We were still yelling across the table, ridiculously.
“He was wasted. He said these were his picks and to fucking leave it, and then he rolled his eyes at me and said something like, ‘Elders are gone from the gate, young men from their music.’ He touched my forehead. I almost fucking slapped him.” Beckett looked at the ceiling. “The music is good though.”
He must be kidding. “Is that a biblical reference?”
“This song?” he asked, pointing up to the ceiling again.
“No, what the guy said.”
We were missing the mark. Our conversation was becoming more and more awkward by the second. The date was going downhill fast. All the smitten, shiny feelings were beginning to dull. This always happened to me.
He shrugged. “No clue, man.”
Did he just call me “man”?
The next song came on, a slower, quieter acoustic ditty sung by a familiar voice. Beckett pointed at the speakers yet again and shouted, “Fuck yeah, Tom Waits!”
It was the song “I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You,” and Beckett knew every word. He serenaded me with his hand on his chest while I looked around for a hidden camera.
“Am I being Punk’d?” I asked.
“What?”
“It’s just that you’re pointing at me and saying you hope you don’t fall in love with me.”
He shook his head as if I were confusing him. “I’m singing. What’s the big deal?”
“Never mind!” I yelled. “Do you want to go to my apartment?” The music came to a screeching halt while I was mid-sentence, basically broadcasting my proposition to the entire bar.
Beckett looked affronted. First time I’d offended a guy by inviting him over.
“But the music is so good here,” he said.
A moment later, the music was back on, and I swear it was even louder than before. I nodded, although I had never been so dumbfounded in my life. “Okay.”
I finished my wine and watched Beckett continue, song after song, to flip out in excitement over the music.
One o’clock and three glasses of wine later, the jukebox was still blaring random selections, even though I hadn’t seen anyone go near it. There were four barflies on stools and Beckett and me at a table, while the rest of the place was empty. My mind was clouded by his strange behavior, and my patience was growing thinner by the second. I had had enough.
“I’m going home!” I yelled.
When I stood, he smiled. He didn’t bother standing. He held up his hand and waved.
“See ya!” he shouted over “Sad Angel” by Fleetwood Mac.
What in the hell just happened?
I was eager to get home to make sure I didn’t have a giant fleck of lettuce in my teeth. Apparently, Beckett was no longer into me—he was into classic rock. I walked two blocks and up two flights of stairs into my lonely, dark apartment. Brooklyn was still out.
We had a corner in the Mission, which was expensive, but her very progressive parents were still paying for half of it, so we split the other two grand. That meant we had the nicest rental for the smallest amount of money in the area. It was a typical San Francisco third-floor apartment with a round-corner living room. Our place would have been amazing had Brooklyn not been the biggest slob in the world.
I didn’t turn on any lights; I just stared out the window onto the street and played back the date in my mind.
Did I act too whiney about the Tracey situation? Was I eating the ribs like a barbarian? Did he get a better look at my body and notice the saddlebags?
I needed to stop obsessing, but I was still confused. Within a couple of hours, I had gone from I think this guy is going to be my boyfriend to I think this guy is clinically insane. I thought I knew him. I thought he liked me. I was seriously questioning my own character judgment.
Brooklyn’s rules were running on a constant loop in my head, but still, I was undeterred. I needed to know what went wrong with Beckett. I had made up my mind; I was going to confront him.
Stringing my purse across my chest, I skipped right back down the stairs and headed to the bar where I had left Beckett singing his heart out. The moment I walked through the door, I noticed the music was no longer blaring, the lighting was a little brighter, and there were at least fifteen more people at tables and at the bar itself. It had become a completely different place in less than thirty minutes. Buckley was crooning softly from the speakers, and Beckett was nowhere to be found.
A moment later, my phone pinged with a text from him:
Beckett: Sorry about tonight. I don’t know what came over me. It was like I was stoned in that bar, pullin’ a total Jerry. I’m really am sorry.
Me: It’s cool.
But really, it wasn’t cool. Pulling a Jerry? Seriously? Speak English. I didn’t know why I was back in that stupid bar looking for him anyway. I was currently ignoring Brooklyn’s rule number four: TAKE A HINT! But it was hard to tell what had happened between us. Maybe Beckett was too cool to cut our date off in a respectable way. After leading me on, he’d made a spectacle and then acted as though he’d been roofied. I was only twenty-four but already over dating games. My domestic future was looking bleak.
“Need a drink, sweetheart?” came the bartender’s voice. I focused my attention on the bottles of alcohol.
The only available stool was next to the guy Beckett had said was wasted. He was now slumped pathetically in the same stool he had been in earlier. I pulled the seat out and noticed the guy stiffen as I moved around to sit.
“Something strong,” I said to the male bartender.
I had been in that bar enough times to know it was the kind of place where you could say, “Something strong,” and the bartender would pour two ounces of Basil Hayden’s into a highball glass, and then slide it across the oak. The barstools were cracked and ripped, red vinyl that no one had bothered replacing in thirty years, but the bar top was meticulously polished to perfection every night. It’s called knowing what’s important when you own a dive bar.
I sipped the bourbon and glanced at the drunken man to my right. He didn’t look particularly wasted. He was looking at me out of the corner of his eye, his expression was one of moderate fear. I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. I swiveled my stool so that my entire body was facing him. He continued facing forward, his posture rigid.
“Hello.” I was not a particularly social person, but I was intrigued by the strange comment he had made to Beckett earlier and by his bizarre music choices.