Prescription Hold

The drawer was two hundred and fourteen dollars short of where it should have been when the front door buzzed, and I remember that number exactly because I'd been staring at it for a full minute trying to make it come out different. The pharmacy closed at nine and it was now nine-ten, and the fluorescent lights in Liberty Cove do this thing at night where they hum so loud you forget there's a highway forty feet away. I looked up through the glass and there he was, standing in the parking lot with his hands jammed in his jacket pockets, waving a crumpled piece of paper at me like it was a warrant.

Derek Hobart. Twenty-six years old, infantry, stationed at Fort Grantham going on three years now, and a regular at my counter every other week for six months of increasingly stupid conversations about his refill. I'm Clay Newell, I'm twenty-seven, I run the pharmacy two doors down from a titty bar and a Wendy's, and I moved out here after pharmacy school because my brother's stationed at the Fort and I figured family was family. That is the entire arrangement. I'm telling you now so I don't have to keep explaining it.

So anyway, I knew the drawer was going to stay short no matter how long I stared at it, and I knew the store was closed, and I walked over and unlocked the door anyway. Some things you just do and then deal with the math later.

"We're closed," I said, holding the door open.

"I just realized I forgot to pick up my refill."

He held up the crumpled paper. "It says right here. Refill."

"You texted me a photo of that same paper yesterday, Derek. While I was standing at the register handing it to you."

"Yeah, but did I pick it up though?" He came in past me, all six feet of him taking up way more of my doorway than a person should, and I locked the door behind him because apparently I was committing to this. He walked over to the will-call bin like the bag might be waiting there for him, looked into it, empty, and then looked at me, and he had the nerve to look confused, like maybe yesterday hadn't happened.

"Huh," he said.

"Huh is right. You picked it up yesterday. I handed it to you. You said thank you, which is the only time you've ever said thank you."

"That doesn't sound like me."

He leaned back against the consultation counter with his arms crossed, and the counter is about chest height on me and he can rest his whole forearm on it, which is one of the many physical facts about him I've tried not to spend time on. "You could've just said no. But you didn't."

"I was already up. The drawer was open. It's not a statement."

"It's a little bit of a statement."

"Go stand in the waiting area and don't touch the blood pressure machine, it's been off since nine." I went back to the drawer, and I could feel him watching me count it, the way he always does, and I kept my face doing nothing because that's my whole strategy with this man. Six months of him leaning on my counter telling me his back hurts in a voice that makes it very clear his back does not hurt, and my strategy the entire time has been to be a vending machine. Beep, receipt, have a nice day.

The problem with the strategy is it apparently works on him, which means it was a bad strategy, because here he was at nine-ten on a Friday night with a crumpled piece of paper.

I counted the drawer a third time, still two hundred and fourteen short, and he didn't leave. He didn't even pretend to leave. He just stood there with his arms crossed again, looking at the health aisle like it was interesting.

"So, consider this," he said, and I want to note that I did not react to that even though internally something dropped about an inch. "I didn't forget anything. I picked it up yesterday. It's on my kitchen counter."

"I know you do. I filled it."

"So this paper is just paper."

"It's your copy. It says your copy on the bottom."

He turned around and leaned on the counter properly this time, facing me, which is worse. "I wanted an excuse to see you alone. That's it. That is the entire story, it's dumb, I know it's dumb, I've been standing in that parking lot for ten minutes trying to decide if I was actually going to come in or just drive past your apartment like a weirdo."

"You don't know where my apartment is."

"I know it's above the laundromat, because you complained about the laundromat for three straight visits."

He did know that. My pulse was doing something I'd describe as unprofessional, and I kept my voice completely flat, because the strategy, remember. "That's a lot of confession for a guy holding a piece of paper."

"I've been on leave since Tuesday and I'm back at work Monday, and I figured if I didn't do something dumb this weekend I'd regret it for the next deployment cycle."

He shrugged, and the shrug looked fake, like a shrug a person does when they've rehearsed being casual. "So. Dumb thing. Done."

And here's where I should tell you what I was thinking, which was nothing useful. I was thinking that he'd shaved for this, for a Friday night in a town with one bar worth the name, and that he'd put on a shirt that fit him, and that I had noticed both of those things in under a second in the parking lot through glass. Six months of beep, receipt, have a nice day, and I'd been keeping score the whole time without admitting there was a game.

"If you're going to waste my time," I said, "you owe me a drink."

He grinned, and the grin was so fast and so pleased with itself that I regretted the sentence immediately. "Deal."

"I'm choosing the bar."

"It's two doors down, Clay, there's one bar."

"There's a titty bar and there's Rosie's, and you're not taking me to the titty bar."

"Rosie's, obviously, Rosie's is my spot."

"That's exactly why we're not going to your spot. I'm not sitting in a bar where the bartender knows your order and can tell me things about you."

"She can't tell you anything I wouldn't tell you."

"Then we're going to Rosie's, and she won't get the chance."

He laughed at that, a real one, and held the door for me after I flipped the deadbolt and the lights, and I locked the cash in the safe and grabbed my jacket off the hook in the back where it's been hanging since August. The night outside was that panhandle cold that's dry enough that you don't feel it until you're already freezing, and the parking lot was empty except for his truck, which was parked diagonally across two spaces like a man with no plans for the vehicle.

Rosie's is a dive in the sense that the pool table has a dead spot in one corner and the sign out front is missing a letter, and it was doing its usual Friday business, meaning half full of soldiers and half full of people who've lived in Liberty Cove since before the Fort doubled in size. We got two stools at the end of the bar away from the jukebox and Derek ordered us