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  Glass Half Full

  Katia Rose

  Copyright © 2019 by Katia Rose

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The following is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (or lingering between those two states), or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This book has been licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Please respect the author’s work.

  Cover design by Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations

  Contents

  1. Renee

  2. Dylan

  3. Renee

  4. Dylan

  5. Renee

  6. Dylan

  7. Renee

  8. Dylan

  9. Renee

  10. Dylan

  11. Renee

  12. Dylan

  13. Dylan

  14. Renee

  15. Renee

  16. Renee

  17. Dylan

  18. Renee

  19. Renee

  20. Dylan

  21. Renee

  22. Dylan

  23. Renee

  24. Dylan

  Save An Indie

  Acknowledgments

  Up Next

  I. The Bar Next Door

  1. Monroe

  2. Monroe

  3. Julien

  About the Author

  Club Katia

  Also by Katia Rose

  One

  Renee

  CAESURA: A pause or pivot within the rhythm of a poem or sentence that is used to create dramatic impact

  “Mademoiselle!”

  The shout echoes through the bustling metro station, bouncing off the tile walls and getting swallowed up by the rattling roar of the train approaching down below—the train I’m supposed to be getting on.

  I start running, fumbling for my wallet in my backpack behind me and doing my best not to collide with anyone as I charge toward the turnstiles.

  “Mademoiselle!” The shout is closer this time, more insistent. “Avec les cheveux!”

  That halts me in my tracks. It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s referred to me as, ‘Hey, you with the hair!’

  I’ve yet to find elastics that last me longer than a week before they decide to give up on life. Almost every Christmas, someone gets me a bottle of volumizing shampoo as a joke. Salons fear me. That’s one of the things you get with a white mom and a black dad: hair no one knows how the hell to handle.

  “Madamoiselle!” The voice is panting now, hoarse like a smoker’s and out of breath.

  I turn around to find a man with a grizzled beard and a Van Halen t-shirt hunched over with a hand braced on his thigh as he tries to catch his breath. He’s looking at me, holding something out in his other hand.

  “Is this yours?” he asks in French.

  My attention flicks to the turnstiles behind me, to the people flooding up the staircase as a few desperate stragglers like me try to weave their way down through the crowd. I take half a step closer to whatever it is the man is holding. There’s a scrap of fabric clutched in his fist, something purple. I only have to move a few inches closer before I recognize it.

  It’s a thong—a purple thong, patterned with tiny Neapolitan ice cream cones.

  It’s my thong, the one I stripped out of after hot yoga and shoved in my bag with the rest of my sweaty gear.

  I glance up at the man again. He smiles.

  Then he winks.

  “Nope, not mine!”

  I don’t look back as I sprint away, one hand still flailing for my metro card like the doomsday countdown is about to reach zero and the only way I can stop it is by slamming my card against the machine. I somehow make it down the stairs two at a time without falling on my face and launch myself onto the platform just in time to see the train’s doors closing.

  The ding-dong sound that announces departures is the only thing that keeps me from throwing myself against one of the doors and begging for mercy.

  That’s a slight exaggeration.

  I just stand there, shifting my backpack up on my shoulders as I watch the train pick up speed, faces blurring in the windows as they whip past me and disappear into the tunnel up ahead.

  I’m going to be late for my interview.

  I glance at the arrival times on the screen hanging over the other side of the tracks and then lean against the wall, taking stock of myself.

  One of my shoes is wet from stepping in a puddle, the moisture just beginning to soak into my sock and leave me with a swamp foot. I was so sweaty from yoga that the light makeup I slapped on wouldn’t set, so I’m sure most of it is sliding down my face. I don’t even want to know how much of my hot-yoga-enhanced hair has escaped the thick braid I pulled it into. I dropped a thong in the metro station, for god’s sake—a sweaty thong.

  It’s one of the first cold days of the season, but that hasn’t stopped me from being Montreal’s hottest mess.

  “Breathe,” I mutter to myself.

  The order comes out more like an army command than the gentle encouragement I was going for. The rushing river of nerves I’d managed to calm to a faint trickle with yoga today gushes to the forefront of my mind, picking up speed like a tidal wave as I try to throw up the dams.

  “Breathe.”

  Saying it out loud just makes me realize how bad things have gotten, makes me step outside my own body and assess myself as a stranger, feeling all the judgement and aversion of someone watching a sweaty girl on the platform mumble to herself with her eyes closed. I start repeating the order in my head instead.

  Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

  Slowly, syllable by syllable, the command changes from a word to an action, my inhales lengthening and exhales deepening as the squeezing in my chest loosens. The fingers that feel like they’re clenched around my heart get pried off one by one. I open my eyes just in time to see the next train shoot out onto the tracks.

  I’m the first one on, so I manage to get a seat. I watch the dark walls of the tunnel fly by, resisting the urge to check the time on my phone. I’m already late. All I can do is accept it and keep moving forward.

  At least, that’s what my yoga teacher would say. My therapist would agree.

  I hate being late. It isn’t like me. Then again, nothing about this situation is like me. Fighting off a major freak out in a metro station isn’t like me. Applying for food service jobs in the middle of September because my bank account has been drained dry by a summer of unemployment isn’t like me.

  Putting my studies on hold with only a year left in my degree isn’t like me either. Giving up scholarships, a guaranteed internship, and a once in a lifetime chance to study overseas—none of it’s normal. Moving back in with my parents after having a nervous breakdown that turned me into the campus freak show everyone whispered about behind their hands is the very definition of being unlike me.

  Yet here I stand.

  Or sit.

  I get off the train at Station Mont-Royal and exit into the grey light of a cloudy afternoon. The bar I’m interviewing at is several blocks up, and I take in the sight of the storefronts and restaurants as I trudge my way along the sidewalk. Hipster cafes and ratty thrift shops with racks of vintage band shirts sitting outside their doors are nestled between boutique furniture stores and hole in the wall souvenir outlets.

  That’s one of the things I missed most about Montreal when I was aw
ay: how anything and everything gets crammed in together, the ramshackle buildings painted in vibrant hues as disparate and unique as the businesses they hold. The face of the city is always shifting, changing, growing and shrinking with the passage of time, but the soul underneath its surface stays the same.

  I spot Taverne Toulouse from a few metres away. A metal sign shiny enough to prove it’s brand new displays the name in a typewriter font, the industrial vibe a compliment to the garage door style windows that make up almost the whole front of the bar. Before I can talk myself out of it, I brace like I’m about to spring off a diving board and walk inside.

  It’s dim enough that I have to pause and blink a few times, adjusting to the string lights looped along the ceiling and around the three-sided bar. When I dropped my resume off, the place was still under renovation, and I didn’t even get to come inside. Everything in sight is shiny and brand new, which makes it extra surprising that the space feels so homey, so worn-in. Mismatched couches and dark wooden coffee tables make up most of the seating, with a tiny stage tucked away in one corner surrounded by some empty space for dancing. The atmosphere is like walking straight into an old friend’s living room, somewhere you can plop down on the sofa and kick your shoes off while complaining about how much you need a beer.

  It’s a dive bar, that much is clear, but it’s not the grimy get-smashed-and-go-hard student bar this place used to have a reputation as. This room feels like a place to relax, a place you can laugh or rant or dance like no one’s watching. It’s the kind of space you go to meet old friends and end up making new ones too.

  It feels like a bar that was built for being yourself.

  If only I knew who ‘myself’ was.

  “Desolé, sweetie. We’re closed for another twenty minutes.”

  I turn away from studying a framed photo collage of old Polaroids on the wall and find a girl with bright pink hair hanging down past her shoulders smiling at me from behind the bar.

  “I’m here for an interview?”

  That’s not a question. Why did I say that like a question?

  “Oh!” She leans forward on the bar, her smile getting even wider as she starts to bounce a little with excitement. “Then welcome to Taverne Toulouse, choufleur. You know what? You look like just what we need around here.”

  If what they need is a girl with foundation sloughing down her face like a mudslide, I’ve come to the right place.

  “Hey.” Pink hair girl beckons me closer, whispering in her thick Québécois accent like she’s about to share a secret. I cross the few steps between me and the bar.

  “You know what always helps me when I have to do something scary?” She ducks behind the bar and then pops up with a bottle of Patrón, lifting it above her head and shaking it. “Tequila shots!”

  I start to think she might be crazy, but it’s the kind of crazy you can’t help wanting a piece of. I grin back at her as she sets the bottle down on the counter.

  “DeeDee, who are you—oh no, not again.”

  A guy who looks like a cross between a hipster and a farmhand appears from somewhere behind the bar, his woodsy red flannel open over a white t-shirt, a scruffy blond beard covering half his face.

  “Câlice, Zach. We’re having fun. Don’t spoil it.”

  “Maybe you should have this kind of fun later. I take it this is the interview?” He waves at me as the pink haired tequila enthusiast responds in the affirmative. “I’m Zach. You can come around the back here, and I’ll take you to the bosses.”

  He unlocks a gate at the far end of the bar, and I follow him down a little hallway after calling out a thank you to answer the shout that my tequila will be waiting for me when I’m done.

  “Yeah, she’s uh, she’s something, as I’m sure you can tell.” Zach chuckles and scratches his neck. Even in my bracing-for-an-impending-interview state, I can tell just what kind of ‘something’ he thinks she is. It’s too dim in the hall to tell if he’s actually blushing, but he might as well be. It’s kind of adorable.

  “I’ll just tell them you’re here, and then you can go on in.”

  He pops his head into a doorway before motioning me inside, wishing me good luck as I go. I’m about to thank him as I step into an office as shiny and new as the rest of the place, but the words die in my throat.

  My mind blanks. Everything blanks.

  Out of everyone I could have imagined facing behind this doorway, he is the very last one.

  Yet there he is, his presence sucking all the air out of the room as he sits in a folding chair pulled up beside a woman behind the desk. I note her round, smiling face, and I know I should smile back. I should smile at both of them, but instead I stare at my hands, at the desk, at the woman behind it—anywhere but at him.

  Smiley woman is now saying words I should be paying attention to. Her voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater, dulled by the thumping of blood in my ears. I barely catch her name and her explanation that she’s the bar’s owner before she’s offering me her hand. I zombie-walk toward it, offering my own name in return, but all I hear is his.

  Dylan Trottard.

  I almost called it out, nearly yelped it like it was a swear word and someone had just stepped on my foot. I don’t think I ever fully understood the term ‘shocking’ until I saw him sitting there.

  That’s what it feels like: a shock, like someone zapped my brain with electricity and left me short-circuiting. Live wires are sparking inside me, all frayed ends and billowing smoke where just seconds ago a steady connection used to flow.

  “This is Dylan, one of our most trusted cooks and now our recently promoted kitchen manager. Dylan tells me you two already know each other. You used to do poetry slams together?”

  I let go of Monroe’s hand—some miraculously functioning part of my brain managed to catch the woman’s name—where I’ve been reaching across the desk to shake it and nod.

  “We did, yeah,” I rasp, my mouth dry. “A few years ago.”

  This is the part where I’m supposed to turn and shake his hand too. This is the part where I start acting like a normal human who’s here to get herself a job.

  I am Renee, hear me roar.

  I borrow my best friend’s signature phrase of encouragement as I fix my gaze on Dylan, steeling myself for however awkward or weird or painful this is going to be, but it turns out it’s none of those things.

  My eyes meet his. He blinks. I blink.

  Then the impact of how much I’ve missed him hits me so hard it’s like he’s crushed me into one of those giant Dylan bear hugs without even moving at all. The tension loosens, the air in the room no longer feeling too thick to pull into my lungs, and my head starts rushing with the dozens of questions I want to ask, everything I want to know and share.

  How are you? How are Stella and Owen? How are the slams going? Who made nationals this year? Are you still performing?

  I let myself take in the sight of him. He looks the same: same bulky frame, same doorframe-width shoulders we were always teasing him about, same tufty chestnut hair and coffee-with-cream coloured eyes that always made me shiver when they locked on mine.

  Same cavalier smile. With Dylan, you could always count on a smile.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” he jokes in that deep, rich voice of his, one massive hand covering mine. The live wires inside me spark again at the contact as heat blooms in my chest. His forearm is still tan from the summer even though October is days away, the freckle-dusted skin a contrast to my smoother, darker arm that looks so tiny next to his. He really is built like a rugby player.

  “Wish I’d known you work here before I applied,” I tease him before I can start to wonder if that’s an appropriate thing to do in an interview.

  “Why? So you could work even harder on your application?” he teases right back.

  “So I would have known not to apply in the first place.”

  “Well she’s certainly got the sass factor necessary for surviving at this place.”r />
  Dylan and I both turn to Monroe like we forgot she was here. Part of me really did forget she was here.

  “No need to worry about sassiness with this one. If I remember correctly, she always gives as good as she gets,” Dylan assures her.

  “I will check that box off.” Monroe pretends to draw a checkmark on the paper in front of her, which I realize is my resume. She tucks a strand of her brown bob behind her ear, and I let myself take a closer look at her now that I’m not reeling at the sight of Dylan. She looks young to own a bar; she can’t be any older than thirty.

  Just a few years older than Dylan must be.

  I do the math in my head. Twenty-eight. He’s twenty-eight now.

  Too old to give you a second thought, Renee. Three years didn’t change that.

  “I’m just going to start this off by saying your resume looks fantastic, Renee. Seriously, it’s just so pretty.” I force a laugh as Monroe holds up the deluxe quality, colour-printed page. “You seem to have just the kind of experience we’re looking for, and your cover letter was very impressive. I have a few questions for you myself, but I’ll let our manager take the wheel first. Dylan, did you want to ask Renee anything?”

  A memory forces itself into my thoughts like a projector screen coming to life, the scene playing out so clearly it might as well be a movie in my head. It was the first time I ever went to one of the spoken word workshops at the library. A few of my friends thought it sounded cool, but not cool enough to go with me. I sat on an orange plastic chair surrounded by chatting teenagers I’d never met before and wondered why I even came in the first place.