Love On The Rocks

Chapter 2: Gin And Tonic

I had always taken pride in knowing I had been right about something, it always did bring me a sense of satisfaction; but never had I felt such satisfaction than on that Sunday evening, when the front door of the Golden Cross opened and one familiar face stepped through and entered the bar. I was standing at the other side of the counter when the man made his way to it and sat down behind it, taking a seat at the exact same spot on which he had been sitting the first time he had come around, exactly one week before. I walked up to him with a happy smile, not hiding from him the fact that I seemed pleased to see him again.

"Hey, it's suit and tie man."

He scoffed at the hearing of my words and smiled in a way I found inhumanly charming.

"It's good to see you again." I added.

He looked up at me while he was still smiling.

"How sweet of you to say."

Why do I get the feeling he's rarely told nice things of this kind? I asked myself as I stared at him with what he probably assumed to be empathy and compassion.

"... Tonight's another one of those lonely nights?"

He lowered his gaze to his hands resting on the counter, cleared his throat, then looked back up at me with a smile somewhat sad.

"How'd you guess?"

I responded to his question by giving him the same smile he was giving me, but I then looked down from him as it vanished slowly.

When he first stopped at the bar last week, I had picked up on how deep his voice was, but I didn't notice it was so... soothing and charming.

"I'll take a Craig."

Just as I was thinking about his voice, it was the very thing that pulled me out of my thoughts and I blinked a couple of times as I set them aside to instead pay attention to what he was ordering: after having processed what he had told me, I chuckled and raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, I see you've got your favorites."

"What can I say, it's hard to break habits." He said while he shrugged lightly.

I smiled at him as I grabbed a clean glass sitting nearby on the counter then turned to face him.

"I'll serve you that right up." I told him with an instinctive wink.

I turned around, grabbed the bottle of whisky from the back bar behind me, then turned back to face him before I filled his glass in my hands.

"One Craig for the kind and amiable gentleman." I said while I set the glass down in front of him.

I was surprised to hear him scoff, and to see he looked to be somewhat offended by my choice of adjectives.

"'Kind and amiable'?" He repeated. "You can't possibly mean that."

I softly scoffed myself and shook my head while I set one elbow down on the counter.

"Oh, believe me, I can assure you that compared to the regular type of guys we usually get around here, you're a real angel."

My words seemed to have triggered him in some way, as he looked away and closed his eyes for a second after having heard them; in the meantime, I gently tapped twice on the back of his hand with the palm of mine, then started to walk away back to the other side of the counter, to serve customers that had just taken a seat.

"Well, enjoy your drink." I told him with a smile.

He turned his head to me and smiled from one corner of his mouth; but as I went back to serving customers, I could feel that he was still holding his sight on me, for just a few more seconds, even after I had turned my back to him.