Warnings: Drinking, Alcohol, Swearing, Low key bad talk of Navy men, Insecurity, job interviews.
The breeze blowing in through the open windows is almost cold. No one has ever said that California is cold. Sure, the nickname The Golden State comes from the gold rush and not the rays of sun that beat down heavily on the state, but it's California.
The O Club is dingier than Honey remembers, full of ancient Officers and their wives who still enjoy smoking inside and beer from lines that haven't been cleaned in so long that Honey actually grimaces when she thinks about it.
The floor is sticky. So is the chair she is sitting in. The tabletop is covered in peanut shells and damn, this place is gross. Honey puts on her best smile for the manager as she slides her resume though the peanut shells. The paper absorbs a droplet of undetermined liquid when it reaches his side of the table. Honey fights back a shudder.
The man who sits across from her seems completely disinterested in not only Honey, but his job in general. The only thing that seems to hold his attention at all is the baseball game on the television behind the bar. His eyes are trained just over Honey's shoulder. She watches as his eyes glide over the screen, taking in the way he almost mouths, his lips stopping himself halfway through his lack luster word of encouragement for the team up to bat. His tongue snakes out of his lips before he flicks it around to wet the chapped skin. Honey grits her teeth.
"Mr. Spencer," Honey leans over right into his line of sight, a kind but annoyed smile on her face, "Thank you for taking the time to see me. Please hold onto my resume and give me a call once you've looked it over. I need to head to my next appointment. Thank you again for your time."
The man waves a hand and gives her a noncommittal grunt as she stands up. She manages a tight lipped smile before heading for the front door. It's not worth it, she reminds herself as she pushes out into the chilled evening air.
The dejected feeling she has been pushing down for the last three weeks seems to engross her, bogging her down like wet boots. It should weigh heavy on her shoulders but the only thing she can seem to feel is a broody sense of determination. The O Club is the fourth place she has been since nine am, and her luck doesn't seem to be improving. She is slowly exhausting all the locations that came up on her navigation app under the "BAR" tab. She scrolls back up to the top of the list, clicking on the first hit to come up. The Hard Deck. It is just a bit too close to the Air Base, but desperate times and all that. So, she throws her car into drive and heads towards base, and unknowingly towards her future.
---
The warmth that overtakes Honey as she walks into the Hard Deck makes her skin tingle. The cold evaporates from her skin, her goosebumps easing with each step she takes towards the bar top.
The Hard Deck is busy, bodies bumping bodies as they make their way through the crowd. Honey pulls her blazer from her shoulders, letting the fabric slide down her arms as she scootches herself around a large man in a Marines uniform. He mutters an apology to her as his forearm grazes against her shoulder, the beer in his hand sloshing around in the glass. She offers a tight lipped smile.
The folks behind the bar are busy, a flurry of hands and glasses, liquor and tap. They each have sweat droplets peppered across their brows, their forearms coming up to dry them off. The effort is fruitless as the sweat returns.
Honey slides herself up onto an open bar seat between a woman who is unsuccessfully flirting with a man who has a tragically overgrown undercut and a man who is engrosses in the baseball game that is playing from his phone. Honey throws her blazer across the back of her chair, hanging her purse up along with it.
The dejected feeling begins to crawl back in.
"You're a little overdressed, aren't you, Babe?" The woman on the other side of the bar notes as she shakes a shaker near her ear. Her voice is a tad louder than necessary but her words are kind, so Honey manages a smile, genuinely.
"Can't seem to win today it seems," Honey shoots back with a shrug of her shoulders, "Not a damn bar in this city is hiring,"
"What's your name, Babe?" The woman asks, brushing her bright red bangs from her eyes with one hand as she pours a drink with the other.
"Y/N, but everyone calls me Honey," The bartender nods back, sending a drink down the bar.
"Penny! We've got a live one!" The redhead calls down the bar before nodding back towards Honey. An older woman glances towards the redhead before her eyes land on Honey.
"You're looking for a job? Bartender?" The woman, Penny, asks, pulling down on the Budweiser tap. The honey liquid flows into the glass, foamy and cold.
"Sure am!" Her voice is slightly too giddy for the expression on her face. She pulls a folded up resume from her pocket, the paper now crinkled and less than presentable. Honey slides it across the bar with one manicured hand. It slides across the clean bar top with ease. The redhead takes a look at it before giving Penny a quick thumbs up just below the bar near her hip. She thinks Honey doesn't see it, but she catches it.
Penny shuffles over and trades places with the redhead. She places a bottle of house vodka and an empty glass in front of Honey with a small smirk on her face.
"Alright then, Honey Girl, can you pour me two ounces of this, no jigger?" Penny asks sweetly, before she is back to pouring another glass of beer on tap.
Honey stands up on the bar of the stool, allowing herself to lean over the edge of the bar to grab a rag that has been abandoned on the other side. She steals a pump of hand sanitizer from next to the register before she wipes the bottle down with the towel. Then, Honey moves to the floor, pushing the stool back behind her. She takes the house vodka by the neck of the bottle, label facing Penny. Turning it over, Honey counts out two ounces. She then places the bottle on the rubber mat on the serving side of the bar, offering the double shot in the whiskey glass to Penny.
Penny takes it and pours the contents into a jigger, measuring out the liquid. It comes out right at two ounces and Penny tries her best to hide the smile that is beginning to stretch across her lips. She isn't ready to give Honey the job just yet...
"Can you tell me what is in a Tequila Sunrise?" Penny quirks an eyebrow before throwing back the Vodka that Honey poured just moments before.
"Two ounces tequila, four ounces fresh orange juice, a quarter ounce grenadine, garnishes with an orange slice and a cherry," Honey raddles off the recipe, counting the ingredients out on her fingers. The counting makes Penny chuckles a bit, and Honey just smirks at her, "Hard to do it without actually pouring the drink. It's basically muscle memory,"
The women behind the bar share a devious smile. Penny shoots Honey a look laced with scheme.
"Come on back here and make me a Cosmopolitan, would you Honey Girl?"
Honey places her hands on the bar, leaning forward to turn her head right then left, surveying the drinks in everyone's hands with furrowed brows. Then, she turns around, standing up on her tiptoes, looking around the room. She turns back to Penny with a smirk.
"Do these military folks even drink stuff like that?" There is a glimmer in her eye, one that Penny can't help but love already.
"Nope," She pops the 'P'.
"Okay Penny, I'll make you your drink," Honey winks before winding though the crowd to make her way behind the bar. She rolls the sleeves of her crisp white button up all the way up above her elbows before making a pitstop at the sink to scrub her hands. Then, Honey gets to pouring. First the juices, then the liquors, shaking then straining, the drink coming out pretty pink in a martini glass.
Honey steps back, revealing the drink to Penny like a magician might reveal a woman sawed in half. There is a flick of the wrist and a dramatic bow that makes Penny laugh out loud. The older woman steps forward and takes a drink of the pretty pink cocktail, an instant smile on her lips the moment the drink hits her tongue.
"Are you Military officiated?" Honey shakes her head no, a slight purse to her lips. She knows it isn't quite true, but she doesn't need to air her dirty laundry in the middle of this makeshift job interview.
Her hands are clasped in front of her as she rocks on her feet. Heel toe, heel toe. Honey wants nothing more than to spill her guts to the seemingly friendly staff at the Hard Deck. She wants to tell about her father, and what a shitty man he is for abandoning her and her mother. She wants to explain how she ended up in this little bar anyway, and everything she has left behind over the years, chasing his ghost. But most of all, Honey wants to talk about Bradley. She wants to talk about the storm in his eyes and the way he spoke so angrily to her. She wants to lament to these women in the way she couldn't with Bradley. She wants nothing more than to speak of the life she left behind, but she doesn't. Instead, she bounces on her feet. Heel toe, heel toe.
"Are you dating anyone in the Military?" There is a bit of humor to her voice but Honey can't help the drop her stomach takes- it falls so far she feel for a moment that she might never see it again, but then the nausea hits.
Honey can still hear the door slamming. She can still feel the way her fingertips used to gently adjust the frame next to the door. She can still see Bradley coming in drunk, over the shoulder of one of his friends. Bradley, Jake Seresin, and Natasha Trace all got sent to Pensacola and their little trio could drink that town dry if they really wanted to, and they did just that a time or two.
The photograph of Nick and Bradley has faded to the back of her mind now, but she swears she can still see Nick's eyes when she closes her eyes. She can hear the words Bradley screamed at her, and the tightness of his throat as he did. Her own words haunt her harder, deeper, like they are melting away her insides.
Bradley Bradshaw is the furthest thing from Pete Mitchell in her mind. He would never abandon his family, that much she knows. Honey has seen him with Jake and Natasha, knows how he cares for them, and how much love he has for not only them but his team. She has watched him pour from his cup more times than anyone else, making sur that those he cares for are loved and that they know it.
Maybe that's why it hurt so much; having thing end the way that they did leaves Honey feeling the furthest thing from okay.
"No," Honey answers simply.
"Good on you, Honey Girl," Penny sends her a wink, "I can't say the same for me, but I have seen so many relationships between these guys and their significant other's go sideways-"
Honey stops listening to Penny, too focused on the glinting diamond on her left hand. The diamond is large, and absolutely sparkling even under the amber lights of the bar. Honey blinks back tears as she looks at it, memories of Bradley flashing through her mind.
Honey wants to ask Penny if she had ever had a fight quite so bad with her own husband. If being with a Navy man is always so hard or if Bradley just decided to make it that way. Is it all circumstance or does it come with time in? Maybe the it's issued to them with their gear, but it doesn't quite matter how it got there, the matter of the fact is that it's there.
Somehow, Honey thinks maybe Penny knows exactly what she is feeling, and though Honey was the one to walk out the door, it feels like Bradley was the one to walk away.
When her eyes make their way back up to Penny, she is standing there expectantly, eyebrows raised.
"I'm sorry Penny, what was that?"
"I said, the job is yours if you want it! We have a big welcome back party scheduled for a week from Friday, and I want you here and ready for it. My husband's team is getting recalled and they are going to be very excited to see each other. Can you start tomorrow?"
Penny has already begun digging through a cupboard below the bar, her hands working just as fast as her lips.
"I'll be here, Penny, thank you so much!" Honey's gratitude is met with a balled up shirt straight to the chest. She catches it before it drops to the floor, and Penny chuckles at the rapid movement.
"Great, then I will see you tomorrow, now get on the other side of my bar!" She shoos the younger woman with her hands, offering her a smile, "And Honey Girl, welcome to the team,"
Honey leaves the bar with a sense of accomplishment she didn't know she could feel. The wet boot feeling in her soul is gone, now relaced with a sense of excitement for what's to come. There is still a part of her brain replaying all of the times the door slammed and the way Bradley would stumble into her arms. Nestled next to those memories is the image of Pete Mitchell with his arm wrapped tightly around Bradley, and Honey blames the nausea that swims deep within her body on that memory.
There is so much going on in Honey's mind that she walks straight to her vehicle, not bothering to spare a glance away from her path. Once she climbs inside her car she takes a look at the t-shirt in her hand, the Hard Deck logo on the left chest, the word, "Bartender" is printed across the shoulders. Honey smiles, so distracted from the joy and excitement that she doesn't even notice the familiar blue Bronco parked just a few spaces away.
Honey drives back to her shitty new rental with the windows of her car down. The chilled breeze blows in, messing her hair, causing gooseflesh to break out over her skin. No one ever said that California is cold, but it's about as far away from Bradley Bradshaw that Honey can get, so she shivers and enjoys it.
Small leaps Off the highest peaks Sunrise walks At six o’clock In company outside Surrounded by alone inside These are the things I like to bring By OxyregretsGen
