The Bar Next Door Read online

I’m not prepared for the pity that floods his face as he looks at me and sighs again. It’s an expression I’ve never seen on him before, and as I watch the wrinkles of his forehead deepen and contract, those eyes I’ve only ever seen squinting in shrewd criticism now softened with something like sympathy, it’s then I know I’m wasting my breath.

  I’m not changing his mind.

  “Monroe,” he says, as close to gentle as the gruff and permanently pissed off tone of his voice will ever get, “I’m selling. The decision is final. Taverne Toulouse is going to close.”

  “I’ll buy it.”

  He and the lawyer share a look that makes me want to grab the nearest kitchen implement and whack them over the head.

  “I know how much I pay you. You can’t afford to buy a bar.”

  “I’ll buy a share,” I urge, his belittling comments about my salary just fuelling me on. “I’ve talked with my bank and...”

  The words are falling on deaf ears. It wouldn’t even matter if I had all my documents and plans and sales projections in my hands. To them, I’m just the desperate manager willing to say anything to keep her job. I’m just the girl who has nothing to show for herself except this dingy dive bar. I’m the girl who’s too scared to face the fact that the only thing worthwhile in her life is what’s held between these walls.

  Maybe there’s nothing else to see. Maybe that’s all I am.

  “We’re making a good offer to the guy next door. He would be crazy to pass it up, but even if he does, there are other...”

  I stop listening to what Fournier’s saying as the lawyer shuffles whatever papers he has for me. I stop the tunnel vision play-by-play of all my life’s meagre accomplishments that’s streaming in my head to a soundtrack of self-doubt. I shut it all off like it’s the chaos of a particularly screwy Saturday night and force myself to do what I always do when things get out of hand at the bar.

  I think.

  Fast.

  Then I act.

  This isn’t over. I won’t let this be over.

  Seventeen

  Julien

  CLOS: An archaic French term for vineyards surrounded by walls

  When she said she needed to see me right now, I thought Monroe meant it in an ‘I need to be on your dick right now’ kind of way.

  The woman standing outside my apartment door does not look like she needs to be on my dick. She looks like she’s here to enforce some sort of conscription law and drag me off to war.

  Then again, being on my dick might solve that problem too.

  I push the thoughts of her skin and her screams away as I take in how worried and frazzled she looks. I’ve never seen her this upset before, not even when she stood on a sidewalk scattered with the shards of my bar’s vandalized windows. She was nervous then, ashamed even, but this is something different. This is something close to fear.

  “Monroe.” I place my hand between her shoulder blades and usher her inside. “What’s wrong?”

  She only takes a few steps into the living room before she turns around and faces me with her arms held tight to her sides. She doesn’t even move to pet Madame Bovary when the Yorkie runs over and starts butting against her legs for attention.

  “I have to ask you for something.” She’s looking at me like I’m a firing squad. Whatever this is, it’s not a simple favour. “Actually, I have to ask you for two things. One of them I hoped I wouldn’t have to ask you at all, and the other I hoped I’d have more time to prepare for, but I’m running out of options. It has to be now.”

  I start leading the way to the couch and take a seat on the grey cushions. “Well, that wasn’t cryptic at all.”

  I give her a tentative smile and only get that same resolute grimace in return, but she at least eases up enough to sit beside me. I rest my hand on her thigh, half expecting her to slap it away, but my touch seems to neutralise some of her tension. I feel her sag into the cushions, and she lays her own hand on top of mine. She’s actually shaking.

  “The owner of Taverne Toulouse is going to sell the bar.”

  Now it’s me tensing up, but I try my best not to let her see it.

  “I can’t convince him otherwise; he’s made up his mind now, and he won’t budge. They’re already scouting out potential buyers. The first one they’re going to make an offer to is you.” Her fingers clench around mine. “Julien, I...I know you still don’t really understand what that place means to me. I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that ‘little dump’ has a piece of my heart. Many pieces of my heart.”

  We both exhale a quick laugh at the reference to our first meeting, but the atmosphere in the room turns breathless once more as soon as the moment passes.

  “When I look at that bar, I see so many dreams that have come true. I see all the customers I’ve talked to over afternoon pints, the ones who come in beaten down by their day and walk out ready to fight it with all they’ve got. I see the employees I’ve taken a chance on, the ones I’ve hired when no one else would, and you know what? They usually turn out to be the best ones. I see all the bands and DJs and poets who got their start on our stage. I see my friends. I see their smiles. I see the memories we’ve made. Hell, some of the most momentous events in Roxanne and Cole’s relationship have happened at Taverne Toulouse, and now they’re getting married. That place is so full of hopes and dreams, and...and now when I’m there, I don’t just see other people’s dreams. I see mine too. I see what Taverne Toulouse could be if I had the guts to reach out and get it, and I want to, Julien. I want that so bad. I never let myself realize just how much until I met you.”

  She’s blazing with passion, glowing like a star on my couch, but the last sentence is a curl of smoke—less like a flame extinguished and more like one about to be born.

  She needs me to breathe on it to keep it alive.

  She needs me to make sure I don’t blow it out.

  “You wanted to ask me something?”

  The question comes out wary, like I’m not sure if I’m willing to meet her demands. I wish that weren’t true, but it is. I have no idea what she’s going to say next, but this feels all too much like those times Fleur would beg me to stay home or to take the damn money from the trust fund so both of us wouldn’t have to keep sacrificing for the things I wanted to build.

  Only that’s what success is made of: sacrifice. At least that’s what I thought. I thought it for so long it’s sliced a path through my neurons. It’s seeped into my synapses. It clouds the signals sent between my eyes and my brain. It’s not something you simply shake off, and just like Monroe, I wish we had more time. I wish she didn’t need to ask me this now. I wish we had weeks, months even, to let this fire between us burn away the past and make way for a future, but the future has already arrived.

  “Don’t buy the bar.” Monroe lifts my hand off her leg and wraps both of hers around it. “But...could you pretend like you’re going to? Just for a bit?”

  “What?”

  That is not what I was expecting.

  “I need you to stall them. Pretend you’re taking the bait. Tell them you want to bring some experts in to have a look at the place. Drag out the negotiation on the price. I just need a few weeks of you playing hard to get before I can make my own offer.”

  “An offer?”

  She nods, that visionary glint coming back into her eyes. “I looked into what it would take to buy a share. All I really do is work, so my savings have been piling up for years. I talked to the bank about business loans. I know what Taverne Toulouse is actually worth. I can cover a big share. I thought the owner would be willing to go in with me, but since that’s not happening, I’ll...I’ll find investors, or something. I’ll make it work. I just need a little more time.”

  I hate how condescending it is to think it, but she doesn’t know what she’s getting into. She’s a brilliant manager, and I know she has everything it takes to be a brilliant business owner too, but lack of experience is making her blind.

  She’s not go
ing to find investors. Anyone she talks to is going to take one look at that property and snap it up for themselves. Places on Avenue Mont-Royal don’t go up for sale often; I would know. If I don’t take the offer they make me, somebody else won’t waste a moment saying yes—somebody else with enough money to crush everything I’m trying to build next door at the wine bar.

  If I don’t buy it, we both lose.

  “Monroe, what if...”

  All the flaws in what I’m about to suggest start flashing like warning signs so bright and insistent I don’t bother voicing the idea. She won’t work for me. I could give her double the pay she’s making now, and she still wouldn’t manage my bar. This isn’t about her stepping down or to the side; this is about her stepping up.

  I consider what would happen if Taverne Toulouse became what I know she could turn it into. Every customer who walked into her bar would be one who didn’t walk into mine. No matter what else we might be turning into, we’re still what we’ve always been since the very first day we met: rivals. My success doesn’t leave room for hers, and hers doesn’t leave room for mine.

  “Julien.” She moves closer to me on the couch, both her hands and mine now pressed to her heart. “We went into this knowing there would always be a major road block at the end of it.”

  I know by this she means us. She means the thump of her heart beneath my palm and the heat of her body beside mine.

  “We knew our goals would always get in the way of any shot we had to...to be...something. I didn’t know you would come to mean this much to me. I didn’t even want you to, but you did. I think about you all the time. I’ve told you things I tell almost no one else, and you’ve trusted me the same way. I care, Julien. I care too much to just let it go so soon, and maybe you don’t feel the same, but—”

  She’s opening herself up to me. She’s laying all she has on the line, and it’s shaking the very earth I stand on, the very ground I’ve built my life upon. I don’t have the words to match hers. I only have the pressure of my lips, the sweep of my tongue in her mouth and the cradle of my hand around the back of her head as I pull her into me for what feels like hours and still far from long enough.

  “Okay,” she says breathlessly, once she’s finally broken the kiss and lays her forehead against mine, “so I guess that means you do feel the same.”

  I taste her laughter as she breathes it into the space between us, and it’s a taste too sweet to give up. I’ll do whatever she asks. How could I not?”

  “Julien, give us a chance. Give yourself a chance. I...I’m not good at asking for favours. I don’t do it a lot, even when I really should, but I need to ask this, and I think part of you needs it too. You’ve always seemed so trapped, so stuck inside this life you’ve built for yourself, and I want to see you be free. I want to be free too. You make me want so much.”

  Her voice cracks, and I pull her even closer. She’s in my lap now, her hands releasing mine to grip my shoulders.

  “I’m not going to claim to know everything about you; it’s way too soon for that, but I think I know you well enough to understand what this will mean to you, and I’m going to ask it anyway.” She looks me straight in the eyes. “Sell the wine bar. I know you’ve invested a lot in it already. I know it will be a hard thing to do, but...you have the money from your family. You can get an even better location. You can build a better bar somewhere else and make sure the place next door goes to some bakery or cafe or something else that won’t run me out of business, and we can...we can actually give ourselves a shot.”

  She makes it sound like the easiest thing in the world, like jumping over the fence and finally wading into that green, green grass on the other side. It should be easy. It shouldn’t even be a decision at all, but the dread that’s made me push away from anyone I’ve had even a shot at getting close with over the past six years chooses now to rear its head.

  I don’t why I thought she’d be different, why I thought I’d be different this time. I’ve been in this exact same situation already. I know how it ends.

  “I can’t.”

  It’s like I can feel her breaking against me, a crack splintering outward from somewhere deep inside. It fractures me too, zig-zagging lines of pain and memory cutting into my heart. I know what she’s going to say next. That doesn’t stop it from slicing me open.

  “You can’t...or you won’t?”

  Your head is too big and your heart is too small.

  I should have listened the first time.

  “You know how I feel. You know what it’s like for me,” I plead. “I can’t give in. I can’t just walk away from it. It’s who I am.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.” Monroe cups my jaw with her hands, and sacrement, I don’t know what sears me more: the hurt in her eyes or the hope. “You can be whoever you want. That’s what you’ve been trying to show me, and you did. Let me do the same for you. Your father—”

  “Don’t.”

  My interruption is harsh enough to make her drop her hands.

  “Don’t bring him into this,” I add, softer this time.

  “But he’s part of it. He—”

  “Don’t use him against me to get what you want, Monroe.”

  It’s not a fair accusation, and I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but I’m desperate for a defence mechanism, for a way to somehow stand my ground. If I don’t, I’ll just say yes and end up hurting her even more in the long run. Even if I do sell the bar, what am I giving her? Long evenings alone when I don’t come home. Phone calls I forget to return. Hasty apologies for mistakes I’ll only make again.

  I always make fucking mistakes.

  “Excuse me?” She jumps off my lap and faces me with her hands on her hips. “That’s not what I’m doing, and you know it.”

  I rise to my feet as well. “I’m sorry. I...Monroe, just think about what you’re asking.”

  “I have thought about it. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want, what I’m capable of, and for the first time in my life, I’m ready to go after it. I’ll do that with or without you, but...but I’d rather have you on my side.”

  She takes a step closer, her posture softening just enough for me to notice the change. I want to lean into her. I want to tell her everything will be okay, but all I do is stand there at the edge of the couch.

  “I told you what you mean to me. I told you what I feel.” Her lip quivers before she catches it with her teeth. “Tell me something. Anything.”

  What I feel for you is everything I love and hate about myself.

  You are all my dreams and nightmares come to life.

  I want to hold you until this mess makes sense. You’re the only thing that’s ever made me feel like I have a way out.

  My heart calls out to her, but my head remembers the truth.

  My silence is the only answer she needs. Her shoulders start to shake. She lifts her hand only to clench it in a fist and let it fall back to her side.

  Then she’s leaving.

  “Monroe, wait!” I lunge for the door just as she grabs the handle.

  “Wait!” I call out the words I didn’t even bother shouting after Fleur. “Please, wait. Just wait. I...I...”

  “I know,” she murmurs, still facing the door. “You can’t.”

  Then she’s gone.

  She’s gone, and I’m alone.

  The first thing I notice, once I’m actually able to notice anything at all, is how quiet the condo is. I’m standing exactly where she left me, arms braced at my sides with my eyes fixed on the door, when the utter emptiness of the room strikes me. The air conditioning hums, a pipe gurgles, and my pulse thuds in my ears. The scratch of Madame Bovary’s nails on the floor is so loud it makes me jump. She nudges my pant leg, and with the distractedness of someone locked in a trance, I bend forward to pet her, still staring at the door.

  This is my life: a condo without any photos on the walls and a dog who sometimes doesn’t even get out of her bed when I come home. This is my busy, impo
rtant, successful, safe, and empty life.

  I never knew how hollow it all was until I learned what it was like to be filled.

  Madame Bovary leaves me to trot over to the kitchen, and I straighten back up. I move my gaze from the closed door to my pocket and pull out my phone.

  I’m not going back to this life. I can’t, and with a dull sort of surprise, I realize I know exactly what I have to do next.

  Eighteen

  Monroe

  DRAIN POUR: Slang term used by beer brewers and tasters to indicate a beer of subpar quality not fit for consumption

  “Thank you all for coming in today. I know noon is the equivalent of the crack of dawn for a lot of you.”

  A ripple of laughter passes through Taverne Toulouse’s staff where they’re all crowded around a few of the cable spool tables, but the sound dies quickly, crushed by the heaviness in the air.

  “As many of you know, the bar has had some struggles this year. Winter was hard on sales, and we’re still busting our asses just to meet last year’s targets even now. I know working in a place where your hours are being cut and your coworkers are being let go is far from enjoyable, and I’m sorry you’ve all had to go through that. I just want to let you know how much I appreciate your work ethic and enthusiasm despite the circumstances. Even with all the bad things, there’s never been a day when I wasn’t happy to come to work, and that’s because of you guys. Thank you.”

  DeeDee lets out a whoop before bringing her hands together and leading the group in a round of applause. I want to smile at their cheering, at the way several of them shout, “No, thank you!” over the noise, but this is only making it harder to do what I have to do next.

  “Many of you have worked here for years,” I continue, “but no matter when you started, you’ve all come to be part of what makes this place so...so special to me.” Oh god, I’m breaking down already. I had a formal speech all prepared—something suitably brief and businesslike to keep me from totally losing it in front of my staff, but I’m already going off book. “We’ve had a good run. I couldn’t ask for better.”