The Wrong Smile

I wiped down the same four feet of bar for the fifth time that night. I know it was the fifth because Babs counted out loud.

"Ali. Honey. The bar is clean. It was clean an hour ago. You're going to wear a hole in it."

"I'm conditioning the wood," I said.

"You're spiraling," she said, and she was right, but she didn't have to say it out loud like that.

It had been a year. A whole year, one year exactly as of last Tuesday, since the woman with the crooked smile bought me a drink at Denny's Bar over on Fifth. And yes, I know how it sounds, a grown woman, twenty-four years old, two jobs, her own apartment over a laundromat, still replaying one night like it was a song stuck in her head. But you don't understand. It was one of those nights that feels written. She leaned on the bar and asked what I was drinking and I said whatever you're having, which is not something I say, ever, I'm a water girl usually, and she laughed with that smile that goes up on one side first, the left side, and the whole night went sideways after that in the best way.

We talked until the bar closed. Or she talked and I listened and occasionally made a noise that qualified as a word. Then we were in the parking lot and she kissed me, or I kissed her, honestly the memory has gotten foggy on the details I care about most, and then I did the thing I do, the Ali special, I got flustered and said I should go and walked to my car like my shoes were on fire. No number. No name. Can you believe that? A year of my life spent wondering about a woman whose name I never even asked.

"Table six needs waters," Babs said. "Also, stop looking at the door. You do it every time a brunette walks in. Mr. Thompson noticed. He asked me if you were expecting someone."

"I'm not expecting anyone."

"You're expecting everyone," she said, and slid two glasses down the bar at me.

She wasn't wrong. That was the embarrassing part. Every brown-haired woman who came through that door on a Thursday night got the full Ali scan, up, down, smile check. Left side first? No? Okay, back to work. It was a stupid system and it had failed a hundred times and I kept running it anyway, as if it were a slot machine that owes me.

The Rusty Nail on a Thursday is nothing special. Low ceiling, dented brass rail, jukebox that only knows country ballads from the 90s, which is fine by me because I know every word to all of them and Mr. Thompson counts that as free entertainment. The light in there is this amber color that never changes, summer or winter, like the whole bar is stuck at 7 pm forever. It smells like stale beer and floor wax. That's home, sort of. It pays one of my two rents, anyway.

I was doing my table six waters when the door opened and I did the scan without even meaning to. Brunette. My stomach did the thing. I checked the smile.

Left side first.

I swear I almost dropped both waters. It was her. It had to be her. A year, and she walks into my bar, my actual bar, on the exact week I'd been extra pathetic about it? Who does that? Who lives that? That's movie stuff. That does not happen to waitresses on the south side.

She sat at the far end of the bar, which was also her end, the end she sat at at Denny's, and I tried to walk over there casual and I'm sure I failed completely. My breath was doing something weird. Short little sips of air, like I'd climbed stairs.

"Hi! What can I get you?" Too loud. Way too loud. Babs was going to give me a look.

The woman looked up and there it was, the crooked smile, exactly the same, left side climbing first like it was on a track. A year older on her maybe, but the same.

"Ginger ale?" she said, and it came out almost like a question. "Ginger ale, please!"

"Ginger ale! Great choice. Coming right up."

I have never in my life been that enthusiastic about ginger ale. I turned around and Babs was already staring at me with her eyebrows up near her hairline, and I ignored her, because what was I going to say, Babs, the woman from the parking lot is here? She'd want the whole story and I couldn't tell the whole story because I didn't have half of it.

I brought the ginger ale over and then, instead of going back to the bar like a normal employee, I leaned on the counter next to her. So sue me.

"Busy night," I said. Riveting stuff. Award-winning small talk.

"Yeah, looks like it," she said, glancing at the four other people in the joint. "Not too bad, though."

"First time here?"

She did this little pause. Half a second. I didn't catch it, I was too busy floating.

"Yeah," she said. "First time. You guys have a jukebox?"

"Only country ballads from the 90s, fair warning. It's a whole thing. The owner won't fix it. Says it's character."

"That's kind of amazing actually. What's good on the food menu, or is it a bar with no food situation?"

"Oh no, we have food. The wings are actually good. The burger is a trap. Looks good, tastes like a hockey puck. Everyone orders it anyway."

She laughed and the laugh was right too, and I felt the old flutter come back, that exact flutter from Denny's, the one I'd been living off of in reruns for a year. It was like the year between had just folded up and put itself away.

"I'm Ali, by the way," I said, and stuck my hand out like a jerk. Who sticks a hand out at the woman whose kiss you've been memorizing? Me, apparently.

"Cari," she said, and shook it. Her hand was warm. "Nice to meet you, Ali."

Cari. I rolled it around in my head. I'd been calling her crooked smile girl for a year and the real name was Cari. With a C. I liked it immediately, the way you like anything that belongs to a story you're already telling yourself.

"So what brings you in on a Thursday?" I asked. "You new to the neighborhood? I haven't seen you before and I notice people, it's an occupational hazard of the apron."

"Just moved back to town," she said. "Six months ago. Been meaning to try this place."

Six months. Okay, that stung a little, tiny sting, the kind you don't even mention. Six months she'd been in town and I'd been scanning brunettes for a year and our orbits never touched until now. But whatever. Now was now. Fate is slow sometimes, right? Fate has a lot on its plate.

"Well, welcome," I said. "Ginger ale's on me. Don't tell my boss, he counts everything, it's his whole personality."

"You don't have to do that."

"I want to. It's happening, it's done, the ginger ale is free, this is your life now."

She smiled again and I could have fallen into the bar. I looked at her eyes and her eyes were staying on me, not wandering to the TV or the door, just on me, and I thought, she remembers too. She has to. You don't look at a person like that over a ginger ale if they're a stranger. That's a look with a history in it.

"So," I said, settling in, arms crossed on the bar, "do I get to ask what you do? Or is that too forward for a first ginger ale?"

"That's not too forward. I go to the community college part time. Transferring credits, long boring story."

"Oh my god, I dropped out of there. What year, what are the odds, do you know Professor Halloway? Does he still assign the same three essays?"

"Ali," Babs called from the end of the bar. "Table two."

"Table two can wait thirty seconds, Babs, they have their beers," I called back, and Cari laughed at that, really laughed, and I thought, this is going well. This is going so, so well.

I lingered. I am not going to pretend I was professional about it. Every time I had a second, I drifted back down to her end of the bar. She told me she used to live in Portland. I told her I've never been but I own a flannel anyway, which is basically the same as living there. She asked if the wings were as good as I said and I told her to order them and judge me after. She ordered the wings.

Somewhere in there I stopped wiping tables entirely and Babs started shooting me looks that had actual weight to them, like little thrown bricks. I ignored every one. I had a year of almost-remembering to make up for and one ginger ale in a free glass to do it over.

"You know," Cari said, stirring her ginger ale with the little straw, "this is funny. This whole thing."

"Funny how?"

"Just funny," she said, and did that half-second pause again, the one I still wasn't catching. "Small town. You never know who's going to walk in."

"Right? I was literally just telling Babs, you never know. Sometimes the universe just, like, hands you a Thursday."

She looked at me then, and something worked behind her eyes, some thought she was chewing on, and I assumed, because I am a fool with a crooked-smile-shaped hole in her chest, that the thought was us. The parking lot. The year. I waited for her to say it. I would've said it myself if I'd had any game at all, but all I had was a bar rag and a smile.

"Your wings are coming up," I said instead, because I'm smooth.

"Great," she said. "Hey, Ali? Can I ask you something?"

"Anything. Ask me anything, I'm an open book, it's embarrassing."

She opened her mouth, and then the kitchen bell rang and the wings came up and I was gone before the question landed, sailing back down the bar with a basket of wings and a heart going a hundred. Whatever it was, she'd get to it. We had all night. I was sure of that much.

I dropped the wings, did the little "hot, hot" dance around the basket, and got out of there before I said something insane like "it's been a year exactly, isn't that wild?" Because the thing about fate, and I say this as someone who believes in fate the way other people believe in horoscopes, which is fully and with receipts. Fate does not need my help narrating. If I told her "one year ago this very week I was kissing a stranger in a parking lot," that's pressure. That's a lot of pressure on a Thursday.

So I behaved. Mostly.

It was around nine when Babs grabbed my arm at the service station and said, "Kitchen. Now."

"The kitchen? Nothing happens in the kitchen except Jonas crying over the fryer."

"Kitchen, Ali."

Okay! Kitchen. Babs had her arms crossed and her head tilted, the full librarian treatment, and she waited until the swinging door settled before she said anything.

"You know that's Cari Sawyer, right?" she said.

"The what now?"

"Cari Sawyer. She was two years behind you. Don't you remember her?"

I did the thing where you squint at the middle distance like memory is a movie you can pause and scrub through. I scrubbed. I got nothing. High school was ten thousand years ago and I spent most of it in the back of Ms. Petty's class drawing on my jeans.

"Two years behind us? Babs, I barely remember people who were in my own homeroom."

"You really don't remember her at all?"

"Should I? Was she, like, famous? Did she set a trophy case on fire?"

"No, she was just... she was around. Quiet-ish. Dark hair, always had her sleeves over her hands? My little brother knew her."

"That's the thinnest description I've ever heard, that describes forty percent of our graduating class and also me."

Babs laughed but she kept looking at me with that face, the one that means she knows something and is doing math about whether to say it. She said it.

"She's been coming in three weeks, Ali. Three Thursdays. And she always sits where she can see the door. And she never once ordered a drink until you forced a ginger ale on her tonight."

"That's not weird, that's just... loitering. People loiter."

"Uh huh. And she lights up like a vending machine every time you walk by."

"Okay, that's a good sign, though. That's a flattering vending machine."

Babs held up both hands, backing off. "I'm just saying. Know your customer. Anyway, table two has been trying to catch your eye for ten minutes and the one guy is doing the snapping thing."

"I'll snap his neck."

"Go serve him, maniac."

So I went and served him and forgot everything Babs said for about an hour, which was easy, because Cari was still there and the bar was emptying out and every time I passed her she had some new question ready. Did I still live around here? What was Portland like, did I hike, did I regret dropping out. Regular getting-to-know-you stuff, except it didn't feel regular to me, it felt like a test I'd already aced somehow.

We closed at midnight. Mr. Thompson did his till thing in the office and Babs went out the front with her jacket over her shoulder and gave me the eyebrows on the way, the two raised ones, and I gave her a look back that said mind your business, Babs, and hers said absolutely not.

Cari didn't leave. She was still at the bar at 12:20 while I stacked chairs, and I kept sneaking glances at her, and every time I snuck one she was already looking at me, which should've been embarrassing but instead felt like winning something.

"You don't have to sit in an empty bar," I said, flipping a chair onto a table. "I'm just doing chores. It's the least glamorous thing you'll ever witness."

"I don't mind. I like watching you work."

"Oh. Well," I flipped another chair, harder than necessary. "Flattery gets you free ginger ale, fair warning."

"Would it be crazy if I asked... do you want to get a drink somewhere else after? Or is that..."

"Yes," I said, way too loud for midnight in a dead bar. "I mean, yes. Obviously. I know a place. Well, I know a diner, it's not glamorous, but they have pie and they don't kick you out for loitering, which I've tested extensively."

"That sounds perfect."

And here's a detail I want to write down because I noticed it in the moment, I really did. I asked and she said yes fast. Like, before I'd finished the sentence fast. And some little filing clerk in the back of my head stamped that and moved on, because everything she did Thursday felt like proof. Fast yes. Proof. Eyes on me. Proof. That's how I was operating. Evidence room with no cross-examination.

The diner on Delano is open all night and the light in there is the exact opposite of the Nail, all white and buzzing, no shadows to hide your face in. We took a booth by the window. She ordered coffee. I ordered pie, because I'd been waiting tables all night and hadn't eaten anything that wasn't a wing I sampled for "quality control."

"This is nice," she said, wrapping both hands around the mug. "I'm glad I finally came in."

"Finally? How long have you been meaning to?"

"A while. I heard you worked there."

"From who?"

"A girl at school. Caren. She said she used to see you around."

"Huh. Small world, like you said."

"It really is," she said, and smiled, left side first, and my heart did its whole routine, and then she said the sentence. Just, you know. Casually. Into her coffee.

"It's weird, thinking about how much I hated sophomore year at Jefferson. I was so sure everyone was looking at me all the time."

Sophomore year.

I want you to understand what happened in my head when she said that. There was a woman I kissed in a parking lot one year ago, and that woman had told me she was passing through town, just visiting her sister for the weekend, just passing through, that's why there'd been no tomorrow, that's the whole shape of the story I'd been telling myself. And this woman across the table, this woman with the smile and the eyes, was talking about sophomore year here. In this town. Which meant she didn't pass through anything. Which meant she'd grown up eleven minutes from the parking lot where that other woman kissed me.

And I thought, oh. Oh no.

The smile doesn't count, is the thing. Smiles are public property. Crooked smiles go up on the left for a lot of people, statistically, probably, I don't know, I was doing grief-math at a diner table at one in the morning. Everything I'd stacked up as proof, the eyes, the fast yes, the vending machine lighting, it all still stood there but now it was pointing at a different thing. It was pointing at Cari, sitting across from me, whoever Cari actually was.

I put my fork down. I didn't cry. I want credit for that.

"You okay?" Cari said. "You went somewhere just now."

"I'm fine. I'm great. Pie, you know how it is." I picked the fork back up. "So. Sophomore year. Why'd you hate it?"

"High school stuff. Nothing dramatic. I just... I don't know, I was one of those kids who watched more than talked."

And that was when I made my decision, and I'll defend it forever: I didn't tell her. About Denny's Bar, about the parking lot, about the year I'd spent scanning every brunette in a five-mile radius. Because what was I going to say? "Sorry, I thought you were a stranger who kissed me, turns out you're a local, my mistake, you've been demoted"? She'd done nothing wrong. She was sitting there being kind to me over coffee and I'd built a whole shrine on top of her without asking. That's not her problem. That's mine.

Also, and this is the smaller, stupider reason, she was still smiling at me, and I didn't want it to stop.

"Okay, but real talk," I said, putting my fork down again for real this time. "Can I ask you something and you answer it straight?"

"I'll try."

"Why do you keep looking at me? At the bar. All night. You've been looking at me all night and I'm not complaining but I'd like to know what's happening, because I notice people, occupational hazard of the apron, I said that already, but still. What's the deal?"

She looked down at her mug and turned it a quarter turn and I thought, she's not going to answer, I blew it, and then she did.

"Because I used to watch you in the hallway," she said, "and you never saw me."

The diner buzzed. A cook dropped something in the back and swore. I sat there with my mouth open, actual open, and thought, hallway? What hallway? And then the filing clerk came back with the stamped paper and I finally read it. Two years behind us. Sleeves over her hands. She wasn't a stranger. She wasn't even a stranger who happened to look like one. She was somebody who'd been on the other end of my obliviousness for years, somewhere I used to walk every day, watching me, and I never once turned my head.

"Me?" I said. Idiotically.

"You," she said, and she laughed a little, embarrassed, and hid her mouth behind the mug. "God, this is so much easier to say at one in the morning than I thought it'd be."

"How long? Like, when? When did you..."

"A while. Doesn't matter. The point is I heard you worked at that bar, and I kept telling myself I'd go say hi, and I kept... not. Three weeks of not." She looked up at me then, all the way up, no hiding. "And then tonight you gave me a free ginger ale and called your boss's counting habit his whole personality, and I figured, okay. Okay, Cari. Tonight."

"Cari," I repeated. Testing it. Cari Sawyer. Two years behind me. Sleeves over her hands. My heart was doing something new now, not the parking-lot ache, something more like vertigo, like I'd walked into a room I thought I knew and the furniture was all moved.

"Yeah?" she said.

"Nothing. Just, say more. Say anything. I'm listening, I promise I'm listening this time."

My apartment, I should note, is not where you take a woman you're trying to impress. It's a studio over a laundromat. There's a sofa with a sag in the middle and a kitchen you can touch from the bed and a dryer running somewhere below us, thumping like a heartbeat in the floor. But when I said, "Do you want to come up? It's small and it smells like quarters," she said, "God, yes," like I'd offered her a trip somewhere.

We got the door open and she stopped just inside and looked around, and I waited for it, whatever people think in that first ten seconds. She just said, "Oh, it's nice. It's really cozy," and meant it, and that was the moment I stopped doing grief-math entirely.

"Come here," I said. That was the entire invitation. She came.

Kissing Cari was nothing like the parking lot. Nothing like it, and I kept waiting for the comparison to ruin things and it wouldn't. The parking lot had been a stranger and a dare. This was slow. She put her hand flat on my back like she was asking permission, and I pulled her closer to say yes.

"Okay?" she said against my mouth.

"So okay," I said. "So stupidly okay."

We ended up on the sofa because it was the closest horizontal thing. She sat back against the arm and I sat sideways facing her, one leg over both of hers, and we just looked at each other for a second, the dryer thumping below.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi. So, confession. I've been so nervous all night I forgot to be nervous, does that make sense?"

"Completely. I ordered wings instead of talking to you for three weeks."

I laughed and leaned in and kissed her again, and this time it went longer, and her hand came up to my jaw, and I said, "Can I...?"

"Yeah," she said. "Please."

I got her jacket off her, which took some doing because the sleeves were ridiculous, and she got my shirt over my head, and then we were on the sofa in the amber nothing-light of my one window, and it was warm and unhurried and real. I touched her collarbone, her shoulder, the curve where her neck met her chest, mapping it with my fingers, and she did the same to me, and neither of us was performing anything. She reached behind her back and undid her own bra without fanfare, and I said, "Show-off," and she said, "Practical," and then I had my mouth on her and she gasped.

Her nipple hardened under my tongue. I could feel her breathing change, quick and shallow, her fingers threading into my hair. I moved my mouth to the other side and she made a sound, low in her throat, and her hips shifted under my leg.

"Ali," she said.

"I know. Me too. Tell me what you want."

"Touch me? Please."

"Where?"

"Anywhere. Everywhere. I don't care, just..."

I slid my hand down her stomach to the waistband of her jeans and stopped there, waiting. "Here?"

"Yes."

I got her jeans open and my hand inside, and she was warm and wet already, and I took my time. Just my fingers moving slow over her, learning her, the way she liked the pressure, the way her breath caught when I circled her clit. She arched into my hand and said my name again, and I pressed a finger inside her, slow, and she was so tight around me, so real, no stranger's ghost anywhere in the room.

"Like that," she breathed. "Oh, God, just like that."

I kept the rhythm and watched her face, that left-side-first smile gone completely, her mouth open, her eyes shut. She came with her hand gripping the sofa cushion, saying my name over and over, and I stayed with her until she stopped trembling.

Then she pushed me back against the other arm and said, "My turn," and got my jeans off, and she went slow too, her mouth on my inner thigh first, then up, then her tongue flat against me and I bucked. She found my clit and worked it with her tongue and two fingers, and I came fast, embarrassingly fast, and she laughed against me, the little jerk, and kept going until the second one rolled through me slower and deeper.

Afterward we ended up lying on the sofa, her half on top of me, both of us sticky and wrecked and laughing at the state of my one blanket.

The dryer below stopped. It was very quiet.

"You know I thought you were someone else, right?" I said, into her hair.

She lifted her head. "I figured. You kept checking my smile like it owed you money." She was smiling, that same crooked one, left side first. "I'm not her. But I'd like to keep doing this anyway."

"Okay," I said.

She put her head back down on my chest, and I pulled the blanket over us both, and below us the laundromat hummed, and I thought, this one I know. This one I actually saw.