Storytelling Saturday: Forward Ain’t Always Forward

Reese sat on the steps of the abandoned house across from the dive bar she swore she’d never go back to. She watched as a huge bear of a man stumbled outside. He went to lean on the lightpole, missed and fell into the street. A few men followed him out and stood over him laughing.

“What is your big ass doing laying in the street, Jimmy,” his friend asked, cackling.

Big Jim tried to roll over on his side and flopped back down. “I ain’t do this shit on purpose,” he said, reaching for his friend’s hand.

Darren slapped his hand away. “Boy, I can’t help your big ass up. We need a tow truck or somethin’.”

A few more of the regulars came out, and they all took turns trying to get Big Jim off the asphalt. Reese would have laughed too if she wasn’t so irritated that she had to be back here.

She sucked her teeth and looked away from them. Same people, same foolishness, same bar she had been so sure she was done with.

Her hand tightened around the strap of her bag, the leather worn down from three weeks of dragging it from place to place. Bus stations that smelled like piss and old coffee, couches that weren’t hers, and miles of walking because she didn’t have money for anything else.

All for a man who took her money and left her in New York like she didn’t matter.

She had stood on that sidewalk for a long time after he pulled off, phone dying in her hand, bank account empty, pride too loud to let her call anybody back home. By the time she accepted he wasn’t coming back, she was already stuck figuring it out alone.

“Reese?”

She went still.

She knew that voice before she even turned around. Clyde always said her name like he had all the time in the world, like it wasn’t something you rushed.

She turned slowly. He stood in the doorway of the bar, wiping his hands on a rag that looked like it had been through too much. He didn’t look surprised to see her. Didn’t look disappointed either. Just steady.

“You gon’ sit out here all night or you comin’ to work?” he asked.

Reese stood up, brushing off the back of her jeans like that was going to fix anything.

“I ain’t say I was comin’ back,” she said.

Clyde leaned against the doorframe. “You ain’t gotta say it. You sittin’ right across the street.”

She opened her mouth to snap back, to remind him how she left and what she said, how she told him she was done with this place for good, but the words didn’t come.

Because she remembered it too clearly. The way she had stood right where he was standing now, telling him she wasn’t meant to be stuck in a place like this. That she had something better waiting on her. That Elijah had plans. That she wasn’t about to waste her life pouring drinks for the same people every night.

She had cursed him out when he tried to warn her and told him he didn’t know what he was talking about.

Now here she was.

Clyde shifted slightly and nodded toward the inside of the bar. “Apron still in the back if you want it.”

Outside, Big Jim finally got halfway up, leaning on two men while everybody else laughed and clapped like it was a show. Nothing about that side of the street had changed.

Reese looked down at her hands. The same hands that had packed up everything she owned like she was leaving something behind for good. The same hands that had knocked on strangers’ doors begging for money. The same hands that had held onto that bag like it was the only thing she had left.

She had been so sure she was moving forward.

Turns out she had just been moving blind.

Her jaw tightened, but she swallowed whatever was sitting in her throat. There wasn’t nobody out here that needed to see her break.

“I ain’t beggin’,” she said.

Clyde nodded once. “Good. I don’t hire beggars.”

He stepped to the side and left the door open.

Reese walked past him and into the bar. The smell hit her first: beer, grease, something burnt that never really left. The same low music played in the background like it had been waiting on her to come back. A few heads turned, a couple people doing double takes, but she didn’t slow down and she didn’t speak. She went straight behind the bar like she had never left.

Her apron was exactly where Clyde said it would be, folded up and set aside. She picked it up, shook it out, and tied it around her waist, letting her hands fall back into the rhythm before her pride could catch up and interrupt it.

A man at the counter tapped his glass, looking her over. “Damn, Reese. Thought you left us.”

She grabbed a bottle and a glass without looking at him. “Thought I did too.”

“Where you been at?”

“Out.”

“Out where?”

She poured his drink and slid it across the counter before finally meeting his eyes. “Far enough to know better.”

He laughed like she was joking, but she didn’t give him anything back.

From the other end of the bar, Clyde watched her without saying a word, like he was taking her measure all over again.

Reese glanced toward the door, toward the same street she had been sitting on not even ten minutes ago. Everything out there was the same as it had always been, the same people moving the same way, the same noise carrying through the night.

The difference was in her.

She wasn’t standing behind that bar thinking she had nowhere else to go. She was standing there knowing exactly what it cost her to leave the first time.

And the next time she walked away, it wouldn’t be because somebody promised her something better.

It would be because she built it herself.

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