Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink (38 page)

“I meant that as a compliment!” Leilani yells from outside.

“And I took it as one!” Ashley yells back. She then says to me, “But it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. I’m playing next Monday night at a coffeehouse in Kula, if you’re free.”

F
IFTY
-
FOUR

By ten o’clock, the evening is in full swing. I’m rocking the bar, Leilani is a superstar waitress, handling all of the tables both inside and outside the bar, and Ashley is easily keeping us stocked up with everything, while also helping me pour beers and wine. I’m having my usual good time learning about people’s weddings and learning what not to do at my own (one couple got married in matching Wookie costumes by a Darth Vader reverend. What about this says romance?), what not to do on my honeymoon (one newly married couple were waiting by the bar’s front door right at opening to escape the seven children they brought with them, all of whom are staying at the Grand Wailea and currently eating room service under the guidance of not one, but two, babysitters. I suspect the parents will be here until closing).

Ben has written me a few texts throughout the night, beginning with a bit of mystery:

You have every right to still be pissed. But can you meet me for a drink? I’ll bring by not only your bracelet, but a little surprise.

Surprise? What kind of a surprise? Why do people always sound so mysterious when they want you to call back?

All right, I have only so much willpower. I can’t help myself—there was still so much more I wanted to say/yell. I write back:

I’m working for Jeff tonight. Won’t be able to do anything for a while.

I proudly decide to be just as mysterious as him.
A while
can mean anything.

But I can’t help myself. I then type:

So what’s the surprise?

Ben writes back within a minute:

After I got home from dropping you off, I called her and told her all about you. See, now you have to see me.

How do you figure?

Come on. Aren’t you the tiniest bit curious how the conversation went?

I am strong and silent for about one hour. Then a couple tells me the story of how they met. They were both hiking at Lands End in San Francisco, and she was tired and sat down, and he shared his water bottle with her and introduced himself and … Okay, so I weaken. I quickly pull my iPhone from my pocket to covertly text:

Maybe.

“What are you doing?” Leilani asks rather harshly as she walks up to the bar.

“I can’t help it,” I whine, flipping my phone around to show her his texts. “What if this guy is my soul mate?”

“Then you’ll be wife number two, who he will proceed to cheat on with soon-to-be wife number three.”

Ashley walks behind the bar carrying two large bottles of replacement rum. “When? The minute she lives a million miles away from him?” Ashley argues. “This Italian-model wife of his could have chosen to move with him to paradise; she stayed in New York. The marriage is over. Time for the band to play.”

Okay, I may have been boring them with details throughout the course of the evening. But isn’t one of the benefits of having girlfriends that you can bore them with details of your travails with men? (Now that I think about it, I’m blessed that I already have girlfriends here I can bore.)

“What is wrong with my saying that Mel deserves better?” Leilani asks Ashley as she walks behind the bar to join us.

“What is wrong with my saying Mel deserves happiness? And the only way she is going to get it is to get realistic?” Ashley asks.

“Realistic happiness,” Leilani snorts. “That is a contradiction in terms right up there with ‘hip-hop royalty.’”

Ashley crosses her arms and squints at Leilani. Then a thought seems to percolate in Miss 177. I wait a few seconds until it bubbles over. “I think I know how I can prove my point,” Ashley decides. “What say you to a little wager?”

The way Leilani is standing, girl fighting pose, you’d think she was about to ask Ashley if she wanted to dance, bitch. “Name it,” Leilani dares.

Ashley turns to me. “Mel, what made you change your mind and write back just now?”

Ugh. I hate being on the spot. “Ummm…,” I begin timidly, then I tilt my head toward the couple I just served. “They told me the story of how they met: he shared his water with her on a hike, and he immediately knew that she was the woman he was going to marry right then and there.”

Judging from her wicked smile, you’d think Ashley was about to be a pit bull violating a cat. She makes a show of slowly rubbing her hands together. “Perfect.” She turns to Leilani, “If I can prove to you that the first three couples we ask did not have the wildly romantic courtship they tell everyone they did, but are still happily married, Mel gets to text Ben back and say she will see him tomorrow. What do you say?”

Leilani appears nonplussed. “You’re going to ask a bunch of disgustingly over-the-moon newlyweds to admit they have problems?”

“No. I’m going to ask them to admit they had some hiccups when they first started dating.”

Leilani seems dubious, but game. “And if I win?”

“If you win, I’ll run over a chicken.”

I gasp. Ashley immediately recants, “Okay, I won’t run over a chicken. But I will buy you chicken for lunch.”

Leilani grunts. “No, you won’t.”

“You’re right, I won’t,” Ashley admits. “But if you win, Mel won’t call or text him. Do we have a deal?”

Leilani looks over at me. Pushover that I am, I nod pleadingly. She nods as well.

“Excellent,” Ashley chirps. She walks over to the couple I have just served and smiles as she asks, “So, Mel tells me you guys have a really wonderful story of how you met. What are you guys drinking?”

“I’m having the Ho’omaika’i ‘ana,” the wife tells her, taking a sip of her drink with a straw. “And my husband’s having the Ku’u Lei.”

“Fab.” Ashley turns to Leilani. “Can you whip up a batch of those two?” Leilani nods and begins her mixology as Ashley tells the couple, “We would love to give you guys a refill, on the house, if you can answer two questions for us to settle a bet.”

The husband laughs nervously while the wife giggles. They exchange a look, then he says, “Shoot.”

“How did you guys meet?” Ashley asks them.

I watch as the wife tells Ashley the same story they told me before: a cold, foggy day at a forest on the edge of San Francisco, she rested, he shared a water bottle, the rest was fate.

“That is amazing,” Ashley says happily as Leilani hands her the drinks. “Now, would you mind telling me how you guys really met?”

Crap. They looked stunned. Jeff is about to get his first one-star review, and it’s all my fault.

Ashley continues, “Don’t be shy, we’re all friends here. I’m just trying to make a point. None of us really have a ‘meet cute.’ We all have the story we have to tell our friends when we introduce him over dinner for the first time. So, how did you guys really meet?”

A smile creeps onto the bride’s face. She smacks her groom on the arm and bursts out laughing. He laughs too. Finally he asks, “Have you ever heard of the dating website howaboutwe?”

Turns out, they first met online. They talked for a few weeks, he finally suggested going hiking at Lands End, and that’s how they eventually had their “meet cute.” She did get tired and he did share his water bottle with her, but that’s not the point.

Ashley also got the girl to confess that at the time she was “in a complicated relationship with someone else” that she “was trying to get out of.”

Okay, she wasn’t getting out of a marriage, but close enough.

As their story ends, a handsome
GQ
model (I’m guessing) asks Ashley, “Free drinks! Can we get in on that?”

“Absolutely!” Ashley assures, him, walking over to the gorgeous couple. “Way you told your grandma you met?”

The blond, new wife giggles as she says, “I saw him in a library and followed him out to a coffeehouse, where I introduced myself.”

“Awesome. Real way?”

“Met her over beer pong,” he admits. “I was on a date with her roommate at the time.”

“We have a winner!” Ashley says, turning to Leilani. “Leilani, be a poodle and set them up.”

“But I really did see him at the library,” blond wife insists. “I was stunned when Jodi showed up with him the next week at our favorite bar.”

“And that’s the beauty of the meet cute: it’s always based on a sliver of reality, just like all good lies,” Ashley tells the blonde warmly. Then Ashley turns around. “Okay, I need one more. Mel—you pick.”

“No. Not fair,” Leilani protests. “She could rig the couple.”

“How do you
rig
a couple?” Ashley asks.

“I don’t know. But if you’re going to prove your point, the last one has to be fated, not someone she can pick. So … the next couple who comes into this bar. All or nothing.”

“I just won two.”

“Aren’t you sure of yourself?”

“Of course.”

“Then all or nothing—the next couple to walk in.”

Ashley gives a quick nod. Let the games begin. For the next minute, the three of us stare intently at the front door. I can almost hear the sound track from one of those cheesy Western movies where the man in black and the sheriff in white walk to the middle of the dirt road bisecting the town, face each other, and fire their guns.

Finally, a couple walks in and heads straight for two empty seats at the bar.

They’re in my station, so I walk up, throw down two cocktail napkins in front of them, and say, “Aloha, I’m Mel. Welcome to Male ‘Ana. What can I get you?”

The woman’s face lights up. “Hey! I’m Mel too. That’s easy. What would you recommend, Mel?”

Not knowing what that coincidence is supposed to mean, I look over nervously at Ashley and Leilani, who are frozen in place, staring at the couple.

The looks on their faces reminds me I’m being ridiculous. I turn back to the couple and ask, “Do you like strawberries? Because we have a fantastic drink with strawberries, basil, and vodka called the Kipona Aloha, which means ‘deep love’ in Hawaiian. It’s served in a heart glass that you get to take home.”

“Sure. That sounds great. Two Kipona Alohas,” Mel tells me.

I smile. “Be right back.”

As I walk away to get berries to put in a glass, Leilani and Ashley race up to me. “Ask them,” Ashley demands urgently.

“Okay, we look psychotic right now. Both of you go back to work. I’ll ask her when the time is right.”

Leilani walks out from behind the bar to the lanai to take more drink orders while Ashley whispers to me, “But what if it’s fate?”

“Then it will be fate just as much in ten minutes as it will be now. Go.”

As Ashley heads back to the storage area, I throw some strawberries and basil into a pint glass, then return to the couple. As I muddle the basil in with the berries, I tell them, “You came at a great time. We have a fantastic game going on right now, and the prize is a complimentary first round of drinks.”

“Wow,” the man says to me. “Cool. So what’s the game?”

“How did you two meet?”

The couple exchange a look, complete with knowing smiles and amorous, silent promises. “I met her in a bakery,” the man tells me as he flirts with his wife.

The woman continues, “Ben works for the best bakery in Cleveland. I was picking up a chocolate cake for a bridal shower. We were doing this weird fortune-telling thing called a cake pull—”

“—where you have to pull charms out of the cake,” I say, my heart jumping into my throat.

She points to me. “Oh my God, yeah. My friend was getting married, and she wanted us to rig the cake with these charms. Long story. Anyway, so I walk into the bakery, and there’s this amazing-looking man at the front counter—”

“Hold on,” I say, putting my hand out, my palm toward her. “Real quick. What charm did you end up getting?”

I knew she pulled the money tree even before she told me. I knew the bride had tried to rig the cake and it didn’t work. I knew that nothing I asked would really matter at that moment, but I had to finish Ashley’s challenge. So after I heard all of the details of the meet cute I asked the inevitable: “So how did you two really meet?”

Again, they exchange looks, but this time they both appear confused. “We met in a bakery,” Mel repeats.

So Leilani won the bet after all. So, as promised, I won’t text Ben again.

But haven’t the rules changed here? I mean, the two of them are named Ben and Mel, and they met right before a cake pull, where she pulled a money tree.

Damn. Seriously, what are the odds? Shouldn’t that be some sort of signal from the universe?

But that was really how they met. They really were soul mates, fated during our romantic era to be with one another after a meet cute, without any major obstacles in their path, destined to be happy forever.

Not until two Kipona Alohas, one Pomaika’i, three beers, and one bathroom break (Mel’s) later that I learned one more thing about fate.

That, sometimes, it needs a little nudge.

Once Mel is in the bathroom and out of hearing range, Ben leans in to me and asks, “Can you keep a secret?”

This might be my favorite part of the job. I lean in, smile, and whisper conspiratorially, “Always.”

He darts a glance toward the women’s restroom and, deciding the coast is clear, tells me under his breath, “We really met at a bar.”

Intrigued, I lean in closer. “Oh, yeah?”

He smiles and nods. “Her bachelorette party. I suggested she buy a cake from me for her shower and gave her my card.
She
was the bride, not her friend.” Ben leans back and takes a sip of his beer. “I’m sure that makes me sound like an asshole. But let me tell you, I knew after five minutes of talking to that woman that she was getting married because she thought that was what she was supposed to do, not because it’s what she wanted to do. Now I’m from the Midwest—I think you have to do what you’re supposed to most of the time: I get up at three in the morning to be at the bakery by four. I pay my mortgage on the first of every month. I visit my grandma at her retirement home every other Sunday. And that’s all good. But we all have enough supposed-to’s in life. Who you marry should never be one of them.”