Remembering Us by Stacey Lynn

slide into the booth. “Didn’t we like, just graduate? They’re not any different are they?”
    Kelsey waves her hand dismissively. “These are the kids who have nothing better to do than get wasted all day and all night. Trust me,” she says while pointing to three couples at the end of the bar. The girls are wearing what looks like matching dresses and the guys all have khaki shorts, flips flops, and button down shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Good god, did they all plan their outfits?
    “They’ve been here since noon. Seven hours of non-stop drinking, and if those girls don’t get out of here soon, I’m liable to kick ‘em out just because they’re blonde and stupid.”
    I look at Kelsey, but her eyes are narrowed in their direction. Except the girls aren’t paying attention to their drinks or their dates anymore. They’re leaning so far over the bar in order to get Zander’s attention that their boobs are hanging on the bar.
    I blink and think I might actually see a hint of nipple.
    These girls … they seem so familiar. The realization hits me as I gasp and look at Kelsey. Those girls are me. Or at least who I tried to go back to being the other week with the preppy little dresses and designer sandals. And the boys? They’re walking mirror images of Tyler.
    The girls giggle and flip their hair and I’m reminded of the first frat party Kelsey and I went to our freshman year. We thought just because we were rich, dressed right, and knew we were at least halfway decent looking, we could have anything – anyone – we wanted.
    These girls have the same energy to them. And I despise them. Something inside me wants to walk up to them and shake them. Shake the sense into them that they’re better than this, they’re better than the act, and to grow the fuck up.
    Except what kind of hypocrite does that make me?
    “This is some place,” I say, looking around the small bar and turning away from the trio of perfection at the bar. I can’t handle the way it makes me feel to see them. To know I used to be them but not know how I freed myself from the lure of wealth and entitlement. “How did Zander end up owning it?”
    “His grandpa used to own it, but he died a few months back.”
    While she’s talking, she doesn’t take her eyes off Zander. He’s almost as good looking as Adam, but in an even rougher way.
    Where Adam looks like an Abercrombie model that stepped into darkness or messed around in it for a while, Zander looks like he’s lived the darkness and barely broken through the other side. His left arm has a full sleeve of tattoos, one side of his top lip has a small piercing, and his black hair is cropped short. He looks part military, part bad-ass, with a hint of rockstar in him.
    And he’s with Kelsey. My beautiful friend who doesn’t – or didn’t – trust anyone not to hurt her, is currently looking at him like he just reached up and hung the moon in the sky just for her.
    “He doesn’t seem like the bartending type.” He looks too rough to tend bar. More like he’d fit in better in the back booth swinging back shots of Jack Daniels and willing to kick anyone’s ass who tried to get him to move.
    “He’s not,” Kelsey says softly, admirably. “But his loyalty to his grandpa runs deep and there was no way he’d give this place up to anyone else.”
    I feel like we’re all sitting around our table, mesmerized by the rough looking guy behind the bar. He’s so contradictory. His tattoos and piercing give him a rough shape that says he can handle his own, the smile for the ladies say he can take care of them if they ask nice enough, but the coldness in his eyes – the look that doesn’t change when he smiles or growls – says maybe he’s just a little bit lost himself.
    “What about his parents?” I ask, taking a sip of my rum and coke.
    The only indication Adam heard me over the music blaring from the speakers is a slight twitch by his nose. “They’re worthless fuckers.