He had to check her ID, because the idiot at the door tonight was prone to weakness at the sight of a symmetrical face, and hers was pretty damn proportional, even if it did look like jailbait.
He did the math (she's 24), and handed it back to her. He gave her a quick glance up and down. She noticed and bristled, reminding him of a pissed off kitten. Her cute little twin-tails got a little bushy, too. He smirked like the flirtatious bartender her pretended to be and took her order. She's had the same glass of some obscure type of whiskey he had to dig up from a top shelf cabinet for the last half hour. The glass was a quarter fill of the nostalgic, sharp amber color of daddy issues. No 24-year-old girl with enough cash for that particular whiskey had a healthy relationship with her dad, but still ordered his favorite drink for herself. But she didn't strike him as the Redbull and vodka type either.
She sat, scowling, at the far end of the bar and pulled out a little black rectangle. She cracked it open and that was that. Her eyes have been glued to the white pages of a moleskine notebook, her pen races as she scrawls- Notes, stories, poems?
He's staring but she's still writing, her black pen scarring the pages. It's a slow night so he can afford to stare. Can she afford another glass of that fucking whiskey?
He wipes the same glass clean 50 times. Customers pop in and out of his sight line. He grunts at them, pours their drink, and snatches their cash. He wipes down the same glass again. He feels weirdly curious about her. She spent $40 on a glass of whiskey, but hasn't taken a single sip. She pours over her notebook like she's writing down the secret formula to eternal youth, but she's sitting pretty casually in an empty bar in the middle of nowhere. She's wearing a yellow sweater vest and tie like a girl in a creepy porno he accidentally watched all of one time.
He hopes that fact isn't influencing him in any way.
He remembers reading a name on her ID but doesn't try to pronounce it. Kim comes in at 10:20 to give him a break, and, at 10:23 pm, he whips out his own pocket notepad and starts to compose a thing.
At 10:57, he's back behind the counter and she's still sitting in the same damn stool, but he swears a quarter inch of that whiskey is coursing through her bloodstream, or has evaporated into the smoke of the bar.
He cracks open a beer and chugs half. Drinking on the job was only discouraged slightly, on the threat of having to clean the toilets after Happy Hour. It might be worth it, depending on how well this works.
He slides over to her, beer and notepad in hand, and taps the soft moleskine in her hands. She blinks huge green eyes at him, pupils dilating, focusing. Her pale eyebrows furrow, a little wrinkle forms between them. He wants to poke it smooth.
"Soul." His voice cracks like he's a pubescent band geek with white hair and he wants to die.
She smiles a little-maybe it' amusement, maybe it's a grimace- and says "Heaven."
It's his turn to blink, this time it's red that Morse-codes confusion.
She grins for sure. "Are we not playing a bartender word association game?" She's got jokes. Twin-tails, a tie, and jokes. Shit.
He sighs. "It's my name."
"Oh." She's still grinning at him.
"You're not going to say it's weird." It's not a question.
She shrugs. "My dad's name is Spirit." She pauses. "Mine is Maka."
"That's fuckin' weird," he says and sips his beer.
She laughs and nudges the bottom of his beer bottle with her index finger. He spills a little on the sticky wooden bar. "Says the guy named Soul."
He glares at her, and mops up the mess with his sleeve. He gestures at her glass. "Your dad's favorite?"
If she thinks the question is random, she doesn't let it show. "My mom's."
He gives a low whistle. "Mom was hardcore."
"Still is," she agrees. "According to her letters, anyway."
Surprise. Mommy issues. He tries not to relate as he recalls his point, the notepad his mom gave him making his palm sweat.
"I'll show you mine if you show me yours." To his eternal amusement, her face reddens and she sputters indignantly. He fails to stifle his amused snort as he tosses her his beat up notepad.
She flushes but, to his surprise, obliges.
He flips the pages of her moleskine. Row after row of cramped prose fills the each square inch of paper. He vaguely understands why she had been so focused on her notebook; if he had that many thoughts coming out of him at once, he'd probably have an aneurism. He reads a couple of lines.
"Poems."
She nods absently. She squints at the sets of six straight lines and blots of notes on the pad he traded her. Her head tilts sideways and he rules music lover out.
"That's pretty fucking emo."
The binding of the notebook is more painful than he would have thought. His beer shatters on the tile behind the bar but he doesn't hear it, he feels it crunch on the bottom of his boots as his head throbs.
Oh. She's going to be fun.