by Audrey Storm
“It sucks,” she’d cried to Adam at his job as a bartender. He may have failed college algebra, but the online test to earn a Responsible Vending card had been a piece of cake for him. “I’m management, so no one trusts me, but I’m also on the bottom of the totem pole, so the other supervisors boss me around. I hate it.”
Adam gave her a sad face, indulging her with shakes of his head and by chiming in with plenty of questions (“Really”; “No way”). In the end, he’d given her some half-thought out advice. “Why don’t you just open up your own store then? I mean, sure, it won’t be some giant firm like we’d always talked about, but you can do something. And you could call it ‘Crystal’s Crumpets’ or something.” But Crystal, tipsy at that point, had just shaken her head.
“Ew, no,” she’d argued. “If I had a store, it wouldn’t be a restaurant. Gross. It’d be something cool, and fun. Something—”
“What? Like a bar?” Adam interrupted, picking up someone’s check. “’Cause let me tell you, they ain’t exactly all fun and games.” He had frowned when he’d looked at it. “Tsk, no tip,” he sighed.
“Mine would be fun,” Crystal insisted. “Everyone would love it, even you.”
Adam only scoffed. “Throw in some video games and I’d have a ball.”
“Yes!” Crystal had leaned over the bar, trying to grab him by the shoulder but overshot and ended up grabbing his black half apron instead. “A video game bar! With old arcade games!”
Adam had frowned, detangling her from his outfit. “Uh, earth to Crystal, I said video games. Like, not old things that take up half a room.”
Crystal just shook her head. “We’d have a big room. Big enough to have lots of them!”
“And video games?” Adam asked, setting a glass of water down in front of her.
She frowned, but shrugged. “Sure.”
And thus, their idea was born.
It was something neither had forgotten, a dream that they could laugh about and do shots on without anything to taint it. But then Crystal had gotten a promotion at her job, and everything had gone to hell in a hand basket.
“They hate me!” she’d said, her face flushed as she sipped on her pear cider.
“They can’t hate you, Crystal,” Adam had said, trying to be the voice of reason. “You’ve told me about them, and we both know they don’t have enough spirit in them to care about anything at this point. Waffle Biscuit House is a soul sucker, right?” He was trying to make her laugh, but it only made her more depressed.
“And I work there,” she agreed miserably. “Where they suck souls and hate me.”
“Well,” Adam had laughed, “They won’t hate you at the Cloak and Dagger.” It was the name they’d come up with for their imaginary game bar.
Crystal snorted. “Of course not. I’ll be the boss. Hating me is against the rules.”
“There you go,” Adam had smiled. “We’ll have a list above the bar, and anyone who breaks any of our rules will be banished! Or, you know, cut off for the rest of the night, or whatever. And the rule to not hate you will be at the top of the list.”
Crystal had smiled then, resting her head in her hands. “Awesome.”
Thinking back, she was sure that Adam hadn’t expected her to come in the following day, slam her purse down on his bar and yell, “Adam!”
He had been in the middle of serving a woman her drink, and he held up a finger, not even glancing at her. Crystal waited.
“What?” he said, finally coming over to her.
“Let’s build it.”
That made Adam pause. He looked at her then, really sizing her up, then shrugged. “Sure, you got it, Crystal. You and me, with our bare hands—”
“No,” Crystal frowned, taking a seat. “I mean, rent a place and build the Cloak and Dagger. Order the pieces and decorate it. Take out an ad in the paper, and tell the world, you know.”
“…And you know that it’ll be very expensive.”
“The most,” Crystal nodded.
“Crystal—”
“Adam,” she stopped him there. “If you don’t build your dreams, someone else will hire you to build theirs. And I’m tired of building fucking Waffle Biscuit House.”
Adam raised his eyebrows. “Fair enough.”
From there, they came up with a real plan. Adam, with his rusty yet workable computer science skills, created a website and a Kickstarter fund. Crystal put in her two weeks and made flyers to post at the local college. She also created business cards and left them anywhere she could think of—with a tip at dinner, in the library book she returned, in a locker at the bus station.
And now, finally, they’d put down the money and rented a space.
Standing up in the empty space, Crystal and Adam looked around at the endless possibilities. “Let’s get started,” she grinned.
Chapter 2
Adam had thought transportation would be the hard part. But, as it turned out, they really had chosen an excellent location—one with lots of parking and plenty of room to stop a U-Haul for unloading boxes upon boxes of gamer gear.
No, the hard part turned out to be the actual act of unpacking and putting everything away in the right place. Luckily, they’d been envisioning Cloak and Dagger for so long that they both mostly knew where they wanted it all to go.
Of course, there were bound to be some disagreements.
“No, no, no!” Adam yelled, jumping over the bar. Crystal froze, the shot glasses in her arms clinking together. “Not there,” Adam said, taking them from her. “They go here,” he placed them at the other end of the bar.
“You know what?” Crystal said. “I’ll leave you to set up the bar.”
“Good plan,” Adam agreed, busying himself with sorting the various other items Crystal had dumped on his shelves.
They’d already set the actual games in their proper spaces. The classic arcade machines were pushed against the wall, just as they’d planned, and were divided into two different rows so that a person could feel completely surrounded amongst the chrome big tops. Adam had dubbed it the Seventies Corner.
“And what’re you going to call that?” Crystal had asked, pointing to the hallway that led upstairs into the video game room. She was actually surprised by the protective cases Adam had managed to find for the consoles—they were hard plastic and fashioned with a key code that only she and him were privy to, making them unbreakable. Unless, you know, their patrons managed to smuggle in a bomb or something.
“Adam’s Attic, of course,” Adam smirked.
“Of course,” Crystal rolled her eyes. “Then this will be Crystal’s Countertops,” she said, half-hugging one of their specialty tables for tabletop gaming. Each one was the size of a six-person dining room table, with green velvet on the top to keep the pieces from getting scuffed.
“They’re called ‘tabletops’ for a reason, Crystal,” Adam laughed.
“Not here,” Crystal argued.
“People are going to think that we don’t even know the proper names of what we’re selling,” he shook his head, smiling.
“So?”
“You’re right—we’ll let them think that,” Adam waved her off. “So long as they don’t break our number one rule.” He bent behind the bar, grunting as he lifted a heavy sign out of a box.
“Is that…?”
“Yep,” Adam smiled even as he strained to hang it up, lugging it up the ladder with him. “There,” he said, placing it on a nail as he let it go and stood back, taking a look at his work. “Well? What do you think?”
The sign was a rectangular piece of wood, stained a deep cherry brown with a gold engraving. It had a number of rules, all silly and game-related, except for the very first one that read, “Don’t hate on the queen.”
“Get it?” Adam said, walking over to nudge her in the arm. “We named it Cloak and Dagger like it was an old underground spy base, and, fitting in with that theme, and now you’re the queen in the story. You know, the one the subjects are all
still loyal to.”
“I love it,” Crystal laughed, leaning against him. She was much shorter than him, with her head only coming up to his shoulder. It had been that way since their junior year of high school, when Adam had suddenly shot up. By senior year, Adam had also become quite built and muscular. Crystal would always roll her eyes when she saw other girls gawk at him, since she knew that underneath that jock body was the biggest nerd ever.
“You’re welcome,” he snuck his big arm around her shoulders, hugging her close for a moment. Crystal blushed, and pushed him away.
“So what are you?” she asked. “The king?”
“Hell no,” he scowled. “A gent’ like me? I’m a knight.”
It was another week until they were ready for business, and it looked like their target audience was gearing up for it.
“Crystal, look at this,” Adam called her over. He was sitting at the bar with his laptop in front of him, scrolling through their website.
“What?” Crystal asked, leaning over his shoulder.
“We’ve got over a thousand hits! And get this, some college kids made a Facebook fan page. Apparently, a group of them are planning on showing up to our opening night in costume.”
“Cosplay,” Crystal corrected, reading over his shoulder. “Huh. Guess these kids are really into anime.”
“I think there’s a club at their college,” Adam added, following a link to another page, one with Pokémon in the banner.
“Huh.”
Opening night was the following weekend, and it was a mess.
But a good, crazy kind of night mess. They were swarmed by the kids from the college, all right—dozens of boys and girls wearing the craziest bunch of outfits Adam had ever seen. “There’s a girl over there in a furry dinosaur suit,” he told Crystal.
“Yeah? Did you see the kid wearing the horns? Says he’s some kind of demon,” Crystal shook her head.
Those that weren’t in cosplay were in their best nerd gear, including bright graphic t-shirts and long trench coats. And not one of them got by Crystal and Adam without being asked for an ID.
“But we’re just here for the games,” one nineteen-year-old complained to Adam. “Can’t you give us an eighteen and up wristband or something?”
Adam wished he could, but he and Crystal simply hadn’t thought that far ahead, and they had cops crawling all over the place, looking to catch someone for a crime as easy as serving a minor alcohol. Twice the cops had already attempted to escort an underage kid to the bar, intent to test their bartenders. And each time, Crystal had stopped them.
“I’m sorry,” she told them. “But this is a twenty-one and up bar. The games are free—we make all our money from the alcohol.”
“That’s why you’re the queen, Crystal,” Adam clasped a hand on her shoulder after she successfully turned away another underage kid.
“I never knew that they did that,” she said, glancing at the police walking back and forth just outside the place. “Like, seriously, what the hell?”
Adam just shrugged. “They’d pull that kind of stuff all the time at my other bar. It’s a test, but they can’t lie—as long as you ask for an ID, the kids will give you one that shows their true age. You just need to read it.”
After that little debacle, everything else seemed to go smoothly. The waitlist for Adam’s Attic more or less worked out, with the exception of a few kids throwing a fit (and then getting thrown out by Adam). Surprisingly, the antique arcade games received the most attention. Crystal threw it in Adam’s face, as he had never really been too fond of the idea, but he just crossed his arms and smirked.
“Yeah? And how is Crystal’s Countertop doing?” he asked. When Crystal just glanced at the four empty tables, he nodded. “Uh-huh, that’s what I thought.”
The kids started filtering out around one a.m., something Crystal attributed to early classes. Adam, on the other hand, blamed weak stomachs that couldn’t hold their liquor.
“Lightweights,” he muttered, watching them leave in big groups.
“Have a good night!” Crystal called out as they went, waving to the few who had turned around and wished her one as well.
By two, they were officially able to close the doors and turn the lock. “We did it,” Crystal laughed, leaning against the bar. Adam sent the two bar-backs they’d hired home and walked behind it, grabbing two glasses and a tub full of cut limes.
“Was there ever a doubt?” he asked cheekily.
“I don’t know. For a minute there—”
“Oh, come on,” he laughed, pouring her a small shot of tequila. “You were worried? When your knight was at your side all night?”
Crystal smirked. “My knight, huh?”
Adam bowed low, offering her the drink. “Of course, my lady.”
Crystal laughed, and accepted the shot. She threw it back, slamming it on the bar when she was finished. Adam chuckled to himself and followed suit, taking a moment to suck on a lime. Their eyes met, and he smiled around it, making Crystal burst out in laughter.
“What are you, a child?”
He shrugged, keeping the lime in his mouth as he poured them another. Finally removing it, he tossed the shot back, licking his lips from the taste. Crystal grabbed a lime for herself, sucking the juice to combat the hard liquor. She didn’t expect Adam to take it from her, leaving her lips red and puckered.
She’d barely blinked before he was suddenly too close, kissing her.
She froze when she realized what was happening, but Adam only moved a hand to her face, caressing her cheek with his fingertips. The movement made Crystal sigh into his mouth, giving him better access to grind his lips against hers.
His fingers slid down to her neck, stopping to pluck at her bra strap and pull it down her shoulder.
“A-Adam,” she breathed, and he moaned in response. There was a warmth pooling in her stomach, something that sent tingles up and down her spine. Every time he kissed her, nipped and licked her, it felt like she was on fire.
“You’re so…” he growled into her mouth, and she felt a hand slip under her shirt. She immediately tensed, and Adam froze up, too. “Uh, Crystal?”
She didn’t respond, but stepped back, shrugging him off. Adam stayed where he was, leaning on the bar with his jaw open.
“G-good work tonight,” she blushed, slinging her purse across her body and running out the door.
Chapter 3
Crystal stood in front of her bedroom mirror. She was in her best bra and underwear, the frilly red ones, with her shirt and jeans strewn on the floor behind her. No matter how she looked at herself, she just couldn’t find a reason to smile.
She was fat. It was like how some people were tall, or muscular—she was overweight. She had been ever since she was a kid, with chubby cheeks and a round stomach that stuck out over her legs when she sat down. She’d promised herself dozens of times in the last twenty-six years of her life that she’d start an exercise routine and be thin by the next summer, but she never did. And now here she was, crushing hardcore on her childhood friend, only to run away because she was scared that he would find out exactly how fat she really was.
He had some idea, she knew, but with the baggy shirts she wore, she didn’t think he really knew. At least, she hoped he didn’t. That’d be far too embarrassing, and it was why she’d run away when he’d stuck a hand down her shirt at the bar last night.
She sighed. It wasn’t like she could avoid Adam forever, especially now that they were business partners. She grabbed her black shirt off the floor, one that had a picture of a Dungeons and Dragons dungeon master behind a trifold, with the caption, “You know he is lying.” She pulled it and her jeans on. The shirt fell to her knees, hiding her stomach, and she slipped into her skate shoes.
Her watch read three o’clock. Time to go to work.
She pulled into her reserved spot next to Adam’s, slightly nervous to see his black jeep already parked. Locking her car, she walked to the entrance, peeking
her head inside before heading in completely.
Adam was at the bar, lying on his back with an empty bottle in his hand.
“Adam?” Crystal called, stepping inside. “What’s—”
“Crystal?” he shot up so fast, he lost his balance and fell off the bar, landing on the other side of it. Crystal heard something crash.
“Adam!” she yelled, rushing over to him. She found him on his stomach, coughing as he pushed himself up off the ground. The bottle he had been holding was shattered next to him but, thankfully, hadn’t injured him.
“What time is it?” he asked, wiping his eyes blearily.
“Adam?” Crystal crouched beside him, helping him up. “Did you go home last night?”
Adam hesitated, but finally shook his head at her words.
“What? Adam—”
“I’m sorry,” he said, leaning against her. “For last night, I mean. I shouldn’t have done what I did.”
As much time as Crystal had spent trying to convince herself that a relationship was a bad idea, she felt her heart sinking at Adam’s apology. “What? Why?”
Adam just shook his head. “You didn’t want it. I thought—but we’ve been friends for so long. I’m just stuck in the friend zone, huh?” he smiled at her, and it broke her heart.
“Adam,” she hugged him, hiding her face in his shoulder. “Adam, it isn’t you. It’s me.”
Adam scoffed. “Oh yeah, way to let me down easy.”
“I’m serious!” she pushed back, looking him in the eye. “Adam, I’m… I mean,” she struggled for the words. “I’m not girlfriend material, you know?”
“Who fucking said that?” he growled.
“I—sorry?”
“I said, who fucking told you that?”
“Adam, it isn’t like someone just walked up to me one day and told me that I was ugly. I’m not blind. I figured it out on my own, thanks.”
“Ugly?” Adam frowned. “Crystal—”
