Beer, Spaghetti, and Pharmaceuticals ||COMPLETED||

Forty-Nine

She licked her lips, desperate for water, but she didn't want to waste any more time.

"Isaac... did you... " she started. "Did you quit your job so you could be with me?"

He turned to her and flashed her a smirk. "Now that's a little arrogant, don't you think?"

"I... I know! I didn't want to ask that because I didn't want to seem arrogant, but I didn't know how else to word it, and I -"

"Alice, relax, I was joking," he laughed and put his free hand on her thigh. The sound of his laughter and his touch instantly calmed her down. "No, Alice, I didn't quit my job for you."

Alice frowned. "Oh..."

That stung more than it relieved her.

"I mean, yes, you were a huge reason for me realizing that I had to quit," he said and Alice felt her face light up a bit. "But at the end of the day... I did it for me. That job makes me miserable and would put me in an early grave if I didn't do something about it. I just... don't think I realized it until you came around."

"Oh..." Alice said and scrunched her nose. "I don't get it, though... what are you going to do now? That job was your life."

Isaac's face cracked into a wide smile, looking happier than she had ever seen him, as if he had been eagerly waiting for her to ask that question.

"That's the best part of all of this," Isaac said, turning his shoulders so his body was square with her. "What have I always said that I wanted to do?"

"Umm... I don't know..." Alice shrugged her shoulders. "You said you wanted to try using handcuffs a couple of times..."

"No! Well, yes, I still want to do that." He sent her a flirty, shifty smirk before continuing. "Think harder."

"Ugh...I dunno, Isaac," she tutted her tongue in thought and shrugged. "Open a spaghetti bar?"

"Yes!" Isaac shouted and lept from the couch, startling Alice with his enthusiasm. "Except, not a spaghetti bar, no. Though, I can promise you that there will be the best spaghetti in the city served there."

Alice's surprised expression was slowly turning into a smile matching Isaac's. "Are... are you serious?"

"Yes! And better yet," Isaac started, "I'm not just opening any bar. I'm buying my bar! Our bar! The bar we always go to!"

Alice tapped her fingers against her lips. "Does that place even have a name?"

"I honestly don't even know, but it will once I'm done with it!" he said. "Yesterday I talked to the owner and made an offer, and well, let's just say he was thrilled to have an early retirement and accepted right on the spot! I've got enough money saved up that I'm able to buy it and live more than comfortably during the rocky beginning years. Alice, this is what I've always wanted to do, and I'm... I'm ready to do it."

"Isaac, I'm so happy for you!" She jumped from the sofa threw her arms around his shoulders, melting into his tightening embrace as he picked her off the ground and spun. When he set her back down, she pulled away. "So... have you been... planning this for a while? All of this is so sudden!"

"I mean, it's always been in the back of my head. And this past month, especially since we hadn't been talking, well... I spent a lot of time there. Even more than usual. And I kept daydreaming about it... imagining the menu I would have, or the special events. But it seemed like an impossible fantasy.

"Then after you visited me in the hospital, and I realized that... I was a fucking trainwreck and this job was sucking the life out of me, I started thinking about turning that fantasy in a reality. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wanted to do it. I had to do it. I know it's going to seem ridiculous to everyone else, leaving a CEO position to be a bar-owner, and lord only knows my father is rolling in his grave right now... but I don't care. My whole life I've done whatever my father told me to do, whatever other people told me to do." He took a deep breath before finishing my rant. "So... I had enough of it. And I just... did it. I'm doing what I want to do."