Chapter 3: Whiskey Sours & Stolen Glances
The Anchor felt like a held breath, dense and waiting. Sticky wooden floors creaked underfoot, each step a tiny complaint. Flickering neon beer signs buzzed like tired fireflies behind the bar, casting a sickly blue and red glow over the assembled faces. The air was a permanent soup of stale whiskey, salted peanuts from broken shells under tables, and the faint, damp hint of rain leaking through a crack somewhere in the ceiling.
Ethan spotted Liv first, a safe harbor in the crowded room. She’d saved two stools at a small, scarred table near the back, far from the low stage. He slid onto one, the wood still warm from someone else.
“You made it,” Liv said, pushing a sweating glass of dark beer toward him. “How’s the heart?”
“What?”
“Your paper. Your ‘post-modern whatever’ paper that was killing you.” She gave him a look that said she wasn’t buying a word of it.
“Right. It’s… fine.” He took a long pull of the beer. It was bitter and cheap.
“She’s over there,” Liv said, nodding with her chin toward the front.
He didn’t want to look, but his eyes betrayed him. Mia was near the stage, surrounded by a cluster of art school people. She was still in the pink dress, the feather earring catching the neon light every time she moved her head. She was laughing at something a guy in a paint-splattered denim jacket said, but her body was angled toward the empty stage, anticipating.
Liam’s band was setting up. Liam himself was adjusting a microphone stand, his long brown hair falling over his face. He said something to his drummer and laughed, a loud, easy sound that cut through the murmur of the room. He looked utterly at home.
“I don’t know why I came,” Ethan muttered.
“Because you’re a glutton for punishment,” Liv said, not unkindly. She squeezed his forearm. “And because you said you would.”
The band started without ceremony, a few chords of feedback, a count-in. It was decent, standard indie rock stuff. Liam had a good voice, raspy and confident. He played rhythm guitar, closing his eyes on the higher notes. Mia watched him, her smile soft and fixed. She held a bottle of beer by the neck, not drinking.
Ethan focused on the feeling of the cold glass in his hand, the pattern of water rings on the table. He counted them. He listened to Liv’s commentary on the bass player’s terrible posture. He did anything but watch the stage.
Halfway through the set, the energy shifted. The band finished a song, and there was scattered applause. Liam leaned into the mic. “This next one’s a new one. Really new. Like, finished-it-today new.”
The drummer gave a soft roll on the cymbals.
“It’s for someone special,” Liam said, and his eyes found Mia in the crowd. A spotlight, weak and hazy with dust, found her too. She blinked, a blush visible even in the multicolored gloom. Her free hand came up, almost touching her feather earring.
Ethan’s stomach dropped through the sticky floor.
Liam strummed a single, clean chord. The chatter in the room died down. He began to play a simpler, acoustic melody, and the band fell in behind him, quieter now. The song was slower, a love song. The lyrics were about a flash of pink in a gray room, a feather that carried a smile, a taste that lingered. They were simple. They were obvious. They were a direct hit.
Liv’s hand found Ethan’s under the table. She squeezed, hard. Her grip was an anchor, but he was adrift, sinking.
On the word “lipstick,” Liam’s eyes locked with Mia’s. She mouthed something. From across the room, Ethan read her lips perfectly.
This is us.
The world telescoped down to that single point of connection between them: the singer on the stage and the girl in the pink dress, lit up by a song built for her. The sickly-sweet taste of the whiskey in Ethan’s beer soured on his tongue. He felt his facial muscles contract into something that was supposed to be a smile. It felt like a crack in dry earth.
The song ended. The applause was louder now, warmer. Someone whooped. Mia was beaming, her face tipped up toward the stage like a flower to a brutal sun. Liam gave a humble little shrug from the stage, but his grin was triumphant.
Ethan stood up. The stool legs scraped loudly against the floor.
“Ethan,” Liv said, her voice low.
“Air,” he managed to say. It wasn’t a lie. The room had run out of oxygen. He couldn’t watch her go up to him after the set, couldn’t watch him kiss her, tasting the lipstick, in front of everyone. A public confirmation of a private truth he’d seen by the dark water.
He pushed through the crowd, a stone moving against the current. The damp night outside hit his face, a relief and a shock. He walked, fast, with no destination. The echo of the song chased him, the ghost of her mouth forming This is us.
He ended up on a cold bench by the bus depot, under the harsh white glow of a security light. The notebook was in his backpack. He didn’t take it out. He just sat, letting the numbness settle over the raw edges.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Once. Twice. He pulled it out.
A message from Mia, timestamped just minutes ago.
Mia: You left! Where’d you go? The song was amazing. Li is on cloud nine. You okay?
He stared at the words. You okay? The question he’d asked her in her dorm, that she’d deflected. He could picture her, phone in hand, tucked into some corner of The Anchor, maybe near the buzzing bathroom sign. A tiny frown of concern for her friend, even as the high of the dedication still sang in her veins.
He typed a reply. Deleted it. Typed another.
Ethan: Had a headache. Tell Liam the song was good.
He hit send before he could dissect the lie. The headache was real, a pounding press behind his eyes, but it wasn’t the reason. The reason was currently wearing a feather earring and living inside a new love song.
A minute passed. Then his screen lit up again.
Mia: He’ll be glad you liked it. Get some rest. Talk tomorrow?
Ethan: Yeah. Tomorrow.
He put the phone away, screen down. He sat until the security light flickered off with a final, decisive click, plunging him into the deeper dark of the approaching night. The echo of the song was gone, replaced by a quieter, more terrible sound: the silence of a space he was no longer sure he occupied.