Old-Fashioned

Text Prompt: Old-Fashioned

He had decided on giving her five more minutes. If she wasn’t by then, he thought, he would leave. He would never look back. He would erase everything about her from his mind.

Twenty minutes later, he was running his finger around the rim of his old-fashioned, recalling the time she’d surprised him with the handwritten poster of The Tell-Tale Heart accompanied by her artwork scattered about the vintage tinted paper. He’d have to get rid of that, he realized. He couldn’t leave it hanging in his bedroom, not now.  But her ability to use a picture to tell a story had been one of the things that had captured his own heart. 

It had been an hour since he had mentally given her five more minutes when he ordered another drink, and began to reminisce about that trip they had taken up the coast. She had been so carefree – their life had been carefree at that point.  They had gotten caught in a storm, after a walk from their bed and breakfast there had led them to a pond. They had been talking for a good portion of the afternoon when the skies opened up without warning. She had only laughed, her dress clinging to all the important parts of her body. He couldn’t remember the last time he heard a laugh like that, from her. Months? Maybe years? 

He took a deep breath, exhaled and checked his watch, noting it had then been almost two full hours. He motioned to the bartender, who poured him the latest drink with a sad look on his face. One sip in he was thinking about the time they moved into the apartment he was still staying in. The boxes were heavy, the day was hot, and he was exhausted. But she still managed a huge grin and a flourish of her arms as she stood outside the open front door of their new home, having just laid the “welcome” mat down. Before her, he would have thought it to be the most ridiculous action. But seeing her standing there, arms still wide out, hair mussed, tired but ecstatic – he felt a tug at his heart strings. 

“Hey,” the bartender’s gentle voice permeated the thick haze of thought he had entered. He nodded towards the clock on the tavern wall. 

Where had the last five hours gone?

He tossed his payment down on the bar and hefted himself from the stool. Maybe next week.

The bartender watched him leave, heaving a sigh of relief and turned towards the bar back. “You about ready to call it a night?” 

The bar back nodded, a quizzical look still forming his face into a squint.

“Every Saturday.” He shrugged, turning off one of the lights and talking over his shoulder to the younger man.

“He’s here every Saturday. He used to come with his fiancée.” He flipped the other set of breakers.

“Did they break up?” The small Hispanic man shimmied into his coat and followed the larger, well-built bartender into the crisp air, jamming his hands into his pockets and sucking in the cold air quickly.

“No. She’s in the hospital.”

“And he goes to the bar? What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong with HIM?”

“She’s been in a coma for a year or something. I don’t know all the particulars. Car accident, it was in the paper. He spends every other night reading to her, from what I hear.”

“And then he comes here to drink away his sorrows?” It sounded sad to the bar back.

“I think he is expecting her to show up? Who the hell knows. People are bizarre.”

“I think it’s kind of romantic.”

“I think it’s delusional. See you tomorrow.” They exited the back alley from behind the tavern and went their opposite ways. The bartender passed his patron on the street, leaving him on the side of the road, talking into the payphone. I just wanted to let you know I waited for you, again. I will wait again next week. One day. We loved with a love that was more than love.