Page 113 of The Player

The second swallow wasn’t much better.

Behind the bar, a mirror ran the whole length of the wall behind the bottles. A couple sat a few stools down, talking over each other and laughing. Every so often, the woman touched the guy’s wrist to get his attention.

Drew looked back at his glass. He should’ve left Nicole a message.

That hit him now, sitting down here. If she called back, all she’d get was his phone ringing in an empty room. He could go upstairs right now, try her again, and tell her he just needed to hear her voice.

He finished the drink instead.

When the bartender came back, Drew pushed the empty glass toward him.

“Another?”

“Yeah. Please.”

The man took the glass, and Drew scrubbed both hands over his face before he sat up. He could feel it now, warm in his gut and loosening up his shoulders.

Tomorrow, he’d get his shit together. Fly home, get through finals, go back to practice. They had the Citrus Bowl coming up. His season wasn’t over, and neither was anything else. He knew all that. Tonight, all that knowing wasn’t doing a damn thing for him.

The bartender set the fresh drink down. Drew took a smaller sip this time. It still burned, but he didn’t cough. He kept his hand wrapped around the glass and watched a drop of water roll down the outside of the other one.

People came and went behind him. Every time the lobby doors opened, cold air and street noise came in with whoever it was. Suitcase wheels rolled across the floor, somebody said hello too loud, and a burst of laughter made him look toward the entrance. Nobody he knew.

He turned back around and drank. After a while, he quit checking the time.

He nursed the second drink. By the third, he wasn’t waiting as long between swallows, and when the bartender came by again, he ordered a fourth. Somewhere in there, he shoved his sleeves up again, pissed off at how much fabric kept getting in his way.

When he reached for the water, his fingers caught the rim instead of the side. The glass rocked on the bar, and he grabbed it with his other hand before it went over. He stared at it for a second. Then he took a drink of water, set the glass down carefully on the napkin, and looked for the bartender. The guy was talking to somebody at the other end. Drew waited until he glanced over, then lifted his glass.

The bartender came back, but this time he didn’t reach for the bottle.

“Can I get you something to eat?”

Drew shook his head. “I’m good.”

“Kitchen’s still open.”

“I said I’m good.”

It came out harder than he meant it to. The bartender’s face barely changed.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“No problem.”

Drew rubbed his thumb along the wet side of the glass. He didn’t need to be an asshole to a guy who was just doing his job.

He looked down at his fourth drink, and there was hardly anything left. He hadn’t realized he’d been going through it that fast.

He knocked back the rest. When he set the glass down, it landed with a clunk. The couple down the bar were gone. He hadn’t even seen them leave.

His face was hot, and his whole body had gone heavy in a way that wasn’t so bad as long as he didn’t move. Turning his head was a different story. The room took a second to catch up, and when he saw himself in the mirror behind the bottles, the guy staring back at him looked wrecked, with bloodshot eyes and his mouth gone slack.

He sat up straighter.

The bartender came over with more water. “Here you go.”

Drew looked at it, then at the empty glass. “One more.”