Mixed

Tawney wiped at the sweat beginning to bead on her forehead with an equally moist arm and snatched another plastic cup from the counter. It was muggy--the kind of day that could break out in sunshine or storm, depending on the overall mood--and she was grateful for the tent that, at the very least, kept her fair skin from burning to a crisp. She pulled the handle of the tap, carefully tilting the cup to avoid excessive foam, then slid the beer across the bar to a young blonde woman. The woman giggled and thanked her before flipping her long, luxurious hair over her shoulder and sashaying back to the table she shared with an equally attractive young man.

This kind of thing had never really been her scene. In fact, any scene involving more than fifteen people in one place had never really been Tawney’s scene. She liked books and animals and peace and quiet; she wasn’t sure how all that had added up to a career in bartending, but she’d been at it for over twenty years now. It had started as a side-job while she finished her master’s degree--British literature--and somehow it had been the only thing in her life to stick. Her usual place wasn’t too bad; occasionally a bachelor party or a particularly rowdy group of college kids would wander in, but for the most part, it was just a few regulars around her own age--a real quiet joint.

This place, on the other hand, was what Tawney imagined hell might be like. Outside the tent, half-naked people--all of whom seemed somehow to be no older than 21--practically crawled over each other in their efforts to get closer to the music. Or maybe that was how people were dancing these days? She wasn’t really sure. Inside the tent wasn’t much better. It was a little less hot, a little less sticky, but the people still seemed to be crawling all over each other. The girl whose beer Tawney had just poured appeared to be near-choking on her boyfriend’s tongue, and there was a group of guys in another corner chanting loudly for their friend to chug his beer--his seventh beer, if Tawney had been counting correctly. “Sean! Sean! Sean!”

She glanced down at her watch--only four more hours to go. It felt so strange to be counting down the hours while the sun was still up, but Tawney had been on the job since noon, and she would be incredibly glad when the event was over. There was a sudden commotion across the room as “Sean”--drunken imbecile--toppled head-first off the chair he’d been standing on in an attempt to impress his loyal fans. For a split second, she wondered if today was the day her first-aid training would finally come in handy, but the idiot stood up and took a bow, and Tawney felt reasonably sure that he would be just fine.

She turned her attention back to her post and was startled to find that there was someone standing right next to her. On the other side of the bar, directly across from Tawney, was a very handsome smiling face. The man ordered a local beer from the tap, installed himself in the nearest seat, and proceeded to bury his nose in a small notebook he pulled from his pocket. This gave his friendly neighborhood bartender the opportunity to examine him more closely than she might otherwise have dared. His straight, narrow nose and deep blue eyes reminded her of a poster of Christopher Reeve that had hung on the bedroom wall of her teenage self. The impression was strengthened when he--apparently seeing something amusing in his notebook--chuckled to himself, showing deep laugh lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes.

“So how are you enjoying the festival?” his voice was low and raspy, and Tawney nearly jumped out of her skin on hearing it. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t so much as looked up from his notebook. Was he talking to her? Had he noticed her staring? After several seconds of confused silence, the man looked up, and, as his eyes met hers, Tawney felt chills run through her body. She’d been wrong about his eyes--maybe it was the lighting--they weren’t deep blue, but rather a shocking icy color. The contrast between their lightness and the dark almost-black of his hair was almost breathtaking.

“I asked you how you’re enjoying the festival,” he repeated. One of his brows raised just slightly, and the lines returned to the corners of his eyes as though he found some secret amusement in having caught her off guard.

“It’s… alright, I suppose,” she replied, not knowing what else to say. “It’s a job.”

“I see,” the man said, smirking down at his notebook in silence.

“How… um, how are you enjoying it?” Tawney asked, flailing to fill the silence.

“It’s alright, I suppose,” he parrotted, chuckling quietly to himself. Then, he pulled a pen from his pocket and jotted something down in his notebook. Several minutes passed in silence before he spoke again.

“So how’d you get this gig?” he asked, this time immediately meeting Tawney’s eyes so she would know the question was directed toward her.

“I, uh…” she struggled, “I work at the Nineteenth Hole, usually, and the owners are sponsoring, so they, uh, asked me to…”

Tawney trailed off as she remembered the one rule she had set for herself when she’d started her first bartending job: no personal information. Not that telling him where she normally worked really qualified as personal information, but it was something he might not have known otherwise.

“Look,” she blurted, “why are you asking so many questions? Are you a cop or something? I’ve been checking IDs all day, man.”

For a moment, the man looked surprised, then his face melted once again into a smile. Tawney found herself caught up in his smile in spite of her annoyance. It was practically luminous.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I guess I should have introduced myself. My name is Nick Isaacs. I write for the Courier. I’m here to write a piece about the festival. I just figured that you might be a more reliable source than anyone else in this tent.”

He gestured vaguely toward the “Sean” table as he spoke, and Tawney couldn’t help laughing just slightly louder than she would have liked.

“So,” his voice was like velvet against her ears, “how are you enjoying the festival?”

“Well, to be perfectly honest,” Tawney took a deep breath before she continued, releasing all the pent-up frustration and criticism she’d been holding in all day, “it sucks.”

Nick’s eyes crinkled with laughter once more, and he asked, “Could you elaborate?”

Tawney nodded eagerly, launching into a rant she’d been replaying over and over in her head so many times that day that she felt she’d perfected it. She hadn’t once thought she’d find the perfect audience for her thoughts, but here he was, and he was looking at her with those icy, watchful eyes, seeming so ready to listen. So she told him about how she believed that music in general had gone into a downward spiral somewhere around the mid-90s. She told him that she’d cut her teeth on bands like Motley Crue, Metallica, and R.E.M. and that no amount of Taylor Swift and Twenty One Pilots--nor even their slightly more garage-style covers she’d been hearing all day--would ever measure up to those groups. 

He countered with arguments in favor of more modern music, citing Five Finger Death Punch and The Black Keys as examples she might enjoy, but Tawney had never heard of them. The pair continued their back-and-forth until, before she even realized that any time had passed at all, the tent was nearly empty. Squinting at the flap over Nick’s shoulder, she realized that darkness was beginning to fall outside. They had to have been talking for at least two hours, and Tawney was surprised to realize that she had no desire to end the conversation.

#

It was nearly another hour later before she realized that they both had jobs to do.

“Shouldn’t you be writing?” she asked abruptly. “Or--I don’t know--interviewing people or something?”

“Are you getting tired of me?” he countered. That smile of his, she’d learned over the last few hours, had an uncanny ability to melt her from the inside out. She must have looked flustered because he blurted out before she could answer, “I’m kidding!”

“Oh…” Tawney didn’t know what else to say.

“Really,” Nick continued, “it’s just a fluff piece. My boss wants to fill space, and I’m the fluff guy, so he sent me out here to write about the festival. I’ve got plenty to write about just based on what I’ve seen right here in this tent. Trust me; I do this all the time.”

“Okay…” Tawney was still a little unsure.

“Come on, doll,” he teased. “I don’t come in here and question your beer pouring methods.”

“Alright, alright,” she put her hands up in surrender, and they continued their conversation.

#

A while later, Nick and Tawney were the only people left in the tent. During a lull in their conversation, Tawney noticed that the chaos outside had also quieted down significantly. She checked her watch and was startled to find that it was closing time. Moving to the open tent flap, she could see musicians and roadies hauling equipment away from stagest that were also being torn down. She didn’t realize that Nick was right behind her until she spun around and nearly collided with him.

He caught her by the shoulders without looking away from the workers outside.

“Careful there,” he said softly, taking his hands and their warmth away from her skin. “Looks like it’s quittin’ time, eh boss?”

Tawney nodded, unwilling to admit that she was disappointed. She hadn’t had so much fun in a very long time--possibly even years. She didn’t want it to end, but she knew that any second now he would walk out of the tent, and she’d never see him again.

“We should do this again sometime,” he said as he gathered up his belongings.

Tawney nodded in response, knowing he didn’t mean it. He ducked out of the tent and turned to shoot her one last, heart-melting smile, and he was gone.

#

Later, when she was alone in her apartment, Tawney thought back on the evening. She replayed her conversation with Nick word-for-word--or as close to it as she could recall--and the more she dwelt on it, the more it brought something to life in her that she had thought had been dead for many years. It wasn’t until she caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror that night as she prepared for bed that reality struck.

Tawney was not a young woman. She knew that; the thought had never once been out of her head that night. She had crows feet where Nick had laugh lines, and her cropped, chestnut hair was beginning to gray at the temples. But the Tawney she saw in her own mind, the one who gave her the confidence to even speak to a man like him--a man who must have been nearly twenty years younger than she--was made up of her better qualities. The Tawney in her mind had clear, fair skin and large, bright green eyes framed by feathery, dark eyelashes and peeking out from behind thick-rimmed glasses that were surprisingly flattering. And while the reality staring back at her from the mirror had those features, she also had a tired resignation about her that could only come from years of loneliness. He had probably just felt sorry for her.

#

That night, Tawney dreamed of him. She dreamed that she was awakened by a light tapping at her bedroom window and that, when she went to check, she found Nick standing on the sidewalk below. In his hands, he held a bouquet of red roses and the reins to a white horse. It was every little girl’s fantasy, and tonight, it was hers too.

When the alarm blared the next morning, Tawney, distressed at being so unceremoniously ripped from her dreamland, threw her pillow across the room. She managed to hit the clock squarely enough to knock it from her dresser.

#

Work was dismally slow. For once, she’d been hoping for a gaggle of twenty-something girls to wander in and make her night hell. At least it would be a distraction from the reality check she’d suffered again that morning. Tawney was attempting to occupy her mind by reorganizing the bottles behind the bar when the door opened.

At first, she thought she was hallucinating--or perhaps dreaming again. He was as handsome as he had been the previous night, even more so, in fact, for his hair wasn’t damp with sweat and he had on a clean blue dress shirt. It made his eyes even more magnetic. When he saw her, he smiled, and Tawney couldn’t help the inevitable reaction deep inside her. Nick stepped up to the bar without hesitation and, before either of them said a word, he slid something across the bar to her. At first, she thought it was payment for his first drink, but he hadn’t ordered a drink yet, and the object beneath her fingers was hard and plastic, not paper. She picked it up and held it between them.

“What’s this?” she asked, confused.

“That,” he chuckled, “is a flash drive. It’s a device used to store things: documents, pictures, all kinds of files, really.”

Tawney glared at him over her glasses, “I know that, smartass. I’m not completely ancient.”

Nick held his hands up in response.

“I meant,” she continued, “what’s on it? Why are you giving it to me?”

“Well…” he hesitated, “it’s sort of a mix tape. All those current bands we talked about yesterday. I wanted to give it to you so you could listen to them. And then… maybe we could talk about them again… over dinner sometime?”