PA,” the blonde said. “Here for a girls’ weekend.”
As if I hadn’t figured that one out already. I was about to ask their names when Parker called my name. That fucker had been my wing-man for as many years as I could count. What the hell was he thinking?
“Be right back,” I said, grabbing some empties and a tip along the way.
I tossed the empty cans, about to lay into him when I realized why he’d failed in wing-man duties.
Every muscle in my body tensed as I spotted her making her way toward the bar. It would be impossible not to notice the boss’s daughter, no longer the girl who’d grown up next door to me. Mae O’Malley had always been the cutest kid on the block. The darling in elementary school. Prettiest girl in middle school. But then in high school, something else blossomed in her. An awareness of her inherent goodness and intelligence so that, by the time she left for the Culinary Institute, her confidence matched her beauty.
Mae’s long dirty-blonde hair was tied in two loose braids, one thing that hadn’t changed since it had always been a favorite hairstyle of hers. It ended just above her full breasts, and she managed to look both innocently girly and impossibly sophisticated all at once. Her flawless complexion glowed, the minimal makeup she wore enhancing a natural beauty that was without compare. After two years in France, she sauntered toward us with a confidence and sophistication that screamed “not from Cedar Falls.”
Except she was. But now she was back, with a French fiancé. Frankly, I wasn’t ready for this.
“How about a round of shots?” Cole interrupted my thought, forcing me to tear my gaze from Mae. Parker and Cole waited for my
reaction.
I immediately headed for the tequila, poured one for myself, downed it, and poured three more for Cole, Parker and me.
It was gonna be a long night.
“Surprise!”
Before I could respond, Jules tossed her arms around me. I had no idea why she was yelling surprise, but it was so good to see a familiar face. I held on, probably a little too tight, because when my long-time friend pulled away, she already looked concerned.
“Mae?” she asked, staring at me like she was trying to solve a puzzle and I was the last stubborn piece.
“What’s the surprise for?” I asked, avoiding the question which I’d eventually have to answer.
Jules pointed to a corner table. It was hard to tell with a crowd in the way who was exactly sitting around it, but there were at least seven or eight people.
“It’s not like a welcome home party or anything, just a few people who can’t wait to see you.”
Inwardly groaning, I was about to plaster a smile on my face and suck it up but instead I found myself being pulled toward the entrance of my parents’ bar. Resisting Jules was like standing in front of a tidal wave and expecting to stay dry. As the chatter and laughter of O’Malley’s Pub died away and the door closed behind us, I found myself back on the sidewalk. As always in May, especially with good weather, the small-town square was filled with locals and visitors alike. Some sat in the gazebo in the center of the small park in front of us. Others wandered in and out of restaurants and the few shops that were still open.
Good ol’ Cedar Falls. For how much I’d wanted to get out of this town, there was something oddly comforting about being back. Maybe not so odd. Only someone that you’d known since middle school would look at you with the same concerned expression as Jules wore right now.
I will not cry. He isn’t worth my tears.
“It has something to do with you ghosting me for the past few weeks, doesn’t it?” Jules and I moved away from the entrance of the bar as a couple made their way inside.
“I didn’t ghost you,” I argued. “As if I’d ever…”
Jules crossed her arms. At all of five foot nothing, her pitch-black hair and wispy bangs didn’t hide one of my friend’s most unique features. Light green eyes blazed, Jules daring me to refute her.
“Okay, okay. I get what you mean.”
“Spill. Now.”
She was as much as a spitfire as the day we met. Thinking of how to say it, not having told anyone except my parents when they picked me up from the airport last night, I went for the direct approach.
“We broke up.”
Jules’s jaw dropped. Her eyes widened. She was no longer crossing her arms, which flew to her mouth. “Oh my God, Mae. What the hell
happened?”
I took a deep breath, steeled my shoulders and started from the beginning.
“About a month ago, literally the day after I got the job at La Petite Miette, we went to dinner to celebrate. I wanted to go to Maison de Lys where he works, my favorite restaurant since it was where we met. But Mathieu convinced me to try Bistro Éclipse, a new place just down the street from my apartment. When I made an offhand comment about not being at Maison de Lys, he acted… strange. I don’t know how to explain it, but something was just off. One second, we were toasting to my new job and our future in Paris, and the next, he admitted that we couldn’t go to Maison de Lys because a new waitress had started a few weeks earlier and the two of them—”
“No. Oh my God, Mae.”
“Yeah. But the absolute worst part was his attitude about it. As if it were somehow my fault for wanting to go there and was it ‘really a big deal?’ since we weren’t married yet.”
“Are you shitting me? You are engaged,” she said with as much antagonism as one would expect from a good friend.
“Were engaged.”
Jules looked as devastated as I felt.
“That’s why you went MIA for weeks.”
“And delayed my return. Instead of packing for a one-week visit, I cleaned out my apartment and took everything I could fit in two suitcases.”
If I surprised her with the Mathieu announcement, Jules was positively shocked now.
“Your job?”
I shook my head, tears forming in the corner of my eyes despite me willing them not to. Without a word, she put her arms around me. I
hugged my friend, wishing I hadn’t given in to her when Jules begged me to meet her at the pub. I should have had her over to the house, or gone to hers, but my mother insisted I should get out.
Maybe I shouldn’t have told my mom when she’d asked what my plans were now that my life, and future, had gone up in flames, “To lie in my bed and cry for the next week.”
“What a lying, gaslighting, narcissistic asshole. I’m not going to say a word about how I thought he was love-bombing you or that I never liked how he treated you.”
Smiling against her shoulder, I pulled back.
“I’m glad you’re not going the ‘I told you so’ route.”
“I would never.”
My chest still hurt. From a broken heart. Or crying so much over the past few weeks. Who knew? But for the first time since I made the decision to break off our engagement and come home, rather than making a life in Paris as I’d planned, I could breathe. I should have leaned on my family and friends as soon as it happened. Instead, I retreated into a black hole of despair that was almost embarrassing to think back on.
“This has been the worst month of my life,” I admitted.
“Of course it has. Everything has been completely uprooted at once. Your relationship. Your career. Your future. But the most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.”
“I like that.”
“Can’t take credit. Someone said it. Just don’t remember who. Anyway, you’re home now and I got you.”
“Thank you,” I said simply, wanting to express
how much that meant. “I’ll be taking you up on that. My life is pretty much a wreck right now.”
“Like I said, I got you. And we don’t have to go back inside. I will text them saying I got sick and you took me home. It’s not a total lie since I’ve had a headache for two days that won’t seem to go away.”
“Really?” The thought of going back inside and facing questions about the French fiancé I was supposed to be coming home with actually did make me feel physically ill. “That would be amazing.”
“Really. Come back to my place. We can open a bottle of wine and bash that French fuck for the rest of the night.”
Jules had always talked like a sailor. “Sounds like a plan.” I hesitated. “Although I did want to see Beck.”
“You go in there,” she warned, “and there’ll be questions. Totally up to you.”
Questions I wasn’t ready to answer without breaking down just yet. As good as I felt, getting that scholarship at CIA to École Lenôtre and spreading my wings to Paris, tonight was just the opposite. Back home, no job, no fiancé, no job prospects or plans… pretty much bottom of the barrel.
Beck could wait.
“Let’s go to your house,” I said. “I’ll catch up with him tomorrow.”
Before the words were even out of my mouth, Jules had her phone out to text the others. Besides, from the brief glimpse I’d gotten, it looked like Beck was busy planning his weekend hookup anyway. At least some things hadn’t changed.
Beck and I had always been best friends growing up together, and we’d stayed close since. He was probably wondering, like Jules, if I’d fallen off the face of the earth these past few weeks. Only my parents knew what happened, and it had been hard enough telling them.
tance, one of the few benefits of living in Cedar Falls.
Heart heavy, I took one last glance at my parents’ bar. Tomorrow, I’d face the questions. Tonight, I just needed to breathe.
“Need help behind the bar?”
“Nah, I’m good. You can head,” I told Spence. With Cole in town, the four of us would be lingering for a while.
Mason, who showed up after his wife had fallen asleep, spun around on his stool to answer Spencer, or Spence, as we called the kid.
“How’s the geometry coming along?”
Spence made the same face I did when someone ordered Brussels sprouts. How the hell anyone could eat those things was beyond me.
“Better than my love life,” Spence quipped.
Parker chuckled. He was the one who got Spence this job after working a few construction jobs with him. Nineteen at the time, now twenty-one, he quickly learned homebuilding wasn’t his thing. But Spence was good with people and thrived here. Even so, I finally convinced him to go back for his GED.
“Bring your geometry to the bar,” Mason said, waving toward me. “This one will help you.”
My hand moved in circular motions as I wiped down the bar, lingering over a beer ring. People really needed to learn to use coasters.
“Beck?” Spence asked, incredulous.
“Don’t let the glasses,” Parker quipped, nodding to Cole, “and yuppy clothes fool you. Everyone assumes he’s the smart one of our bunch—”
“Because I am,” Cole said as if it were a foregone conclusion.
“But your boss has a higher IQ than all of us.”
Though I was technically the manager, I considered Mr. O’Malley the boss. Not me. Also… “How the hell do you know my IQ?”
“Jesus.” Cole took a sip of whiskey. “He doesn’t even know what a metaphor is yet you think he’s the smartest of us?”
“I know what a metaphor is.”
Mason sat back in his seat, eyeing toward the door. A former NYC cop and army ranger, he still looked for threats around every corner, forgetting we were in Cedar Falls.
“So what is it?” Cole asked me.
“It’s like… a simile, but without the training wheels.”
Cole let out a bark of laughter.
“I don’t get it,” Spence said.
“Join the club,” Mason assured him.
“Beck’s been reading again,” Cole muttered. “Next thing you know, he’ll start quoting Shakespeare.”
“You can head out,” I told Spence, attempting to spare him any more of the guys’ quips.
“I’m positive. Go ahead. We’ll close it down.”
He didn’t need me to tell him again. As the guys said their goodbyes, I pulled out my phone. I’d texted Mae earlier, but she’d never responded.
“Still nothing?” Mason asked.
I looked up. All three of them stared back at me. Time for a drink. Taking out Cole’s secret stash, I poured myself a Scotch and raised it up, hoping to avoid the topic.
“To Cole, who’s like a rare book—hard to find, impossible to replace, but somehow always makes you feel like you should’ve read more.”
“That’s a simile, asshole.”
“No shit.”
“Welcome home,” Parker said as all four of us drank.
“Well?” Parker prompted.
“Nothing,” I confirmed, knowing I couldn’t avoid it. These guys, with the exception of Parker, who we met in college, had known me since we started school. There was no avoiding the fact that I’d had a crush on Mae since, well, always. When we made a pact in college never to marry—our bachelor pact as Cole, whose idea it was, called it—one of the rules was made specifically for me. Never date your neighbor. Although it had been a long time since we were actual neighbors, since my father’s business boomed and we moved to Mill Creek, one of those gated neighborhoods where the lawns practically mowed themselves and the mailboxes were all designer.
Mae and I stopped being next-door neighbors, but somehow, she never stopped feeling like home.
“That’s so strange,” Parker said. “Why would she walk in and then leave?”
“I thought you said she was coming back a few weeks ago?” Cole asked. Since he didn’t live in Cedar Falls, our Ivy League college professor gracing us for the weekend from Manhattan which he now called home, he was sometimes more out of the loop than the others.
“I thought so too. She was bringing her”—the word fiancé got stuck in my throat—“friend home to meet the parents. ...
