Drinks in the Crew Bar

My name is Hilary Fox, I'm twenty-nine years old, and I was pacing the promenade deck of a ferry as if I'd lost my keys, my wallet, and my mind all in the same minute. The boat was chugging along from Barcelona to Palma de Mallorca, and at nine tomorrow morning I was going to walk into the Hotel Mariner and interview for a front desk job that could change my whole life.

Or not. That was the problem. It could also not change anything at all, and I'd stay scrubbing cabins on this rust bucket until my hands turned into sponges.

I had my folder clutched against my chest. Printed CV, references, a printout of the hotel's website that I'd highlighted all over like a schoolgirl. I'd read it four times. I paced from one end of the deck to the other, turned, paced back. The sea was doing its thing out there, dark and flat, and I wasn't looking at any of it.

"Hilary?"

I stopped so fast my folder nearly went over the rail. Damien Kruger was leaning against the lifeboat housing with a cigarette, thirty-two years old and still built as if he hauled crates for fun, which he did, part time, before the bar shifts.

"Damien," I said. "Hi. Hey. Hello."

I'd dated this man for six months two years ago, back when I was twenty-seven and he worked the bar on my old ship. It ended fine. He transferred, I stayed, we said nice things and meant them. So I don't know why my face went hot.

"Are you pacing or marching?" he asked, smoke curling off his cigarette. "Because from here it looks like you're drilling troops."

"I'm nervous," I admitted. "I've got an interview. In Palma. Nine tomorrow morning."

"Shore job?"

"Front desk. Big hotel. It's everything, Damien. It's the whole reason I took this stupid ferry contract in the first place, to get to Mallorca, to get seen, to get out of cabins and into a lobby with real lights and real people."

He stubbed the cigarette out on the rail and tucked the butt in his pocket, which I'd forgotten he did, that tidy little habit. Then he smiled at me.

"So come on," he said. "I'll make you a drink."

"It's not even eight."

"So? The crew bar opens when I say it opens. I'm off at eleven and the first hour is dead anyway. Come on, Fox. You can't walk in there wound up like this. They'll smell the panic on you."

And the truth was I wanted to go. Not just for the drink. But I wasn't going to say that, so I said, "One drink," like I was doing him a favor, and he laughed because he knew.

* * *

The crew bar is behind the main galley, down a corridor that always smells faintly of onions and bleach. It's a narrow little box with a low ceiling, one porthole, and a floor of sticky linoleum that peels your sandals off if you stand still too long. There's a shelf of mismatched bottles behind the counter that looks like it was stocked by a drunk in a hurry.

Damien flipped the light on and waved me onto a stool.

"Okay," he said, rolling his sleeves up. "What do you drink?"

"Anything," I said. "Wine. Beer. Whatever's free."

"No, no, no. That's exactly the problem with you landlubbers and you galley-adjacent people. You drink what's put in front of you. Tonight you're going to learn to make something. Then you'll have a skill, and then you'll have something to think about besides your interview, and then you'll calm down."

"That's three thens."

"I'm a bartender, not a poet."

He started pulling bottles down off the shelf. Gin. A cheap one and a decent one. Lemon. Sugar syrup in a squeeze bottle. Egg white in a little plastic tub he keeps in the galley fridge, apparently, which horrified me until he explained it makes the top all silky. A shaker, a strainer, a jigger, that little hourglass-shaped measuring thing.

"We're doing a gin sour," he said. "Simplest good drink there is. Spirit, citrus, sugar. Learn the ratios and you can make a hundred drinks, because most of them are just this with a hat on."

"Are you flirting with me or teaching me?"

"Yes," he said, and I laughed, and some of the knot in my chest came loose a little. I hadn't laughed since Barcelona, honestly.

"Okay, watch first." He cracked the shaker, poured. "Two ounces gin. Three quarters ounce lemon. Three quarters syrup. Splash of egg white. Dry shake, no ice first, that whips the egg. Then ice, shake again till your hand hurts, strain. That's it. That's the whole religion."

He slid the glass across the counter. It was pale and foamy on top and it tasted bright and sour and dangerous, the kind of drink that doesn't taste like alcohol at all.

"Oh, that's mean," I said.

"That's a sour."

"It tastes like lemonade that decided to ruin my life."

"Good. Now you!" He turned a clean glass toward me and set the jigger in my hand. "Two ounces. Go."

I poured. My hand was shaking a little, from the nerves or the gin, and I overshot.

"Two and a half," he said, peering into the jigger like a jeweler. "Close. Dump it back, that's what the well bottle's for. Again."

I poured again. One point seven five. Again. Two even. He nodded like a professor.

"Lemon."

The lemon juice came out in a shaky thread and mostly hit the shaker.

"Syrup. Splash of egg. Now cap it and shake. Hard. Don't be polite to it."

I shook. The shaker was freezing and rattling and my whole arm went with it, and I was grinning like an idiot because for two whole minutes I was not thinking about the Hotel Mariner at all. I strained it out and it came out thin and a little sad compared to his.

"Taste."

I tasted. It was good. It was actually good.

"See?" he said. "You're employable at something."

* * *

I don't know exactly when the teaching part stopped and the other part started. He came around the counter, I think, to fix my grip on the shaker, and then he was standing behind me instead of beside me, and his hand was over mine on the jigger, guiding it over the shaker mouth.

"Steady," he said, close to my ear. "Pour slow. Let it do the work."

His chest was warm against my back. He smelled like lemons and cigarette smoke. My pour wobbled and he steadied my wrist with two fingers and I became aware of him at once, every place we touched, which was a lot of places.

"Hilary," he said quietly. "Your hands aren't shaking anymore."

"No," I said. My voice came out lower than I meant it to.

"Is that the gin or me?"

"Ask me again and I'll answer honestly."

He didn't move away. I set the jigger down on the counter, careful, precise, like it was the most important object on the ship. The gin was warm in my head and his hand was still resting over mine on the counter now, not guiding anything, just resting.

"I've thought about running into you again," he said. "Didn't think it'd be you pacing a deck like a caged tiger with a folder."

"I looked ridiculous."

"You looked nervous. There's a difference." His thumb moved once across the back of my hand. "So here's a question, Fox. Do you want me to go back behind that counter and teach you the daiquiri, or do you want me to stay right here?"

And that's the thing about Damien, two years ago or now, he always asks. He never grabs. He put the choice in my hand as plain as the jigger, and he waited.

"Stay," I said.

"Yeah?" His mouth was close to my ear and I felt him smile.

"Yeah. Stay. Please."

"Okay then," he said softly, and his arm slid around my waist, slow, giving me every second to change my mind, and I turned my head and found his mouth with mine.

The kiss was soft at first, then not. Two years is a long time and it was also no time at all. My folder slid off the counter and hit the sticky linoleum with a slap and neither of us bent to pick it up. His hand spread warm across my stomach and I made a low sound into his mouth and felt him grin against my lips.

"Interview's in the morning," he murmured.

"Then stop talking," I said, and pulled him back in.

His hands went to the hem of my shirt and I raised my arms and let him pull it off, and then I reached for his, because fair is fair, and his chest was warm under my palms and I had missed this man, I realized, in a vague low way I hadn't even let myself notice. He walked me back a step and lifted me onto the bar counter. The bottles rattled somewhere down at the far end.

"Careful, there's glass," I said, half laughing.

"There's glass everywhere on a ship. Sit tight." He took the wet bar towel off the rail and wiped a patch of the counter behind me, then eased me back on it. It was cool through my bra and I shivered and he noticed, of course he noticed, and he leaned down and kissed the place where the shiver started.

Two years ago he used to do that. He used to map me like that, slow, reading. It came back to both of us at the same time, I think, because we looked at each other and laughed, a little breathless.

"You remember," I said.

"Every bit of it." He unbuttoned my uniform trousers and pulled the zip down slow. "Lift."

I lifted my hips and he slid them off me, off my legs, and dropped them on the stool behind him. Then my knickers, and the air of the crew bar was cool and I was suddenly, hugely aware of the porthole, the black sea through it, the hum of the engines under everything. He put my knee over his shoulder like it was a dance step he already knew.

"Damien," I said, and it came out as half a question.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, just. Yes."

"Good answer." And he went down on me.

I've had it done before, plenty of times, by him even, but this was different, this was a man with two years of questions and no nerves at all. He took his time. He started soft and slow with his tongue, flat and warm, and my head went back against the counter and the