The Life Lucy Knew

by Karma Brown

  “You don’t remember.” He smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he did, and I felt instantly lit up inside. No longer upset, now I was curious.

  “I don’t remember.” Then I laughed. “I can’t tell you how many times a day I have to say that.”

  He turned to me quickly, exaggerated shock on his face. “I’m hurt.”

  “Okay, so what’s the story with the limes?” I grinned and took a sip of the drink, the dark rum strong, the ginger beer sweet and spicy. “I hope it’s worth it.”

  “Lucy Sparks, the lime is where it all began.”

  27

  It was hot, too many bodies crammed in the room, and the night was only getting started. Lucy pulled her black silk top away from her skin where it clung with sweat, and billowed it out from her body a couple times. Scanning the crowd from where she stood by the outdoor bar, she couldn’t find Jenny, who had said she’d be right back, almost fifteen minutes ago. The music reverberated in Lucy’s chest as she swirled the slim red straw in her Dark and Stormy, the ice nearly melted with the heat of the room and her hand holding the glass. Stabbing the lime floating lazily in her drink, she brought it to her mouth and sucked out the juice and some of the pulp.

  The Madison Avenue Pub was a local watering hole near the university—three old mansions that had been combined and converted into a bar and English-style pub where students drank too much and made memories they’d reminisce about for years to come. It was a maze of rooms connected by grungy, maroon-carpet-covered staircases, with a huge wooden deck off the back that was usually teeming with students on weekends.

  Tonight Jenny and Lucy were meeting up with some other friends, and Lucy had heard Evan McAllister—a guy she was interested in but didn’t know well yet—was also coming. Evan and Lucy had flirted at another bar night similar to this one and had run into each other a few times on campus. They were also in the same psychology class, though there were four hundred people in the class, but Evan always waved and smiled when he saw her. There was chemistry between them for sure—at least enough for a few nights of fun, and at twenty-one, Lucy was all about fun.

  “That’s a mistake,” someone said, and Lucy looked up from her glass to the guy standing in front of her. Clearly intoxicated—bleary-eyed, body swaying slightly, damp hair stuck to his forehead—but with a nice smile, dimples on either side piercing his cheeks. Lucy wasn’t short at five foot six, but this guy had only a couple inches on her. He also seemed a few years older, maybe a graduate student.

  “Sorry?” Lucy replied, unsure if he was actually talking to her or not.

  “Eating the lime. They never wash the fruit before it goes in the drinks,” he said, shouting to be heard over the cacophony of voices and music. He pointed over her shoulder at one of the bartenders preparing a row of cocktails. “See?” he said. “He’s grabbing those slices with his bare hands. And who knows where those hands have been.” He raised his eyebrows, swayed a little more and held up his own hands while somehow managing to keep a grip on his beer bottle.

  “Thanks for the tip.” Lucy set the lime peel on the bar’s countertop and grimaced as she watched the bartender wipe his sweating brow with the back of his hand before slinging fruit slices into drinks.

  The guy gave a sloppy wave, as if to say, Happy to help.

  Then he squinted at her, leaned in enough she instinctually leaned back, if for no other reason because of the waft of alcohol following his breath. “Have we met before?”

  Lucy had to laugh. “Has that line ever worked for you?” She sipped from her watered-down drink, missing the lime.

  “Not really,” he said, looking sheepish. “But seriously, you do look familiar.”

  “I hear that a lot,” she said, which was true. With her shoulder-length bob and all-black outfit, she in fact looked like at least seventy percent of the women in this very bar. The guy shifted then, and one of the spotlights illuminated his shirt. It was navy, with a white arrow pointing up toward his chin and Keep Calm and Kiss the Groom emblazoned on the front.

  “Nice shirt,” Lucy said, gesturing to his chest. “How’s that working for you tonight?”

  He tugged out the shirt as if he was noticing it for the first time, then read it upside down. “Not much better than the line, if I’m being honest,” he said, and they both laughed. Then he jumped in a semicircle so she could see the back of it, which he tried to read over his shoulder. “What does it say? They wouldn’t let me look.”

  Hi, my name is Daniel.

  If I’m too drunk and seem lost, please call me a cab.

  (There’s twenty dollars and my address pinned inside this shirt.)

  She laughed, and he asked again what it said, but she told him it was the same as the front. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Lucy.” She held out a hand and he shook it. “And I’m guessing you’re Daniel.”

  “I am,” he said. “Wait, how did you know?”

  She shrugged, smiling. “Lucky guess.”

  He nodded as though that was a perfectly acceptable answer and pointed to her nearly empty drink. “Well, Lucy, can I buy you another?”

  “Sure. Thanks,” she said. “Dark and Stormy. This time without the lime, I guess.”

  “Coming right up.” A few minutes later he was back with her drink, and one for him, as well. “I’ve never had one of these. What’s in it?”

  “Dark rum, ginger beer and lime juice.”

  “Hmm, sounds good,” he said before trying a sip. Then another. He gave a long blink, swayed a little again. “You have good taste in cocktails, Lucy.”

  “Thanks?” Lucy laughed again and wondered about Daniel’s story. He was engaged, if his T-shirt was to be believed, but he seemed to have forgotten that detail as he flirted with Lucy and sucked back his drink.

  A group of ten or so guys, all wearing navy blue shirts that read Team Groom, engulfed Daniel and dragged him laughing back out into the dark sea of people. He waved as he went, and Lucy gave him a wave back right as Jenny returned, bumping their shoulders together. She handed her another drink and Lucy immediately took the skewered lime out of the glass and lined it up beside the other one on the bar.

  “Who are you waving at?” Jenny asked.

  “Some guy named Daniel. He seemed to know a lot about bar limes and is apparently getting married soon.”

  “You know, you might have better luck if you stick with the single ones,” Jenny said.

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “So where have you been?”

  Jenny sipped her own drink. “I ran into Jackson.”

  “Jackson?” Lucy asked, trying to remember which one he was. “English lit Jackson?”

  “No, that’s Jack. This is CrossFit Jackson,” Jenny replied, a contented smile spreading over her lips.

  Right. Jenny’s latest fitness craze was CrossFit, and Jackson was one of the guys who ran a few classes a week out of the university’s gym. He was muscled in a way that made Lucy both curious and concerned, and Jenny had been going to a lot of classes lately.

  “He’s here with a few other guys. Thought we might want to join them?” She gave Lucy a hopeful look, and Lucy glanced at her watch. With every passing minute she was getting drunker and less certain Evan was going to show. Jenny covered the watch face with her hand and shook her head. “Nope. No. You do not get to pull the ‘It’s getting late, I’m going to cab it home’ thing.” She puffed out her cheeks, gave Lucy her best annoyed pout. “It’s barely midnight. You promised fun-Lucy tonight.”

  “You’re right, I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “I’m all yours tonight. Fun-Lucy is ready for anything.” She gulped the drink Daniel had bought her, the burn of the alcohol and sharp ginger mingling uncomfortably in her mouth with the cold of the ice cubes. Crunching the ice with her teeth, she set her now-empty glass on the bar beside the fallen lime soldiers, picked up the dri
nk Jenny had brought her and pointed into the crowd. “Let’s go find Jackson and his shockingly fit friends.”

  Jenny smiled and kissed her on the cheek, then grabbed her hand, and Lucy let herself be pulled deep into the pulsing sea of bodies. Later, she would run into Daniel again. They would literally bump up against each other on the too-small dance floor and Lucy would fall right on her ass. He would crouch in front of her, not so drunk he wasn’t horrified to have knocked her over, and Lucy would laugh at his clumsy attempts to help her up, then let him buy her drinks with the twenty dollars from inside his shirt. She would learn he was a few years older, a soon-to-be lawyer currently articling, and was getting married in a couple of weeks.

  Lucy would give him her number because she had had too much to drink and was young and single and didn’t care whether or not that was appropriate. And a month later Daniel would call her, out of the blue while she was studying for midterms—now dating Evan, even though she liked the idea of him a lot more than the reality, as it would turn out—and he would ask her out for a drink. He and his fiancée had broken up before the wedding. Lucy never asked why, only if it was for good (it was, he said), and if he was okay with it (which he assured her he was).

  Three weeks later Lucy was Daniel London’s girlfriend.

  28

  “I can’t believe I forgot about the lime,” I said. But I hadn’t forgotten-forgotten, like the way I’d forgotten I liked eating meat and my parents were separated and Matt was my boyfriend. This particular detail—so small and insignificant in the grand scheme—had been pushed aside. Easily retrievable with a little reminiscence therapy, which was what Daniel and I were up to tonight.

  There was a brief flit of guilt in my belly as I thought about Matt and his reaction when I asked for extra lime in my drink at Jake’s party, and the tequila shots from the other night (this must have been what I was remembering about the lime), but I pushed it aside.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised, though. My brain is a bit of a mess.” I tried to laugh, but it got caught in my throat.

  “You okay, Lucy?” Daniel asked gently. “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought up the lime thing? Let you live in blissful denial?” He was trying to make me smile, and it worked.

  “It’s not the lime thing,” I said, my smile fading. “I got blindsided by something today, and, well...” I held up my drink. “Let’s say I needed this Dark and Stormy tonight.”

  “So what happened?” Daniel asked, holding up two fingers for the bartender before turning his gaze back on me. I saw his ring then, and my head was spinning and I felt unpleasantly warm. I looked away from his hand, from the ring and what it meant.

  “I found out my parents are separating. Or are already separated, months ago.”

  “Ah, I’m sorry. You didn’t have any idea?”

  “I guess I did,” I said. “But I don’t remember, and they’ve been keeping up this whole ‘we’re still happy and together’ charade since I got out of the hospital. My mom is even dating apparently.” I shuddered, and Daniel laughed.

  “This is not funny,” I said, though the smile crept back onto my face.

  “The nerve of our parents, doing things we don’t like,” he quipped, and I laughed. “My parents should have split years ago. Neither of them is happy, but after Nan left Gramps it created such a mess within the family my mom once made the comment being unhappy was part of being married. A ‘suck it up, buttercup’ arrangement.” He raised one eyebrow, smirked. “Nice, right?”

  “That’s sad,” I said.

  “It is sad. But my grandparents got back together and now they act like newlyweds, so who the hell knows.”

  “They got back together? Huh. Maybe there’s hope for my parents yet.”

  “Nan and Gramps married when they were seventeen,” Daniel said. “Nan said she needed to ‘know’ another man, aside from my grandfather. It was apparently on her bucket list.” He cringed and I chuckled. “Look, I’m sorry you’re going through this with your parents, Luce. They always seemed so solid.”

  “I know. And it sucks. But the worst was finding out they’ve been lying about it. Plus, everyone else knew and kept it from me, too.” I picked up my third Dark and Stormy, which had magically appeared in front of me. “There’s nothing worse than being the last to find out.”

  “I bet,” he said, draining his glass. I wasn’t sure if he was ahead of me or not at this point, but he definitely seemed less intoxicated than I was.

  “You want to know the shitty truth?” I asked.

  “Always,” Daniel said. “Hit me.”

  “I have no idea what other secrets are locked inside my brain. They could be big. Important, life-changing secrets. And what if I never remember?” I said. “What if I can never trust my memory again?”

  He sighed, shook his head. “I don’t know, Lucy.”

  I held up my glass a bit sloppily, and some of the drink spilled over its edge. “And the award for the most honest reply yet goes to Daniel London!”

  Daniel chuckled as he watched me try to mop up the spill with a tiny napkin. “I think you need another drink,” he said.

  “Ha! That’s probably the last thing I need. But why the hell not?” I said, slurring a little now. “One more couldn’t hurt.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Daniel said, and soon we had another round going and I was sucking it back like it was water.

  The rum had loosened my tongue and so my curiosity finally won out. “Where’s Margot tonight?” I asked when there was a lull in our conversation. I hoped my tone sounded light and nonloaded, even though I was quivering slightly on my stool.

  “She’s out,” he said. “Girls’ night.” He was saying something else, about someone’s birthday or something, but I was fixated on his lips. I had the sense everything would be all right if I moved closer...closer again...

  “Easy, Lucy.” Daniel laughed as he helped me right myself after I nearly slid off my stool. “As much as I’m enjoying this, maybe it’s time to call it a night?”

  “Prob’ly good idea,” I said, my words blending together. Daniel paid our tab and tucked his arm through mine as we left the bar. I let him take some of my weight because it turned out that last drink had in fact been a terrible idea, and I swayed more than walked back to my place.

  “So what is the lovely Margot doing these days?” I asked, like it was perfectly ordinary to discuss her. Like it didn’t hurt me to say her name, to know she filled the space in Daniel’s life I believed was mine even though it wasn’t. “She wanted to be a professor, didn’t she? Is she teaching or something?” I was trying hard to be coherent, but it was a battle I wasn’t winning.

  Daniel shook his head, used his free hand to pull his collar up higher against the chill. “You’ll never believe it, but she’s an interior designer now. Does some TV work, too.”

  “Shut up!” I slapped his arm but missed and lost my balance. Daniel put a firm hand on mine, which was clutching his arm for support. “You’re kidding. Television, eh?”

  He laughed, took a step back so we were side by side again, and I had mostly regained my balance. “I told you it was unbelievable.”

  “But...but...she used a sleeping bag instead of sheets when we were at school! Hated having her picture taken. She always used to hold her hands in front of her face during photos, said smiling on demand was demeaning.”

  “I know.” Daniel let out an even bigger laugh this time. “That was a long time ago.” He smiled at me, and a flutter filled my belly. I couldn’t stop staring at him, the feelings inside me swirling and growing, at least in part thanks to all those drinks.

  “You should see how many accent pillows are on our bed now. It takes me five minutes to move them every night.” He didn’t sound like he minded, though, and again I was hit with the truth that Daniel had married Margot. He chose her, even though I was the one who used to
wear an engagement ring he put there.

  The sadness was swift and crushing, and I started walking faster for fear if I didn’t I would sit on the cold sidewalk and cry. “You sound happy,” I said, because it was true, and though it hurt me to know the reality of Daniel’s life now, I was glad for him. Wanted him to be content with his life.

  “I am. Life is pretty sweet,” he replied. “Though I could do without the pillows, if I’m being totally honest.” I smiled and tucked my chin into my coat, which allowed me to let my smile drop without him noticing.

  Things were quiet between us as we walked the last block to my place, and I slowed as we approached the front steps of the building. “This is me,” I said, pulling my arm out from his.

  Daniel looked at the building. “Nice place. I remember when they were building these.” I followed his gaze, appreciated again how much I loved where I lived. It was an old bank that had been converted into four loft town houses, with exposed brick and beams inside and plenty of character on the facade. “Bet it’s great inside.”

  I bit my lip, held in the desire to say, You know it is, because even if my mind tried to remind me this was our place, Daniel had never stepped into my building. “It is” was all I said instead.

  “Thanks for the drinks, and the walk home,” I added, thinking in any other scenario this would be when I invited him up for another glass of something neither of us needed.

  “It was nice to hang out,” Daniel replied, sensing none of my conflict, blowing into his gloved hands and jumping a couple of times to stay warm. “We should do it again.”

  “We should,” I replied, though I didn’t think that would be the best thing. For me, anyway, because there was too much between us and I could still feel the current connecting me to Daniel. I wondered if he could feel the threads, too. “Well, okay. Good luck with the studying. I hope you aren’t up all night now.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ve got all weekend.” And still, he didn’t leave, as if there was no other place in the world he’d rather be.