work in progress

Hayley had been in love with Corey Jackson since the day she had met him. From that blank summer night that her and her cousin Beth walked into that hole-in-the-wall bar on the side of route 94 in Miller Place to the very present moment in time, he flooded her thoughts, her judgments, her day-and-night dreams. Three years of undiluted, unrepressed, and moreover, unreturned affection had gone by, and her head was still crazy for it, still swam in murky waters for it.

She kept her schoolgirl feelings mostly under wraps, allowing her friends to know only the surface stuff, but never recounting for them all the tiny details about Corey that she had cataloged like a library underneath her skull. Like how if he had the choice, he'd wear flip-flops every day of his life, but if forced, wore only Vans or Nike Airmaxes; or how whenever he was bartending he always gnawed on red stirrer straws on the right side of his mouth because smoking cigarettes is illegal inside public New York establishments; or how whenever the Foo Fighters were playing he was air drumming, but AFI and Lifetime made him an air guitarist. She knew all this, and she was hopelessly in love with every detail.

On nights that she visisted at the bar she'd order a Jagerbomb for herself and a shot of whiskey for him, and after the clink and drink, he'd only charge her for the bomb. "It's a buyback," he told her the first time when she tried to pay for both. So instead, she threw down a 100% tip, trying to buy back his attention as he cracked open beers and shook up chilled shots for the other customers.

"How long is too long?"

The first time she met Corey, she was enjoying a night off from summer camp counseling with her cousin Beth, who lived in the same town. Beth had mentioned that she knew her old friend Jay frequented a bar less than a mile from the camp Hayley worked at, and would she be interested in checking it out? Of course - sounds like fun - Hayley had replied.

When the two girls, buzzed already from sharing an Olde English Fourty Ounce in the parking lot, walked into the bar for the first time, they were greeted with blue walls decorated sparsely with Mets memorabilia and beer signs; a pool table sat towards the back of the room while the space right inside the door boasted a 1990's Mortal Kombat arcade machine next to an equally archaic manual jukebox. Alternative rock emanated over the speakers, a marginal amount of clientele milled about the room, and Hayley felt at ease.

Beth waved to Jay, who approached with his hands full with two tall beers, one for himself and one for Beth. Upon introductions, he apologized for not having a third, which Hayley waved off casually. She made her way to the bar with a cold beer in mind, mildly fatigued from chasing around kids full of summer energy. She had only been 21 for four weeks and three days, so her approach was timid as she tried unsuccessfully to gain the bartender's attention. She watched him shoot the shit with the other patrons, and in her observation soon forgot to be annoyed that she still didn't have a drink. Most of the other customers were male and seemed to range from mid twenties to old biker dudes. They wore black band T-shirts with hoods pulled up over flat-brimmed sports hats, and when they stood up their keys jingled from caribbeaners strapped to the belt loops of their grisly, slung jeans. Instinctively, Hayley clipped her keys to her own belt loops, always annoyed that women's jeans had the loop directly on the side of the hip as opposed to towards the back of the jean, like the guys around her.

That was the first detail she noticed about Corey. Before she even knew his name she knew that his keys were clipped on his left belt loop and that he had a bright red guitar keychain that stood out obnoxiously against his nondescript outfit of dark jeans and plain white T-shirt. She watched him laugh and nod in response to something one of the seated patrons had said, and she was instantly sold on his smile. At rest, his face was solemn and serious, like it didn't have much capacity for mirth; she felt treated to a surprise as she watched this stranger grin broadly and brightly smack his friend, a Heinecken drinking guy in a Misfits T-shirt, on the shoulder. She leaned further over the bar to get a better vantage point, and when the bartender finally looked over in her direction, she smiled faintly, now only slightly aware that she was supposed to be wanting a drink.

He came over and leaned his forearms onto the ledge of the bar and cocked his ear in her direction, waiting for her request. Struck by his proximity, she blanked, managing only a baffled "Uhhh..." and he raised his eyebrows, somewhat annoyed with her delay. His mouth was slightly crooked, and finally she blurted "Uh, can I have a Blue Point?"

Without re-angling his body, he held one hand up, index finger and thumb extended. "You got ID?"

Fishing in her bag, she removed a black wallet and handed him the driver's license. He looked at it, then her, then back at it. He chewed on imaginary straws and Hayley realized that a Pennsylvania ID must look suspicious to anyone responsible enough to check in New York. She gave him a tentative smile and an apologetic shrug, embarrassed that she didn't look old enough to elicit his service.

He flipped the card over, then back to the front. "You're from PA?" he asked, his voice clear and enunciated, but not meeting her eyes.

"Yeah - I mean - sort of - I go to school in Pittsburgh but my family lives here," she explained, inwardly chastising herself for talking way too fast and way too much.

"Pittsburgh, huh..." He handed her back the card, looking down at her hands. "Pittsburgh kind of sucks. You wanted Blue Point?"

Baffled, she choked out a harsh, grating laugh, and nodded. Stepping back, he flipped a pint glass out of a drying rack, flicked on the dispenser, and set the full beer down in front of her. With his hand still lingering lightly on the glass, he seeemd to stare right above the top of her head for a minute. "That's...four bucks," he affirmed.

Hayley pulled a loose fiver from her bag and handed it over. She gazed after him as he slid away from his place before her, dialed up a beer on a rackety cash register, dropped in her $5, whipped out a dollar, and smacked it on the bar, letting his index finger rest on top of the bill for a split second before he whisked himself away to the other end of the bar. She wrapped both hands around the glass and whipsered "Thanks..." to his absence.

She returned to Beth and Jay with a bewildered look on her face, and when questioned, she said "The dude at the bar just told me Pittsburgh sucked..."

"Who, CJ?" Jay looked over and rolled his eyes when his assertion was confirmed. "Whatever. Dude thinks he's cool because he's been in a band and has been since he was like, twelve."


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"What size are your gauges?" she asked him, a week before camp was over.

He puckered his face and looked left and upwards, like he often did when asked a question. "Twos, I think," he answered, pinching his earlobe. "I don't really know. I've had these in forever."

"Yeah?" She leaned in closer over the threshold, squinting to see his ears. "That's what mine are, too. They look about the same."

He nodded. "Yeah, I guess. You good here?" He tapped the side of her glass, and when she nodded back, he mingled away.

Disappointment broke through the floodgates, and her throat tightened harder and harder as he walked away from her for the millionth time that summer. She felt foolish and alone, even as she looked around to recognize the faces and names of everyone in the bar. At the door, checking IDs was Daniel, the owner, whom Hayley knew had slept with Beth on more than one occasion, cheating on his girlfriend. Playing pool in the back was Kevin, who's Dad had died three years ago from skin cancer, and Trent, who sometimes liked to secretly experiment sexually with men. Evan stood a few feet away and in the fourth grade, he quit his little league hockey team because he single-handedly lost the most important game for the team; he chatted casually with Sergio, but certainly not about the night that Serg's alcoholic father hit his mom and left to move to New Jersey.

As she looked around, she came to realize that in her constant patronage over the last few months, she knew something personal about every one of the regulars - except Corey. She thought about all her observations, about how she could probably draw from memory the hawk tattoo on his forearm; how he always sheepishly put his hand on the back of his neck whenever anyone asked him about his band, or that he took cigarette breaks every 95 minutes, like clockwork. She knew he was from Miller Place, that he had a brother and two German Shephards, that his birthday was January 8th and his bass guitar was a Fender, she knew every surface detail that he or his myspace his friends could ever tell her, but he had never shared anything more with her than that.

The disappointment morphed into anxious energy, and she called sharply across the room: "Hey, Jackson!" She tapped the bar with her index finger. "Jagerbomb, please?" Her hand trembled slightly.

He set the glass of Red Bull and shot of Jager before her, but before he could ask her for money or vanish or break her heart, she reached out and put her hand on his forearm, right below the hawk. Their faces froze, eyes locked, but Hayley still could not figure out if they were green or blue. She still smiled faintly. "I need to tell you something," she said slyly, her voice layered with conviction. He did not return the smile, but he cocked his head with his ear angled towards her, interested. Still lightly touching his arm, still keeping contact, she arched her body forward, trying not to pitch over completely, and whispered "I have a huge crush on you." She then pressed her lips to his ear, drank the shot, and wiped her mouth dry.

Corey stared at her for a moment, and released a controlled laugh. He shook his head, smiling and bemused. "Aw," he said, "you're sweet." She smiled with tight lips and he walked away, without tapping the counter, charging her for the shot, or returning the kiss.

She left the bar moments later, too jazzed with adrenaline and caffeiene and alcohol to remember to say goodbye to her friends. She walked around the side of the building and sat with her back pressed to the faux wood siding, arms clutched around her knees and tears sliding down her face. She was going back to school next week and she wanted nothing more than to share the summer air with Corey for five final minutes and hear what he thought about that fact. Drunk and drifting, she envisioned him apologizing for his detached behavior all summer, explaining that he was enraptured by her and didn't know how to show it, taking her hands, holding her tightly, stroking her hair. The scope of her daydream moved from moment to moment, as she pictured what it would be like to drive across the state with him sitting shotgun, telling her stories of what it's like to play shows overseas for kids who don't know any English except the words to his songs. She wondered how his strong but slow voice would sound like when they sang Saves the Day songs together somewhere on a long drive, keeping the highway warm at well above the speed limit, and she thought that nothing in the world would be more real to her than for him to say that he wanted her in his life, that she mattered to him.

She sat alongside the bar all that night, watching person after person file out until the neon lights out front snapped off and the puddles in the parking lot no long glowed orange and green. She waited, tripping over more fantasies, until she heard a key turn inside the doorway that she sat next to. The sound was like fireworks after the hours of near silence, and she dove behind the nearby treeline that separated the alley next to the bar from the service road on which it was located. Kneeling low, she watched Corey lock up, but instead of heading out to his car, he turned to walk down the back alley to where it met with the service road. Haley followed him a good distance away, reminded of the Midnight Manhunt event they had recently hosted at camp, drawing on her other staff's advice for how to sneak effectively without making noise. After ten minutes of tailing, the trees thinned out when they reached a residential development. She found she could no longer maintain a covert pursuit, but as she continued to watch Corey's movements, she realized she didn't have to. Crouched like a lioness, her eyes followed as he walked to the back door of the closest house and pull out his phone. He tapped on the keys briefly, and a moment later a slender girl with short black hair and tattoos on her collarbone opened the door, embraced Corey, and pulled him suggestively into the house.

The sun was starting to lighten the sky when Hayley made it back to the bar parking lot, but she couldn't focus on her bosses' warning or how disappointed her campers would be if she got fired. The only thing she could think was how dumb it was to debate whether she should park next to, near, or far away from Corey's car. How stupid it was to even think that he, or anyone at all, would notice something as minuscule and unimportant as that. Stupid! She lightly put her fingers on her rear windshield, and traced the letters P-I-T-T into the grime. Yes, she thought, now I'll go back to stupid Pittsburgh, where I belong.

Hayley unclipped her keys from her belt loop and felt around in her pocket to check for her license and extra cash - what little she had left after a summer of excessive tipping. Sandwiched between some crumpled $1 bills and her PA identification was a large folded sheet of gaudy unicorn stickers that one of her campers had given her earlier in the week. She stared down at the white horses that lept all over the page, the horns glittering with blue and pink and orange and green foil, and she thought of Tina, the eight year old who had given the gift. Tina had gestured for Hayley to kneel down to her, and she had whispered labouriously in her ear, "Hayley, you're my favorite counselor." She had spoken shyly, as if this were a bad thing or would elicit a negative response. Full of compassion, Hayley had hugged the girl tightly and tucked the stickers into her pocket, promising she'd find somewhere special to put them. Now, Hayley took the sheet and plastered seven shiny unicorns all over the driver's side door of Corey's car. She stuck three flying gold-horned ones on the rear bumper, two green-horned ones on the driver's side mirror, and put the biggest one with the rainbow horn on the front windshield, just out of reach of the wipers. She saved one of the unicorns for herself, sticking it to the passenger window on the side of her car, and drove the 45 seconds back to camp, back to her campers, just as the sun broke the horizon over the lake.