Chapter Text
Why the fuck anybody wanted to hang out at a bar when the beach was right there, Julie didn’t know.
Maybe it was the fact that she’d grown up on the beach that made her think that. It had been the Florida coast, and not California, sure, but she didn’t think it made much of a difference. If anything, it should’ve been even more appealing here, where the San Diego air didn’t feel like walking through soup when you stepped outside. The water was glittering, the sand was soft, and the beach near the military base was emptier than any she’d seen in years.
And yet here she was, sitting with a bunch of cohorts at a bar, with her back against a jukebox that was blaring out some garbage Foghat song.
The bar was cute, to be fair. The cups hanging from the ceiling were a nice touch, and she and her classmates had gotten a free round from some schmutz who’d left his phone on the bar. The bartender was nice, and it was less rowdy than she would’ve expected for a Friday night at a military bar, even with the group playing pool in the corner.
They had, of course, picked this place in an attempt to pick up Navy men, but that was beside the point.
There was a version of tonight where Julie had had the balls to say she wasn’t interested in going out. There was a copy of her in the multiverse somewhere that was able to admit to her classmates that she couldn’t afford to split an Uber, much less several rounds of overpriced drinks. In some universe somewhere, she was back at home, at her little seaside apartment, entertaining herself with another Stephen King novel instead of people-watching.
Not that the people weren’t interesting. Granted, they mostly looked the same, all the officers in their identical beige uniforms, but they had their quirks. Some tall, some short, some so loud she could hear their conversations from across the room. It was a real melting pot, to use the exhausted expression, of anyone and everyone that had ever washed up in San Diego for one reason or another.
They just weren’t as interesting as the beach.
She wondered if she could get away with sneaking outside when Mel and Syd weren’t looking. She’d heard rumors of horseshoe crabs washing up earlier in the day, and she wanted to take a look. Maybe chuck off the uncomfortable jean shorts she was wearing and strip down to the surf suit she wore underneath, take a dive while she had the time.
The back door was right there, just past the officers playing pool, and beyond that were the stairs down to the sand. If she pointed her classmates in the right direction, towards the hot lieutenants currently doing shots at the bar, she could sneak off and go for a swim. If she found a couple of ancient-looking sea creatures in the process, even better.
But then Mel grabbed her arm and dragged her back into the conversation, and the idea died in her head.
The conversation went over her head, something about Syd’s roommate’s marine botany lab that she didn’t understand. She nodded politely and interjected when she could, but she could see the glassy look in her friends’ eyes; the combination of cute boys and good alcohol was doing them in. They weren’t about to start discussing their theses any time soon.
At least she had the jukebox to keep her company. Whoever had loaded it up last had paid for quite a few songs, slowly rotating through a mix of 70s yacht rock her dad would’ve loved. The old thing must’ve been full of that — the chrome on it told her the model was at least late ‘80s, if not older — and she listened along to the sound of Hall & Oates and Kenny Loggins, occasionally interspersed by a rogue comment about seaweed.
Personally, she’d’ve been a little more discerning. Too many years as the lone emo kid in a sweaty Tampa suburb gave her a…well, a specific taste that veered away from the sounds normally present on the yachts she could see from her apartment window. Little more Tears for Fears, little less Toto. But that was just her.
She wondered if they had any Duran Duran in there. She hadn’t paid too much attention to what had been playing when they’d arrived, before Syd had started making eyes at a lieutenant who was attractive in the influencer sense (that is to say, the too-perfect-for-his-own-good sense) and her mind had wandered. The Hard Deck — that was the name of the bar, she was fairly certain — didn’t seem like the kind of place for it.
Then again, she hadn’t been in a place with a jukebox since that random Waffle House in Tucson two years ago, so what did she know?
Mel and Syd (and the Navy boy Syd had picked up) had gone to the bar to grab another round when someone finally came up to change the tune. The 70s rock had faded out, and all that was left in the interim was the dull roar of a Friday night crowd, full of Navy lieutenants and tourists and college girls looking to sleep with said Navy lieutenants for a story to tell. It was buzzy, but not ideal for the energy the owner was probably looking to put out.
Julie wasn’t paying attention when he walked up, too focused on draining the last of her drink so she’d have an excuse to bail when her classmates eventually came back. She noticed the Navy uniform, the service khakis snagging the corner of her vision with their blandness. A kind of simplicity that stood out against the colorfulness of the bar, of the other patrons — hell, of her own hair, the faded pink that was brushing down into her eyes.
It was that that dragged her eyes away from her glass, pulled her eyes up until she was looking into the face of a guy her age, maybe a little older. He looked like something off one of the Navy postcards she saw in the gift shops littering the Fightertown boardwalk, a vintage example of the perfect sailor. Perfect hair, innocent face, pretty blue eyes that would’ve stopped her dead had they not be aimed so thoroughly at the floor.
She’d noticed him earlier, when her eyes kept drifting to that back door wondering if she should just make a run for it. He was tall but didn’t look it, the way his shoulders slumped forward to hide how well he was built. He curled in on himself, almost — at least compared to his opponent at the pool table, who strutted around with all the subtlety of a peacock during mating season. He was shy, if Julie had to guess it, but not insecure.
Wire-rimmed glasses hid his eyes when they reflected off the light, but Julie noticed how observant they were — the same way she noticed how big his arms were, though his posture seemed determined to hide it. He didn’t lack purpose, nor discipline, and he wasn’t bad looking, especially compared to the frat boy reject Syd had chosen.
She watched as he put all his energy into looking at the jukebox, eyes scanning the outdated songs carefully as one hand pressed at the machine’s buttons almost absentmindedly.
She couldn’t help herself.
“At what point are they going to realize you’re hustling them, do you think?”
She made her voice loud enough to be heard, buoyed by some vodka cranberries and the confidence that she’d never see this guy again after tonight. Her eyes scanned over the ribbons on his chest before making their way up to his face, where she was met with a slightly stunned expression as he turned her way. No doubt he’d had no idea she was there at all.
He didn’t say anything, the place between his brows creased by what Julie assumed was worry. She shrugged.
“Nobody shoots pool like that unless they know the game front to back.”
She pointed a lazy finger towards the pool table, where the stranger’s opponent was re-racking for another game. In her infinite quest to entertain herself, she’d watched him played, and it had taken all of thirty seconds for her to recognize the trick. Whoever he was was taking advantage of that small stature of his, playing dumb while he pushed the game exactly in the direction he wanted. No one seemed to be the wiser, particularly not the hotshot he’d been playing against, who was too busy boasting to notice every time this stranger’s eyes narrowed, something deeper ticking behind his eyes.
He was shy, but he knew what he was doing.
“You’re bleeding them dry.”
She smiled at him, like it was funny — because it was. Still, he said nothing, staring at her with an expression just adjacent to a deer in headlights. A cat when you slam a door, maybe. Or a spooked horse.
Nah, he was nicer looking than that.
“It’s kinda funny, actually.”
A tiny, strategically placed laugh slipped out of her — something to oil the joints, encourage the attractive stranger to say something, that she wasn’t trying to scare him. She always forgot how she looked when she tried to flirt — neon hair, big eyes, surf suit that looked like Rainbow Brite had thrown up on her. Compared to him, she was a child’s playroom, messy and colorful and untempered.
Him? He was a perfect show home, marred only by the way he ran a hand through that perfect hair of his when she laughed.
He nodded a couple of times, and Julie was almost convinced he was doing it to kickstart his own brain. The shock slipped off his face a bit, though not entirely as he opened his mouth once, twice, three times as he figured out what to say.
“Phoenix—my pilot—she bet me I could get through a whole night without them realizing I know how to play.”
He hooked a thumb back towards his game, and Julie nodded. He had the tiniest bit of a southern accent — coastal southern, not Texas southern. She’d’ve guessed the Carolinas, or maybe Louisiana. Barely there, but noticeable if you knew what to look for.
“Clearly she was right.”
She let her laugh settle into what she hoped was an inviting smile, leaning til she was angled more towards him instead of the bar. If Mel and Syd came back now, she was fucked. They’d scare him off, with their bombastic words and inability to be quiet for more than forty-five seconds. She loved them, really, she did, but she was barely reining in her own bad habits after drinks that were too cheap for their own good.
It took tact to talk to boys like this — a talent Julie liked to pride herself on.
“Who’s the looker?”
She nodded towards the stranger’s friends, towards his opponent, and she noticed the way his face fell a bit as he followed her eyes — the shocked look was gone, replaced by something a little sadder.
She furrowed her brow. That certainly hadn’t been a compliment . At least, not for said looker.
“He’s total shit,” she muttered, letting her voice slip just a bit. “Worried too much about those fancy trick shots to notice you’re kicking his ass.”
She waved her hands in the air, bracelets clinking together and rings chattering like thrown dice. She probably looked like a right dick, but whoever this guy was was at least nice enough not to mention it.
“I think he’s more concerned with impressing his girlfriend.”
He shrugged, the look on his face shifting more towards impassive. Julie glanced back over at the group, where said hotshot was currently setting up yet another of the complex trick shots she’d been watching him do all night. There were two women in the tiny group her stranger had come from — both the same size, both looking at the hotshot with equal amounts of amusement and disdain.
“The one in the tank top,” she asked, “Or the one in the uniform?”
The stranger shrugged, like the answer was obvious.
“Tank top.”
“Mm.”
She watched the group for a brief moment — ah, there it was, the way Hotshot slipped a hand around Tank Top’s waist and pressed a kiss to her temple.
Huh. She wouldn’t have taken him for a dating guy.
“Still shit though.”
She slipped out of her chair then, letting the look on the stranger’s face that she was curious to explore guide her until she was standing next to him, staring into the yellowed face of the jukebox, trying her hardest not to stare at his hands as they flipped through various options even as they spoke.
“Whatcha playing?”
Her voice was playful, curious. Soft enough that it wouldn’t shock him into silence like she had the first time — just enough to put the ball in his court. She was employing all the tact she had left, just to pull more words out of him. Just to hear that faint accent again, see if she could pin it down to a particular place.
She could feel where her hip pressed into his, and if she hadn’t been so focused on his response, she’d’ve noticed that he didn’t shy from it, didn’t ask her to move away despite only having met a moment earlier.
“John Denver.”
He nodded, like he had to convince himself of his own answer as he pointed into the player at an old record ready to be queued up. Julie smiled. The man had taste.
“Anything in particular?” she asked. He shook his head.
“Nah, just…reminds me of home, I guess.”
He made a noncommittal gesture with the hand that wasn’t still on the controls, and a part of Julie’s mind was curious about what he meant by home . Clearly it was cozy, if the choice of John Denver was anything. She couldn’t see the label on the record, but she’d put money on hearing the opening chords of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” soon enough.
He was definitely Carolina southern, she decided. Maybe Charlotte, that western edge that poked out against Tennessee. He had that air about him.
She watched as it pulsed off of him, radiant in that way that only people who belonged in someone’s life could see. It was hiding under a layer of shyness, itself buried alongside the skill that came with being in the Navy. It didn’t seem like those two things should be able to coexist, Julie thought, and she was so busy considering it that the separation of her side from his shocked her when he suddenly turned to face her, one hand pushed sheepishly out in front of him.
“Bob Floyd.”
His words were automatic, and Julie could tell it was the name he gave everyone, the stock military response he could offer to COs and civilians alike. Clean-cut, easy, even despite the shy way he was looking at her, like he was embarrassed to have diverted the conversation away from the jukebox.
She wondered what she’d done to earn his name, other than probably scare the living daylights out of him.
Ah, fuck it. Who cares why. Mel and Syd took diving leaps with less.
“Julie James.”
She accepted the hand before she could think too hard about it, figuring there was no harm in giving her full name too. Worst case scenario, she never saw him again, and he could stalk her Instagram profile if he got a little too bored back on base.
The comments she’d always gotten about having “piano player hands” came to mind when she saw hers in his, her thin fingers dwarfed by his larger ones. She barely registered the firmness of his handshake — Navy regulation, she figured — as she glanced back up at him before her eyes could linger too long.
“They call you anything, Bob?”
She tilted her head at him, curious — or maybe just to chuck the particular kind of thought she’d been forming out of her head. Her eyes moved from the stranger’s to their joined hands and back, and she noticed he glanced at the floor a lot between sentences.
But his hand lingered in hers just a second too long. She noticed that too.
“Oh.”
He nodded once, twice, then smiled a little as he finally let go.
“Well, they—my full name’s Robert, but usually I just go by Bob.”
A soft laugh escaped Julie then.
“I meant your callsign,” she said. “Been trying to see how many I can collect while I’m here.”
That was the game she played to entertain herself when Mel and Syd brought her out as their emotional support third wheel. She talked to seamen, chatted them up, added the silly nicknames they gave each other to the mental tally in her head. She’d picked up a good number in the few times she’d been to this bar, each one more ridiculous than the last. She wondered what this one’s would be.
But then he was silent for a long moment, and Julie realized in the way he looked to the floor again that he’d already answered her question.
“Oh!”
Her hands came up in the kind of flapping motion indicative of surprise, floating in the air to make up for the fact that she didn’t know what to say. She was her own percussion section, an accompaniment to out-of-tune lyrics as she realized the mistake she’d made.
“Oh. Okay.”
She nodded, her hands unable to find a place to rest.
“That’s cute.”
You’re cute.
The thought electrified the front of her brain, and for a brief moment, she wondered if she’d gone a little too overboard with the vodka. It zapped at her nerves suddenly and strongly, like she’d never had so much conviction about another person in her life. It flooded her veins and made her a little dizzy with impact, and she was lucky he was still glancing away from her as he pressed play on the cozy little John Denver song he’d picked.
Because he was cute. Compared to the men her cohorts were practically climbing all over, he was downright adorable. Like the soldiers she’d see in old military snapshots or news reels at the library. Pleasant, warm, without the inevitable attitude hiding underneath. There very well could have been one behind those wire frames, but Julie couldn’t see it, not beyond the way his eyes went a little wide at her comment, a smile crossing his face before he could bite it back.
He made her feel…safe. Appreciated, even for just the few seconds of conversation she’d given him.
And suddenly she wanted more than just those few seconds.
“Well, Just Bob, you wanna play a round with somebody who stands a chance against you?”
She gestured back to the pool table, where Hotshot had given up and the rest of Bob’s friends were just lounging now, still holding pool cues but not bothering to do anything with them. One glance told her Mel and Syd were very preoccupied with the petty officer they’d picked up at the bar – she finally had her opportunity to make an escape.
Bob, meanwhile, was back to looking a little stunned. Julie wondered if that was just the default expression for his face as he finally looked back at her.
“You play?” he asked. Julie nodded.
“I was a loner in college,” she said. “Got really good at playing on the pool table in the dorm lobby.”
The fact slipped out of her mouth before she could rein it in. So much embarrassment that she just let rip, simply because this boy looked like someone she could trust. It came out like she was discussing the weather or the way her drink tasted — casual, noncommittal.
Bob shook his head a bit, like he thought he’d misheard her.
“I’ve got a hard time believing that.”
He said it with a nervous little smile, his eyes flitting from her to the spinning record in the jukebox and back. It was gone as quickly as it came, and Julie chased after it with a laugh and a raised eyebrow.
“What, that I can play?”
“That you’d be a loner.”
There was the accent again, sliding in on the edge of that last word — loner . It was soft and sweet and lilting, like the water on the Carolina coast, where it poked inland and turned from waves to gentle waterways that lapped at your feet when you stood on the bank. It matched the sincerity on his face, which Julie was certain that boy couldn’t have faked if he tried.
“You’re sweet.”
The words hung in the air for a little bit, and if Julie had been a modest woman, she might’ve been a little embarrassed by them, by how coy they’d sounded. But she wasn’t, and so she swept them aside, too antsy to stand in silence for more than a few seconds.
“I win, I get to pick the next song on the jukebox.”
She made the leap and nudged his hip with hers, tapping one nail against the glass. She had no idea if there was even anything in the old thing she’d want to listen to, save maybe more John Denver, but she wanted to egg him on. Get him to keep talking — which he did.
“And if I win?”
“I dunno.” Julie shrugged. “What does Just-Bob Floyd want if not to humiliate his friends?”
She looked him up and down for a brief moment, wondering what the answer would be. Maybe he’d call it even and agree to a fight over the jukebox, or maybe something else. She wasn’t really sure what the options were, not on his home turf.
The beginnings of “Annie’s Song” buzzed in her ear as she considered the options, watching Bob’s eyes roam over her face. She could see where the tips of his ears had gone a little pink at the name she’d called him, and the pause between her words and his as he considered them was practically agonizing.
“If I win, I get to buy you a drink.”
Oh.
He ran a hand through his hair again, and Julie could see where the flush had crept from the tips of his ears down into his cheeks, coloring him pink like the ends of her brightly-colored hair.
Oh .
Now she was the one that was flustered.
“That’s…a little counterintuitive.”
Her voice had gone out from under her, like his words had shot her straight back to sober, all her buzzy confidence gone. The idea that her surf suit was suddenly a size too small was certainly imagined, but that was how she felt.
“You losing money if you win, I mean.”
It had been a long time since a guy had flattered her like that.
Guys didn’t buy her drinks, it didn’t happen. She was her friends’ scary dog, the one that went out to make sure men with bad intentions stayed away from the group. She was a wimp, sure, but it was a strategy that worked, and so she never had anyone make a move on her. She paid for her own drinks, to the detriment of her bank account, and guys didn’t look at her twice unless she made them.
Granted, she’d made Bob look at her, but he didn’t seem to mind meeting her gaze.
“I’ve won enough from the rest of them.”
He shrugged, still flushed but a little more confident in his words.
“I’ll break even.”
He offered her an arm, and Julie got the impression that Bob Floyd was not the kind of lieutenant that came to bars just to pick up girls.
And yet here they were.
She hoped it was just her imagination that was manifesting the feeling of Mel and Syd’s eyes on her back as she crossed the room, leaving their little table behind in favor of the sunshine bleeding in from the windows by the pool table. It was warmer over there, homier. She noticed Bob nod to the owner, a woman who was behind the bar chatting with an older Navy officer, but her attention was mostly focused on his group, who zeroed in on her presence before they’d even made it to their side of the room.
There were eight of them in all, including Bob, of varying ages and statures, all crowded around the pool table like they owned it. Regulars, obviously, by the way they acted, and Bob seemed to slip right in, the only barrier to entry being Julie tagging along behind him. She knocked against an invisible barrier made of their gazes, which slid over she and Bob with a mixture of shock and confusion, stopping her (and Bob) in her tracks at the edge of their little circle.
It was probably the hair, she figured.
She hoped she didn’t look too much like a try-hard as they all glanced at Bob, all too polite to ask the obvious question while she was standing in front of them. Instead, they all shot inquisitive looks at Bob — well, all except Hotshot, who looked her up and down with a puzzled look in his eye, one that Julie noticed Bob didn’t bother to meet.
“Who’s Ramona Flowers here?” he asked, pointing the hand that wasn’t holding his partner’s at Julie with one raised eyebrow. His gaze was curious, not lurid, and Julie noticed the man standing next to him mirroring it.
Yeah. Definitely the hair.
“Fighting for control of the jukebox,” she replied, not bothering to offer her name. “Friendly competition, that’s all.”
Friendly wasn’t exactly part of the equation, but the guy in front of her looked like he’d take any excuse to make a sarcastic comment, so she chose not to give him an in. Namely not with the way she was still holding on to Bob’s arm, which she promptly released in favor of accepting a pool cue from the lone woman in uniform.
“Nice to meet you.”
Julie nodded, suddenly self-conscious at her height and the bright colors of her surf suit compared to the tiny woman in front of her, who shot Bob a quick look that she didn’t bother hiding.
They tossed callsigns around, too many for her to remember all at once. She remembered the hotshot’s — Hangman, the woman in uniform said with disdain — and she remembered hers, only because Bob mentioned that she was the pilot he flew with. Phoenix . It seemed appropriate, given her badass energy. Julie had a handful of inches on her, but no doubt that the woman could hand her her own ass twice over if she wanted to, especially the way she talked to Bob like a brother, someone she cared about deeply.
She made a silent prayer she wouldn’t want to before Julie left.
Turns out, Hangman’s girlfriend — Nana something, with dark hair and intelligent eyes — was also a civilian, so Julie felt a little less like a fish out of water when she moved to rack her game with Bob. She smiled at Julie and asked if she could buy her a round, which she quietly refused with the wave of a hand. If she was going to play pool against a cute boy who knew the game inside out, she needed her faculties fully on her side.
They decided on nine-ball, since there was no hiding they both knew the game, not even from Hangman’s oblivious gaze. It had been a minute since Julie had played, but by the time they’d racked up and Nana had returned with shots for the rest of them, she’d mentally run through the rules, deciding that those were easier than facing the gaze of the other pilots, who were spectacularly bad at hiding their gossip to each other, even as she and Bob discussed the rules.
Bob Floyd certainly wasn’t the kind of guy who came to bars to pick up women, she decided. Not if the way his friends were looking at him was any indication.
He was still hiding his skill, she noticed once they got going — over-considering his shots, putting on a show even though she could tell he knew exactly how to counter her. It was as much a game as the set-up in front of the two of them, something he was playing as silently as he was his first few turns, too focused (or too nervous?) to risk screwing things up.
But it gave her an excuse to openly stare at his arms, so she wasn’t about to complain.
It wasn’t until they were a good ways into the game that either of them said anything, ears tuned to the conversations around them rather than supplying their own. Pitiful flirting technique, Julie knew, but there wasn’t a bone in her body that wasn’t competitive when it came down to it — especially not when you added tipsy hecklers into the mix.
“So what are you doing here?”
Bob said it without looking at her, and Julie wondered if it was his shy nature or just his focus. Either way, she frowned.
“Like, the bar,” she asked, “Or San Diego?”
Bob, finally, glanced up at her, nodding.
“Both.”
“Mm.”
She thought briefly back to how she’d gotten here. Her mind wandered back to the grueling years of undergrad in Tampa, and the two years working as a temp before she’d decided that yeah, she did actually want to use her degree. She thought about the long and painfully arduous road trip from Florida to California, with only the radio and her childhood teddy bear to keep her company. The trip that ended when she hit the ocean, where she had no friends beyond the ghost crabs that came out of the sand after dark.
But none of that was relevant now. At least, not if she didn’t want to scare anyone.
“Master’s degree,” she said instead. “UC San Diego.”
She lined up a shot, and watched as she bungled it, her mind too far away to focus.
“And as for the bar?” she mused. “Bunch’a cohorts dragged me out. Said they needed a third.”
Bob quirked an eyebrow at her rather than taking his shot — no doubt at the use of the word cohort .
“Classmates,” she explained flatly, suddenly a little self-conscious. “Dumb academic term.”
She pointed over towards the bar, where another officer had joined Mel and Syd and the one she’d sworn she’d heard them call Omaha. Bob’s gaze followed her hand, and she had to resist the urge to shy away when it traced back up her arm to her face. Not lingering, just…intentional. Like he wanted her to know he was paying attention to her words.
“Ah.” He bobbed his head once, halfway to a nod. “Sounds like these guys.”
Julie watched Phoenix frown and chuck a peanut from the bowl she was fishing from at her backseater’s head. It pinged off his shoulder instead, and he didn’t seem to notice it as he looked at her over his next shot, not even having to glance at the cue. Showoff.
“What are you doing here, Just-Bob Floyd?”
She leaned a hip against the table, clacking her nails against her cue. Admittedly, it was harder to play nine-ball with acrylics now than it had been with bare nails in college, but she wasn’t about to let that stop her – especially not when Bob was cracking a smile at her words, the first real, not nervous one she’d seen out of him since they’d met.
“Playing pool, obviously.”
Oh, he was better than he let on.
Julie giggled — she actually giggled at that. His words took her by surprise, and she almost fucked her next shot the way her shoulders shook, head dropping down to face the green of the table as she let the unexpected joy course through her.
“Ah, so the hustle is a living, then?”
“Part time.” He shrugged, and she could see how pleased he looked at having made her laugh. “I also teach at the Naval base.”
“He’s being modest,” one of the others broke in — a tall Black man, whose callsign she was fairly certain was Payback. “We’re Top Gun instructors.”
Top Gun. The name rang out in Julie’s head, familiar yet not familiar at all to her. She knew a little bit about it, living and working in a Navy town — Mel and Syd never shut the fuck up about it, how if they were going to land a Navy boy, they wanted it to be a pilot. It was a point of pride for San Diego, and Fightertown in particular, the little neighborhood where she’d found an apartment. She could hear the fighter planes from her bedroom sometimes, zooming around in the sky as pilots practiced to become the best of the best of the best.
It was ingrained into the fabric of the town, she knew that much. But Julie had always been more interested in the ocean than she was in the sky.
“Cool.”
She nodded, letting a neutral, mildly impressed expression cross her face. She didn’t have much else to offer, and she could’ve sworn she heard Payback laugh a little at it.
“Cool.”
One of the others parroted her voice — the one leaning against the back wall, wearing the worst Hawaiian shirt she’d ever seen. He was tall, too tall, and definitely a bit past tipsy, tapping his fingers on the ledge of the windowsill like he was playing piano.
“That’s got to be the least excited I’ve ever heard a woman at a Navy bar be about Top Gun.”
He didn’t sound malicious, or at least he had enough alcohol in him that he couldn’t muster the right tone. Julie couldn’t tell for certain, the way the sunglasses he was wearing inside (cue the Corey Hart song) obscured his eyes from her vision. Nevertheless, she glanced over at him with a shrug, letting the corner of her mouth turn up in amusement.
“When your school starts dealing with the suicidal behaviorial patterns of oarfish, let me know. Then it’ll have competition with UC.”
If she hadn’t shifted her focus to sinking another ball, she’d’ve noticed Hangman choke on his beer at her words. Hey, not everybody had the guts to deal with a master’s in marine biology.
She could hear Nana laugh though, and the sound of her hand hitting her partner’s back so he wouldn’t choke, because Julie couldn’t control herself. He coughed a couple times, and that seemed to amuse Nana greatly as she looked back towards the table.
“You study fish?” she asked. Julie nodded, not needing to take her eyes off the game — not even long enough to notice the way Bob’s gaze kept falling back on her.
“Marine bio, yeah.”
She felt slightly less silly saying that to a group of people who spent most of their time on aircraft carriers in the middle of the ocean. Usually, when she brought that up, people just asked what aquarium she wanted to work in, or how much it cost to get a degree in something only little kids ever took seriously.
The group, as far as she could tell, took it at face value — that is to say, nodded and looked impressed before going back to what they’d been doing. Namely, taking quiet bets on whether Julie would kick Bob’s ass in their game.
She wasn’t so sure she would, once she realized Bob was still looking at her, all big eyes and polite smile.
“Do you have a favorite?”
He said it with a glance out the window, and Julie’s gaze was drawn in the same direction. The sun was setting now, putting a purple-ish cast over the rollicking waves as they smacked against the shore. It was the kind of view she’d treasured as a kid, the kind she saw on weekends when she biked out to the shore, on those days when she pissed her mother off because she spent all day at Hernando Beach and came back covered in sand from head to toe. Serene and magical, a vision that shouldn’t have been accessible to humans.
His question, then, fit with the scenery. She hadn’t been asked about her favorite species since she was…what, maybe eleven? Back then, it had been a parrotfish, because it was all the colors she wanted in her life but couldn’t have. She’d list off all the facts from Wikipedia, whip out those twelfth-grade-reading-level-in-third-grade smarts to impress aunts and uncles and the occasional coworker that came to her family’s barbecues.
But now…
“Google what a marine hatchetfish looks like.”
It was the first — and strangest — fish she could think of. Maybe not the best answer for the boy looking at her like her response would change his life, but it would have to do.
“It’s like if Henson made Muppets for horror movies.”
“So just…whatever the fuck was going on in Dark Crystal .”
That came from one of the others whose name she couldn’t remember, an attractive man who looked like he was fairly buddy-buddy with Hangman. He had an amused expression on his face, and Julie let out a breathy laugh.
“Kinda.”
She held out a hand to use her fingers as a ruler, approximating the size of the tiny, terrifying looking bastards.
“Imagine Beaker, but like, if he’d seen some shit.”
One of the others — the Corey Hart wannabe — snorted at that, his amusement seeming to spur everyone else’s on. Good to know deadpan humor worked on Navy pilots.
“To be fair, that’s just Beaker’s default expression.”
She glanced over to see Bob shrugging at her, his gaze locked on her over the rims of his dorky Ray-Bans. There was some kind of sparkle behind them, the layers of shyness and awkward small talk peeled away in favor of something different, something…fascinating. Like there was another man entirely hiding under the wallflower persona, if she just stripped the wallpaper back enough.
It was enough to set off fireworks in Julie’s stomach as she laughed, and a small part of her brain registered how easy it was to do that around him. How much she wanted to smile, like it was the most natural thing in the world. He was an easy person to be around, she decided. Frighteningly easy, in fact. Like this had been his goal all along, and the whole charade with the jukebox had been a setup.
Actually…
“You’re still hustling me!”
Her laughter fell away in favor of an exaggerated frown colored in mock shock, and it didn’t go unnoticed the way Phoenix’s ears pricked up, her back straightening as she picked up on another woman’s charade.
Bob, meanwhile, had had his attention ripped from the shot he’d been lining up. The cue went careening in the wrong direction, but he hardly noticed as he found Julie’s eyes, distressed expression creasing the space between his brows.
“Wh—I’m not…”
His face screwed up in worry, and Julie’s stomach dropped for a fraction of the second and she watched him stumble over words, unable to get a full sentence out. His eyes had gone big and doughy, all traces of the man underneath the awkwardness gone, like he’d fled into the night at the suggestion of her coming onto him.
The speed at which Julie cut off his rambling was as much to silence that idea as it was to explain herself.
“You’re flirting with me,” she said soundly, “To distract me. I’d classify that as hustling.”
That stopped him dead in his tracks. The babbling stopped, and if the bar hadn’t been quite so noisy, Julie was certain she would’ve been able to hear Bob’s jaw snap shut. His friends’ too, the way they were looking at her with curious expressions, wondering what her game was.
The worry on Bob’s face was still there, Julie noticed, but it was masked now with a little bit of shock — that same deer in headlights look he’d plastered on when she’d first spoken to him. Either she was specifically talented at scaring him half to death — she wouldn’t be surprised, given her track record — or that really was just the default expression on his face.
“She’s right, man.”
Payback called to his coworker from across the group, playing into Julie’s charade with an amused smile on his face.
“You’re laying it on thick.”
Julie was certain her expression mirrored the surprise on Bob’s face, but she didn’t have time to consider it, the way Hangman scoffed from the other side of the table.
“I say let him at it,” he muttered, waving one hand like he was blowing them off, more interested in his beer. “Be nice if he finally got some ass for once.”
Julie could hear Nana thump her partner in the chest without having to look up from her next shot.
“Jacob Lee!”
Her voice was shrill, tweaked out of tune by one too many drinks, and Julie had to swallow the laugh that bubbled in her throat as she took her shot, sinking another ball to a chorus of hisses and ooh’s.
“Dunno,” she said, straightening up against the table. “I think you’ve got the ass department covered here, dude.”
Even Nana snorted at that one.
Hangman, to his credit, took the insult to his pride with grace, frowning only when he looked at his girlfriend to put a hand on his heart like she’d actually hurt him. She, in turn, rolled her eyes so hard she probably could’ve checked out her own ass, and Julie chuckled under her breath.
Consider your audience before you pull a con next time, James.
She watched carefully as the woman dragged her partner — no, really, she had him by the sleeve of his flannel shirt — towards the bar, muttering something under her breath about manners and kicking him in the ass. Everyone else was dispersing as well, turning into their own private conversations as though to give them space, like the conversation still hanging in the air hadn’t just happened.
All that was left was she and Bob, standing on opposite ends of the pool table, looking at each other like there was an ocean between them.
He wouldn’t meet her eye, gaze locked on the cue ball like an F-18 laser target. For all she’d tried to deflect his embarrassment by dunking on Hangman, his face had still gone cherry red, cheeks shiny under the light hanging just over the pool table. His hand was wringing nervously around his cue, and Julie watched as worry turned to embarrassment, crimson staining his skin all the way down beyond the neckline of his uniform.
“Sorry,” he muttered, voice almost inaudible over the crowd, “If I made you uncomfortable.”
Whatever confidence had been behind that smile of his — the one that threatened to put Julie’s knees out of commission — was gone now, replaced by a wobble in his voice that made her skin burn. He was frail, fragile, delicate as he returned his attention to the game, and Julie knew the tactic well: focus on something else, and maybe the rejection won’t sting so bad.
If she’d known him better, she would’ve shaken him by the shoulders, told him to forget the bullshit flowing out of his coworkers’ mouths. She wanted him to know that it was a joke, that she’d been around enough men in her life to know posturing when she saw it, and he certainly wasn’t the kind.
No, he was too sweet. Saccharine, like cotton candy that turns your mouth blue but you still eat it anyway. More than that, he was genuine. Wore his heart on the outside as plainly as the bars on his uniform, like someone had stitched it on there, colorful Jo-Ann’s thread and all.
She’d’ve said so if she’d known him better, but she didn’t, so she went in another direction.
“I didn’t say I minded you flirting with me, Lieutenant.”
She said it with a passive shrug, though her words came out far softer than she’d hoped for. They were lined with sweetness, so strong it made her molars hurt, hiding under a candy-coated edge of charm. She could just barely see someone’s eyes flicking towards them — Phoenix, maybe — as she said them, but the haze of tipsiness and competition and the tidal force that was Bob’s attention made it insignificant.
“Just that it counts as cheating.”
Bob shifted a little, and she knew he’d heard her the way his hand slipped a little against his cue — bingo.
Before she could stop herself — or consider that someone else might still be watching them — she abandoned her place at the opposite side of the table and crossed to his, invading his personal space the way she had in front of the jukebox. Her undergrad roommate, the one who got the pretentious poetry degree, would’ve called it animal magnetism .
She couldn’t control it, at least not when she wasn’t sober. Her feet were moving without consulting her mind, Bob’s dorky wire frame glasses amplifying the charge from his gaze until she was practically glued to his side. In her head, she’d blame it on the drinks, too much Tito’s clouding her better judgment, but deep in her mind she knew Nia’s artsy bullshit — at least on some level — was right.
Or maybe she was just desperate. It all looked the same from behind rose-colored glasses.
“Once you win, how about I give you my number instead of a drink?”
She didn’t need to, but she said it directly into his ear, one hand draping across his bicep, and she only felt a little bad when he fumbled the shot, eyes gone big and glassy and just a little bit confused.
Okay, maybe that was overkill, but her mind was still fuzzy.
They both watched as the cue ball rolled away from them, pinging off the sides of the table until it stopped just short of falling into a pocket. It was like a gag out of a cartoon, and the briefest temptation to kick the table til it fell in flew through her mind like a bad joke. Her brain was still running on the adrenaline of a jury-rigged plan as Bob pressed his hands against the table and dropped his head in defeat, neck hanging limp as he stared at the felt surface of the playing field.
“Now you’re cheating.”
He sounded slightly out of breath, but she could hear the smile in his voice without having to see it. It was the most genuinely amused she’d heard him all night, and something in her burned at the idea of having brought it back — having banished that fear of his to the horizon line, where it could float on its lonesome with the flotsam and jetsam of the sea.
Hand still on his arm, she felt herself laugh too, one of those silent things that shook her body. It was that laugh that she’d blame on the way she squeezed his arm, nails digging into skin in that ouch-it-hurts-please-don’t-stop kind of way she’d read about in shitty romance books. She blamed the way every muscle in her body contracted at the sound of his voice, a surefire sign that she was in deep — and she’d dug her own damn grave.
“I’m evening the playing field,” she said, before she could think too hard about that fact. “So I can do this.”
She couldn’t keep the smile off her face as she moved back to where she’d been before, acrylics clacking against her cue as she lined up a shot. They were too bright, she thought, under the lights of the bar, too artificial for a place as real and lived-in as the Hard Deck. Too fake for a man whose life was dictated by the rules of physics and order, the only things keeping the metal death trap he flew in from coming apart at the seams. His was a life less colorful life than hers, the one surrounded by all the colors nature could conjure, and even some beyond that.
She wondered if she could meet him somewhere in the middle.
She got fucking lucky that the game worked out in her favor. It was nothing short of a miracle that she was able to sink the eight ball, nailing a winning shot like she had the timing of a Hollywood star or a standup comedian. The universe never worked in her favor, but it did this one singular time, just enough to win her the game and snap Bob’s jaw open like he was trying to catch flies.
In the back of her mind, she heard cheers from Payback and his backseater, but she didn’t really notice them. Not when the entire world had zeroed down to the lieutenant across the table from her, tunnel vision constricting her world until it was nothing more than his gaze on hers and the stupid fucking way it was making her feel.
The fireworks still putting on a show in her stomach made her entire body fizz, and she didn’t even care that it was well past the Fourth of July as she grinned, wearing her own heart on her sleeve like a respirator. There was a shine in her eyes, she just knew it — she could see it reflected in the lenses of Bob’s glasses, the ones that were trained on her, ready to let her go in his defeat.
She’d won, but…
Ah, to hell with it.
In a perfect world, she would’ve had a pen on her, one of the three thousand she always had lying around in back pockets and bottoms of purses because of her classes. But she was without one, and she had to rush to the bar to ask the owner — Penny, she found out — for any spares she might have. Her Navy captain friend produced one from the pocket of his coat, and it was that she used to scribble a set of numbers on a napkin like this was a Netflix rom-com and not a normal Thursday evening at the beginning of her semester.
She prayed they were legible as she scampered back to the pool table, nearly colluding with Payback’s shoulder because her gaze was too focused on Bob. Bob, who was staring out the window like he was trying to make himself invisible now that she’d gone, like his presence hadn’t ever mattered in the first place.
It does , she thought as she approached him, something jumping in him as he realized someone knew he was still there. At least to me.
“Here.”
She shoved the napkin at him before she could toss it in the trash (or worse, give into her intrusive thoughts and just eat the damn thing), and watched with a rapidly beating heart as his hand closed around it, one thumb brushing against hers. There was that electricity again, zapping her fingertips and frying the ends of her hair as he looked down at it, every nerve in her body flaming like a controlled blaze during dry season.
“Use it, don’t use it, I don’t care.”
Stupid words to use when her heart was rehearsing a gymnastics routine in her chest, really.
I do care. I care a lot, actually. Please use it.
She didn’t let any of that show, not even when Bob looked up with eyes like saucers and nodded, the tiniest “thank you” slipping out of his mouth before he folded the napkin and tucked it in the pocket of his uniform pants. She didn’t let slip the fact that her mind was a bullet train station, most tracks running straight towards certain disaster if she opened her mouth even a centimeter. So she just kept silent as he nodded.
After all, she still had a reward to collect.
“See you around, Bob Floyd.”
The smile she offered him was small, for fear that anything bigger would leave her grinning at the look on his face forever.
She could feel several sets of eyes on her as she headed back to her table — ten in total, including Mel and Syd, who’d lost interest in Omaha and had clocked her disappearance a while ago. It was a Herculean weight she carried as she crossed the space, pressing down on her shoulders and constricting the already tight material of her surf suit. Especially heavy were the eyes that stayed safely behind a pair of glasses, that followed her all the way to the jukebox, even as a small female pilot shook their owner’s shoulder to ask what the hell that was all about.
It did not escape Bob’s notice that she chose to play “Head Over Heels”.