Plants to Water

My best friend is getting married, and I’m dancing on a bar top.

I’m just shy of 5’10” and I have to crouch in a sequined mini dress in order to accomplish this, but people are cheering so I must be doing okay. Sure, everyone is lubed up, that liquid courage coursing through their veins – and mine, it would seem – but it’s enough to drop it like it’s hot a few more times with an air of confidence I shouldn’t have.

Maddy, the bride and my best friend since the age of 15 when I subtly crashed into her black Grand Am during the parking portion of driver’s training, looks on adoringly. She’s consumed another neon-tinted shot out of a test tube after her own stint up here, and the glazed look in her eyes indicates she will not be partaking in a second round of twerking and grinding. I hop down.

“Olivia, Olivia, Olivia,” Maddy murmurs, her speech slightly slurred, “I may be getting too old for this.”

“It’s your bachelorette party, and you’re 28; you have years of bar dancing ahead of you.” I wave to the cute bartender at the far end of the bar. His chestnut hair flops over one eye, covering an eyebrow piercing that speaks to a part of my humble loins that hasn’t been activated in a while. He nods in the vague direction of my empty plastic cup and I give him a thumbs up in hopes that he’s asking-without-asking if I want a refill. “Although we could have picked a bar with actual glassware.”

“We haven’t done a lot of bar hopping since college, hence why we ended up at The Locker Room,” Maddy says with a roll of her eyes. “That speaks to my point; we have outgrown this or else we would be doing it a lot more often.”

The we echoes in my ear. She’s not wrong: we don’t close out bars the way we did at 21, but she spends her evenings cozying up to her fiancé Nick and reruns of Law and Order: SVU, happy as a clam. I spend mine cozying up to three buck chuck and, well, also reruns of Law and Order: SVU. The difference is that there isn’t a warm body next to me to refill my glass.

“Everyone else has already left; am I a total loser if I want to call it a night at 11pm?” Maddy groans and rubs her temples. “I can promise I have partied enough to secure a hangover.”

The cute bartender has made his way over to us. He has the pour spout of a vodka bottle angled over my cup, but I shake my head.

“Sorry, I changed my mind. We’re going to take off.” I don’t know why I’m apologizing, or why I feel disappointed to leave. It’s not like I thrive in this environment; it’s just that it’s somewhere other than my lumpy couch.

“What? Now? You can’t leave yet,” says the bartender. He’s not wearing a name tag, but he looks like a Derrick. Maybe a Nathan. “The bride hasn’t sat on her throne yet.”

Maddy covers her face with her hands. When she removes them, her fingers are coated in mascara flakes. “I don’t even want to know what that is.”

But Derrick/Nathan hasn’t heard her. The speakers are pumping out Jock Jams from the early aughts and her words have been lost. Instead, he rotates his body to reveal what looks like a barber chair. It’s fully extended and has a stepping stool beside it – assumingly to climb up.

“Come on! You have to sit on the throne. We reserve it for special occasions.” Derrick/Nathan tilts the vodka bottle in my direction again, waiting for me to reconsider.

I hesitate. “What happens on this…throne?”

“I don’t want to know,” reiterates Maddy.

“You get a free shot,” he promises. “Anything you want.”

“She sits on the throne, and you hand her a free shot?”

Derrick/Nathan smirks. “Something like that.”

He’s becoming less appealing by the second.

“I’m doing just fine without a free shot, but I do appreciate the offer. Give it to Olivia – she’s my maid of honor,” Maddy says, volunteering me for whatever awaits on the battered “throne.”

His attention returns to me. After his eyes very obviously search my hand for a ring, his grin flashes with interest. “Olivia, is it? I can work with that arrangement.”

He’s being cagey, but a free shot is a small victory on a night I expected to last a lot longer. I slap my purse on the bar top and slide off my stool.

“Alright! We have a taker!” Derrick/Nathan pulls a drum stick from somewhere behind the bar and bangs on an old brass bell hanging from a rafter. “Ladies and gentleman! We have a bachelorette party with us tonight! The maid of honor has volunteered as tribute and will be taking her spot on The Locker Room throne!”

“Sweet Jesus, I’m going to regret this.” Yet, I sink down onto the chair with some unnecessary assistance from Derrick/Nathan. He has put the chair in an upright position, and I cringe when my hair clings to the sticky pleather. “You’re not going to put the shot glass in your mouth, are you?”

“Of course not,” he replies, gesturing to the vodka bottle for the third time in five minutes. This time I nod and he pours.

I breathe a sigh of relief. I’ll get my free shot, and then we can be on our merry way.

Derrick/Nathan saunters over to me. He pumps the chair higher with his foot, then extends the leg support so my feet are off the ground. It’s when he straddles my outstretched legs that I notice his zipper.

“Hey, uh, buddy,” I fumble, “your fly is down.”

The music again; he can’t hear me. Turns out, that bit doesn’t really matter. The fly thing? Intentional.

Derrick/Nathan is sliding a test tube shot glass into his unzipped fly. When he looks up, his silver eyebrow ring catches the light off a rotating disco ball. “The throne, also known as the blow job chair.”

“Oh hell no.” I grip the armrests and eject myself with enough force to thrust the test tube right into Derrick/Nathan’s balls. He looks like he’s pissed himself as he cradles his manhood. Maddy and I fly out the door.

“I am so sorry I brought you here,” I mumble as I order an Uber. “Worst maid of honor ever.”

Maddy waves me off. “This is exactly what I wanted.”

I doubt that, considering a stranger named Sam in a red Honda Accord is on his way to pick us up before midnight, but I digress. “Maddy, you don’t need to lie to me.”

My best friend laughs the kind of belly laugh that a 5’6” lithe of a person should not be capable of. A sash that declares her a bride-to-be slips off her shoulder and settles in the crook of her arm. “You, my friend, are the best maid of honor the world has to offer.” Maddy straightens her sash and links her arms around mine. “You let me dance on bar tops like Coyote Ugly. I am blissfully drunk. I ate nothing but pizza and various forms of potato today. On top of that, Nick is gone all weekend with his groomsmen, so we can turn this party into a sleepover!”

There’s no one waiting for me at my apartment. No pets to feed; I don’t even have plants to water. It’s not my intention to be a sad, lonely mess of a human, but I’m a creature of habit; I have grown accustomed to my level of melancholy.

“Guess what my mother said when I told her about our plans for tonight,” I prompt.

Maddy tugs the hem of her white bodycon dress. Her nose turns up. “Damn, tell me she didn’t imply you might meet a nice boy.”

I shake my head and Maddy breathes a sigh of relief. “No, she didn’t imply anything – she very blatantly declared it.”

“Oh no, not again,” Maddy groans. “As if you would fall for an eyebrow piercing with a test tube of vodka in his pants.”

Sam in his shiny Accord pulls up, interrupting a conversation we have had all too many times. The familiar sound of heavy drums and husky vocals fill the car before he turns the volume down.

“Fleetwood Mac,” I say as I lean forward between the front seats. “Crank it.”

“You a fan?” Sam adjusts the volume and I feel the vibration of the bass in my bones.

“Huge. My parents took me to their reunion tour as a graduation gift a decade ago. My heart still skips a beat when I remember I once shared space with Stevie Nicks.” I blush at the confession, but my night of drinking has made me quite conversational. “She’s magic.”

Sam twists his torso to look at me. His eyes are green, more muted than bright, like ivy on a vine. Something unfamiliar and alien is happening to my insides; they feel scrambled and bubbly.

Maddy clears her throat and leans forward so that our three heads form a human triangle. “Sam, maybe you and Stevie Nicks could get us home so I can trade these stilettos for slippers – what do you say?”

My face flushes and one glance at Sam reveals a similar hue spreading across his cheeks. He chuckles and puts the SUV in drive. “I say that if I didn’t have law school to pay for, I’d be doing the same thing.”

Maddy sits back but I stay put.

“Sam, are you telling me you Uber around town in stilettos?”

Sam’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror, little crinkles in the corners revealing his grin. “Only on the weekends.”

While Maddy closes her eyes and lets the breeze from the open window wash over her, I study what I can of Sam from the seat behind him. He has hair so dark it’s like black ink; curly and messy as if he’s been running his hands through it. He’s rolling his broad shoulders, causing sinewy muscles through his neck to tense and tighten. The man seems stressed.

“So, you’re in law school?” I inquire.

“Was,” he corrects. “I’ve been practicing tax law for five years. Those loans are a bitch though. I drive on the weekends when I can – drunk people are often great tippers.”

I snort. “Is that a hint?”

Sam’s laugh booms through the car, riveling the sound of John McVie on bass. “That wouldn’t be very gentlemanly of me, Olivia.”

I like the way my name sounds on his tongue: light, airy. Like a song I want to keep dancing to.

We talk about Stevie Nicks verbally castrating Lindsey Buckingham with “Silver Springs” – forcing him to strum his guitar while she enchanted an audience of thousands. He tells me about the time he tried to make it as a drummer with no training and zero ability to read music. I commiserate by confessing I gave up guitar lessons in my teens because I kept breaking my nails on the strings (“I think you were doing it wrong,” berated Sam before I kicked the back of his seat in retaliation). By the time we arrive at Maddy’s house, I am melancholy no more.

Maddy unbuckles her seatbelt. Before she twists to open the door, she turns to me and mutters my name. Her eyes are wide, dancing between me and Sam. When they land back on me, she mouths, “Phone. Number,” then stumbles out of the car and to the front door of her suburban bungalow, leaving me alone.

With Sam.

“Um, well, thanks!” I spit out, cringing at my inability to play it cool. With my hand on the door, I swallow my pride and try again. “I do have a tip for you.”

Sam shifts in the front seat to see me better. A soft smile graces his full lips. “What’s that?”

“You should give me your number.”

A brow lifts with interest and his smile grows wider. “Wow – have you used that line before?”

I release a breath through clenched teeth while I pretend to work the math. “Too many times to count.”

“Does it work?”

The flush returns to my cheeks, but I’m all in now. “I hope so.”

Sam whistles and pulls out his phone. He airdrops me his contact information and my heart skips a beat. “And to think I almost stayed in tonight.”

I beam and let my fingers brush against the back of his arm as I slip out of the car. “Talk to you soon, Sam.”

Sam leans out the window; his olive skin glowing under a street light. “Goodnight, Olivia.”

The Honda Accord drives away into the night and Maddy, stilettos now off and dangling from a finger, slips her arm around me. “You know what’s hilarious?”

I lean into my friend, buzzed and happy. “What?”

“Your mom is going to love that you met a nice boy.”