It was hot, too many bodies crammed in the room, and the night was only getting started. Lucy pulled her black silk top away from her skin where it clung with sweat, and billowed it out from her body a couple times. Scanning the crowd from where she stood by the outdoor bar, she couldn’t find Jenny, who had said she’d be right back, almost fifteen minutes ago. The music reverberated in Lucy’s chest as she swirled the slim red straw in her Dark and Stormy, the ice nearly melted with the heat of the room and her hand holding the glass. Stabbing the lime floating lazily in her drink, she brought it to her mouth and sucked out the juice and some of the pulp.
The Madison Avenue Pub was a local watering hole near the university—three old mansions that had been combined and converted into a bar and English-style pub where students drank too much and made memories they’d reminisce about for years to come. It was a maze of rooms connected by grungy, maroon-carpet-covered staircases, with a huge wooden deck off the back that was usually teeming with students on weekends.
Tonight Jenny and Lucy were meeting up with some other friends, and Lucy had heard Evan McAllister—a guy she was interested in but didn’t know well yet—was also coming. Evan and Lucy had flirted at another bar night similar to this one and had run into each other a few times on campus. They were also in the same psychology class, though there were four hundred people in the class, but Evan always waved and smiled when he saw her. There was chemistry between them for sure—at least enough for a few nights of fun, and at twenty-one, Lucy was all about fun.
“That’s a mistake,” someone said, and Lucy looked up from her glass to the guy standing in front of her. Clearly intoxicated—bleary-eyed, body swaying slightly, damp hair stuck to his forehead—but with a nice smile, dimples on either side piercing his cheeks. Lucy wasn’t short at five foot six, but this guy had only a couple inches on her. He also seemed a few years older, maybe a graduate student.
“Sorry?” Lucy replied, unsure if he was actually talking to her or not.
“Eating the lime. They never wash the fruit before it goes in the drinks,” he said, shouting to be heard over the cacophony of voices and music. He pointed over her shoulder at one of the bartenders preparing a row of cocktails. “See?” he said. “He’s grabbing those slices with his bare hands. And who knows where those hands have been.” He raised his eyebrows, swayed a little more and held up his own hands while somehow managing to keep a grip on his beer bottle.
“Thanks for the tip.” Lucy set the lime peel on the bar’s countertop and grimaced as she watched the bartender wipe his sweating brow with the back of his hand before slinging fruit slices into drinks.
The guy gave a sloppy wave, as if to say, Happy to help.
Then he squinted at her, leaned in enough she instinctually leaned back, if for no other reason because of the waft of alcohol following his breath. “Have we met before?”
Lucy had to laugh. “Has that line ever worked for you?” She sipped from her watered-down drink, missing the lime.
“Not really,” he said, looking sheepish. “But seriously, you do look familiar.”
“I hear that a lot,” she said, which was true. With her shoulder-length bob and all-black outfit, she in fact looked like at least seventy percent of the women in this very bar. The guy shifted then, and one of the spotlights illuminated his shirt. It was navy, with a white arrow pointing up toward his chin and Keep Calm and Kiss the Groom emblazoned on the front.
“Nice shirt,” Lucy said, gesturing to his chest. “How’s that working for you tonight?”
He tugged out the shirt as if he was noticing it for the first time, then read it upside down. “Not much better than the line, if I’m being honest,” he said, and they both laughed. Then he jumped in a semicircle so she could see the back of it, which he tried to read over his shoulder. “What does it say? They wouldn’t let me look.”
Hi, my name is Daniel.
If I’m too drunk and seem lost, please call me a cab.
(There’s twenty dollars and my address pinned inside this shirt.)
She laughed, and he asked again what it said, but she told him it was the same as the front. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Lucy.” She held out a hand and he shook it. “And I’m guessing you’re Daniel.”
“I am,” he said. “Wait, how did you know?”
She shrugged, smiling. “Lucky guess.”
He nodded as though that was a perfectly acceptable answer and pointed to her nearly empty drink. “Well, Lucy, can I buy you another?”
“Sure. Thanks,” she said. “Dark and Stormy. This time without the lime, I guess.”
“Coming right up.” A few minutes later he was back with her drink, and one for him, as well. “I’ve never had one of these. What’s in it?”
“Dark rum, ginger beer and lime juice.”
“Hmm, sounds good,” he said before trying a sip. Then another. He gave a long blink, swayed a little again. “You have good taste in cocktails, Lucy.”
“Thanks?” Lucy laughed again and wondered about Daniel’s story. He was engaged, if his T-shirt was to be believed, but he seemed to have forgotten that detail as he flirted with Lucy and sucked back his drink.
A group of ten or so guys, all wearing navy blue shirts that read Team Groom, engulfed Daniel and dragged him laughing back out into the dark sea of people. He waved as he went, and Lucy gave him a wave back right as Jenny returned, bumping their shoulders together. She handed her another drink and Lucy immediately took the skewered lime out of the glass and lined it up beside the other one on the bar.
“Who are you waving at?” Jenny asked.
“Some guy named Daniel. He seemed to know a lot about bar limes and is apparently getting married soon.”
“You know, you might have better luck if you stick with the single ones,” Jenny said.
Lucy rolled her eyes. “So where have you been?”
Jenny sipped her own drink. “I ran into Jackson.”
“Jackson?” Lucy asked, trying to remember which one he was. “English lit Jackson?”
“No, that’s Jack. This is CrossFit Jackson,” Jenny replied, a contented smile spreading over her lips.
Right. Jenny’s latest fitness craze was CrossFit, and Jackson was one of the guys who ran a few classes a week out of the university’s gym. He was muscled in a way that made Lucy both curious and concerned, and Jenny had been going to a lot of classes lately.
“He’s here with a few other guys. Thought we might want to join them?” She gave Lucy a hopeful look, and Lucy glanced at her watch. With every passing minute she was getting drunker and less certain Evan was going to show. Jenny covered the watch face with her hand and shook her head. “Nope. No. You do not get to pull the ‘It’s getting late, I’m going to cab it home’ thing.” She puffed out her cheeks, gave Lucy her best annoyed pout. “It’s barely midnight. You promised fun-Lucy tonight.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “I’m all yours tonight. Fun-Lucy is ready for anything.” She gulped the drink Daniel had bought her, the burn of the alcohol and sharp ginger mingling uncomfortably in her mouth with the cold of the ice cubes. Crunching the ice with her teeth, she set her now-empty glass on the bar beside the fallen lime soldiers, picked up the drink Jenny had brought her and pointed into the crowd. “Let’s go find Jackson and his shockingly fit friends.”
Jenny smiled and kissed her on the cheek, then grabbed her hand, and Lucy let herself be pulled deep into the pulsing sea of bodies. Later, she would run into Daniel again. They would literally bump up against each other on the too-small dance floor and Lucy would fall right on her ass. He would crouch in front of her, not so drunk he wasn’t horrified to have knocked her over, and Lucy would laugh at his clumsy attempts to help her up, then let him buy her drinks with the twenty dollars from inside his shirt. She would learn he was a few years older, a soon-to-be lawyer currently articling, and was getting married in a couple of weeks.
Lucy would give him her number because she had had too much to drink and was young and single and didn’t care whether or not that was appropriate. And a month later Daniel would call her, out of the blue while she was studying for midterms—now dating Evan, even though she liked the idea of him a lot more than the reality, as it would turn out—and he would ask her out for a drink. He and his fiancée had broken up before the wedding. Lucy never asked why, only if it was for good (it was, he said), and if he was okay with it (which he assured her he was).
Three weeks later Lucy was Daniel London’s girlfriend.