Drew

The winter slumped its way into a cold, wet, slushy, gray March. The season hung around Drew’s neck like a dead fish. The sky and the earth matched his mood. Nothing looked good. Nothing tasted good. Nothing smelled good.

He had tried to move on. He had told himself over and over again that it was no use. He could not control the beast. He would only end up destroying the woman he loved.

Alice came outside the shop less often to sniff at his crude beer names on his sidewalk board. He had even thrown a raucous Fat Tuesday party, but it felt hollow. There was nobody around to march across the street and yell at him like a misbehaving school boy. Even Stubby was a little less into his job at attracting the pretty ladies to the pub.

In fact, Drew was seeing less and less of Alice bustling around the coffee shop. She seemed to have been hiring a whole lot of interesting new baristas and delegating all the work to them. This was the only thing that kept him from closing up his pub and retreating into a hole of despair. He didn’t like those guys. He could tell each and every one of them were vampires. He wondered what they were after. Despite his melancholy, he stayed alert.

So what if she wouldn’t listen to him. So what if she wouldn’t even come three feet from him. But he would be damned if he would let anything happen to his girl. Because that’s what she was. Even if they couldn’t be together, he’d rather live in this torment protecting her until she died than off himself for his own peace and rest.

Eventually it was time for the spring equinox, and they could no longer avoid each other. The Sisters were once again putting on a big to-do, and all the downtown boosters were going to have to participate.

Drew was not looking forward to it, but Jenny, his surrogate sister and head server at the pub, insisted he get out. “I’m tired of seeing your bummed-out face. You’re bumming out the regulars. Get out. Go. Have fun. Go talk to her and then get laid,” she said.

If only he could.

He pulled his hat down over his brow and wandered to the town square to grudgingly help do whatever last-minute thing needed to be done. Volunteers were buzzing around the square. After the Samhain and lunar eclipse brouhaha last fall, it was decided that the equinox would be a low-key affair. It was still cold and slushy out in late March, so the town leaders decided to commemorate the spring equinox by prepping all the empty flower beds on the square, followed by s’mores and a weenie roast after christening the new community fire pit. It was a small fire pit, and not at all conducive to brainwashed villagers erecting stakes on which to burn witches.

Drew was about to look around for a shovel to start turning over some dirt when someone handed him a flyer.

He looked down and saw a hand he recognized immediately.

“Hi,” he said, feeling dumb.

“Nice of you to join us at zero hour. We could use some help with the sound system at the coffee shop.”

“Sure,” he said with a nod. “After you.”

Once inside Kava, Alice gestured over to the stage. Drew looked. It was a pretty modest set up.

“It’s not Foo Fighters, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said. “Think folk, bluegrass, poetry, and…what did you call it? Oh yeah. Vagina music. So, I guess, try not to turn it up to 11. Lots of old people coming out tonight.”

Drew smiled at her. Goddess, she looked more beautiful than ever. “I take it that includes me?”

She gave him a hint of a smirk, but her pride shut it down. Still, it was something.

“I don’t know if you’d be at all interested. It’s another open mic night. We’re going to do some healing spells on the down low, put it in some smoothies, and give people a safe space to come up to the mic and do whatever they want.”

He grinned at her. “You still trying to push the hippie-dippy stuff?”

She huffed. “Come. Don’t come. Whatever you want. I just thought…you could use some healing. If you’re not too busy at Stubby’s trying to blast everybody’s eardrums out.”

It wasn’t intended to hurt. In fact, he was sure she was inviting him as a gesture of kindness, but it may as well have been a holy relic stabbed right into his heart.

He watched Alice walk away and he got lost in thought. There wasn’t a party going on at Stubby’s tonight. It had been more than a month since Drew had tried brewing anything new or thought of any reason to celebrate. He had even let Saint Patrick’s Day come and go without a drunken celebration. A sacrilege for a bar owner, to be sure. He was hemorrhaging money and he didn’t care. Jenny should take over; the place needed a younger face and a hipper sensibility anyway. Maybe then it would attract a more savory customer base that the other downtown boosters would appreciate. Yep. His time was up. Drew was played out.