This is my first novel. It’s a fun, romantic adventure, about a pair of twenty-somethings who, despite barely knowing each other, decide to take a week-long vacation together on the other side of the world. I’m currently in search of a publisher. Below, is the first chapter.
Chapter 1
In Which We Meet
“I love rooftop bars,” she said, gracefully sitting down on a boxy, leather, white sofa, behind a small, equally white table. She gently placed her tiny purse next to her hip.
“I thought you might,” he smiled, pulling out the chair opposite her.
“And the music is just lovely,” she glanced appreciatively at the quartet near the entrance.
“When you mentioned sangria, this was the first place that I thought of,” he replied.
“It’s just perfect – the fire light, the view of the city, the ambiance – it’s very romantic,” she said, gesturing at her surroundings, taking the atmosphere in, and ending with quite a warm glance toward him.
“It’s even more perfect being here with you.”
She blushed and looked bashfully downward, beaming with a smile.
“And I’m really glad that you came tonight,” he continued, “– they don’t have the flamenco band on the weekends.”
“I’m really glad too… I had no idea this existed! It’s a lot busier than I thought it would be.”
“I’m actually not sure there’s anywhere else to go on Monday nights.”
She laughed. “That makes complete sense. Well, I’m so happy you dragged me out!”
“I wanted it to be special.” He smiled warmly and then looked around for a server. “Would you like a sangria?” he asked her.
“Yes, absolutely!”
He made eye contact with a hurried young woman wearing a black apron.
“So how did you find out about this place?” she asked, studying the contour of his face.
“I was just driving by one night and heard the music. It was … well, not expecting it and just hearing it out of the blue at that stop light,” he gestured to the stop light at the corner, “it was… enchanting, really.” He looked down and let out an embarrassed chuckle at the words he’d just said. “Anyway, I got home and looked it up, and I’ve been waiting to bring someone special here ever since.”
She took his hand in hers and glowed toward him. “That is just the sweetest thing!”
“It is definitely not.” He looked serious for a second while saying it, then broke out in a smile. “You,” he gently poked her nose, “you, are the sweetest thing.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. The saccharin. And who thinks fire columns are romantic in the middle of the Florida summer? I mean, sure—from a distance. But you don’t eat ice cream in Antarctica. And “the view of the city”? It’s like five tall-ish buildings. I’m not even sure if it would qualify as a city, if such things had official criteria. He thought she might like a rooftop bar? Went real far outside the box there, Freddie Prinze, Jr.
I peeled myself off the wall that was propping me up, in search of another perch. Of all the people that could’ve sat by me, why did it have to be those two? Why couldn’t it have been a bachelorette party? Or even a bachelor party. Sure, it being a Monday night might have something to do with that scenario, specifically. But still.
I was gripped with envy. I was wondering if his story was legitimate, or if I’d seen him before. I was there one day on most weekends, but definitely almost every Monday, because my other option generally was to cry myself to sleep alone. (I exaggerate; but not that much.) I’d try to get a friend to join me, and sometimes one would, but I guess most people loved crying themselves to sleep alone.
On solo Mondays like this, I would promptly turn into background scenery, propping up a wall kind of near the action – but not too near. I aimed for a cool, James Dean loner vibe, one foot on the wall, untethered from humanity. Every so often, I’d walk around, from inside to outside and back to inside, searching for an interesting conversation on which to eavesdrop. I thought I would’ve recognized him if I’d seen him there before.
The night air felt nice, like a warm hug – if you avoided the mood fire tucked away in the corner. Summer nights always tempted me to try to sleep on the patio or go camping or some such nonsense, until I’d eventually realize that a warm hug only feels nice when you’re awake. Give me the cold grip of the air conditioning any night.
I made my way inside, propped my back against the bar this time, elbow leaning on it nonchalantly, supposedly watching the band through the wide open sliding doorway, and tried my best to look cool ordering another drink when mine got low. You know, in case anyone was watching. I was pretty sure I’d gotten that pose down perfectly. The new drink came, I took a slow sip while squinting to make the vodka burn less, and did another slow lap of the outside, stopping at the far end to enjoy “the view of the city”. It really was nice, even if it wasn’t grand.
Next on the itinerary, a turn around to survey the ever-changing landscape of the bar, noting that the insufferable couple was still there—now holding both of each others’ hands around two glasses of sangria—when there came into focus a girl, standing at a high-top table with her friend. She had the longest strawberry-blonde hair I’d ever seen. I mean, longest of any color, but it was also just a gorgeous shade of blonde. She was telling her friend something – a story – and she seemed so genuine and earnest and happy in telling it that I found myself enchanted from afar. I obviously couldn’t stare, but I couldn’t look away either, so I started methodically scanning the room so as to keep her in my peripheral vision. It felt like I was fighting gravity and that if I lost, I would’ve fallen not down, but in the general direction of her table. Very disorienting.
“I should go talk to her,” I said.
“Nah, she won’t like you,” I responded.
“You don’t know that – girls are into all kinds of weirdos.”
“Ha, like how Stacy’s been dating Finker for almost a year now?”
“Has it really been that long? Jesus. I wonder if she’ll end up marrying him. But yeah, exactly like that!”
“Alright, maybe. But you need to land the opening.”
“I shall now summon the myriad of pickup artist tricks I’ve learned since college.”
“Definitely don’t say stuff like that.”
“Right-o.”
“Or that.”
“Touché, mon frère.”
“Seriously!?”
“Okay, okay. I’m just gonna go and say ‘hi’ and see what happens.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No, I’m not.”
And so, I went back inside and this time sat at the bar. I pulled out my phone, checked the scores of sports I don’t follow, read some old emails, ordered another drink and then—as if Cupid granted me a wish—she planted herself squarely next to me: standing at the bar with her friend, who was unsuccessfully going for the manic pixie dream girl look, pretending to try to get the bartender’s attention.
“She so wants us.”
“Right??”
“But now we pretty much have to make a move.”
“Do we, though?”
“Dude. Yes!”
I resigned myself to dealing with what might be a night-ruining rejection and was trying to come up with a good opener when she started hiccuping. I didn’t hear the first one, but I recognized the body movement. The second wasn’t far behind, and then a third and her friend asked if she wanted some water, but the water didn’t help. This, by the way, was just my luck. Here I was, about to make an irresistible move, and then something like this happens. Something like this always happens.
The hiccuping continued and she tried holding her breath and holding ice on her tongue, in lieu of sugar, and her friend tried scaring her, but she saw it coming and it didn’t even faze her. It had been minutes now and she was getting progressively more embarrassed, mentioning going to wait it out in the bathroom, when I got an idea. A wonderfully evil idea.
I debated it with myself, wondering if this was going to somehow horribly backfire and get her not only upset with me, but possibly even get me kicked out of the place, but she started facing the bar and I told myself “carpe diem”, suddenly grabbed my cheeks while at the same time turning my face toward her and shrieked the loudest, most high-pitched cackling I could muster.
She literally jumped back toward her friend, and with the most confused and bewildered look searched me to see what on earth could be the matter with me. In that split second I felt like I could see the questions going through her head. Was I a literal lunatic? Like, was I schizophrenic and suffering a mental break? Was I trying to somehow mug her? Was it an act of some kind? Performance art? Was she on a prank show?
I smiled as I calmly put my hands down and around my drink. “Did it work?”
“EXCUSE me??”
“The hiccups. Do you still have them?”
She put her hand on her heart and let out a big sigh of relief followed by laughter, turned to her friend who was now standing up, then back to me and put her hand on my shoulder.
“Oh my God, you were trying to scare me! Good God did that work. I mean, I don’t know about the hiccups…”—she paused and kind of waited for one as her breath was catching up with her—“… but man, I think my heart did!” She stopped and waited again, still breathing heavily. “Yeah, I think they might actually be gone!” She turned to her friend. “Can you believe this?” I don’t think her friend knew if she meant me, or the scare tactic working—I certainly didn’t. She turned back to me, still laughing, “Well, that’s gotta be the most random thing to happen to me in a week.”
“Glad to be of service,” I raised my glass in her direction.
The bartender, having missed all of this while in the back, walked up to our section.
“What would you ladies like?”
“Well, we’ve gotta buy this man a drink, first of all.” She gestured toward me and the bartender looked me over, suspiciously.
“I’m okay. Thank you! I literally just got this one. But that’s really nice of you.”
“Oh! How about shots?” Her friend piped in.
A shot on a Monday night? Interesting.
“Yes!” The recovering hiccuper exclaimed and turned to me, “Please do a shot with us – as a thank you.” She was beaming an exaggerated, but sincere smile.
I pretended to think about it for a bit, “okay, but only if you let me get it.” And quickly following up the look of confusion on both of their faces, I threw in a plausible excuse: “You just went through a traumatic experience, while I had a ton of fun with it. It’s really my pleasure.” The reality is that it had been deeply bred within me that a gentleman always pays.
They looked at each other shrugged and the friend replied with “We will gladly accept your booze, random, scary stranger.” I chuckled.
“What are you guys in the mood for?”
They looked at each other again, and before they could answer, I quickly added: “just not a Lemon Drop.”
They looked back at me, a little disappointed. “Do you have any ideas?”
“Have you ever had a Buttery Nipple?”
“That sounds unappetizing…”
“Oh, it’s the most appetizing thing on earth. Delicious and weak. You guys look like you have jobs in the morning, and your missing hangover will thank you.”
“Alright, let’s try that!”
I turned to the bartender, who was waiting impatiently, and said “Three Buttery Nipples, please”, while gesturing the number with three fingers up.
“Not gonna lie: never thought I’d hear that phrase,” she said, looking at me a little too stoically out of the corner of her eye.
“Probably didn’t think you’d meet a knight in Under Armour tonight either.” She laughed. I wasn’t wearing anything by Under Armour, but the comeback popped into my mind—which was floating in a cocktail of adrenaline and vodka—and I couldn’t pass it up, and she never called me on it.
I had to tell the bartender how to make it (float half an ounce of Irish cream on top of an ounce of butterscotch schnapps), but I seriously doubt I could’ve planned that whole incident any better. To think I was afraid the scare tactic wouldn’t work out, when in hindsight: how could it not work out? They loved the shot, asked me how I found it, I told them about my friend Stacy that introduced me to it, and asked them why they’re out on a Monday, which led into work and college and then finally some other guy started talking to the friend. His opening line was “Hi, I’m Kevin,” but he looked like Superman, so he could pull it off.
With the friend occupied, we ended up talking for a solid couple of hours. Her name was Tessa. My family and her grandma were from the same corner of Eastern Europe. She loved classical music and also had a touch of class—with a good amount of indecency to keep things interesting. The kind of girl that wears pearl necklaces and curses like a … what’s not quite a sailor? A longshoreman? Someone who could recite dirty limericks in Latin, who would drink cheap beer at black-tie affairs, and who would try shots with scandalous names, from dashing strangers.
And she loved to travel. Or at least the idea of it, because she hadn’t been anywhere of real importance yet. She’d recently gotten out of a long relationship and really wanted to go to France. I told her about my European adventures the month before, heavily name-dropped Paris, and let it slip that I was going to Australia for work – she was “so jealous!”.
“Honestly, I’m less psyched about Australia than New Zealand”, I said.
“Ohhh yeah – that’s where they filmed Lord of the Rings, right?”
My heart secretly leapt.
“Yes, exactly! Those mountains are supposed to be just as amazing as in the movies. I’m going to drive across them twice and go glacier hiking – it’ll be a great adventure.”
“That sounds – I don’t even know what other word to use besides amazing!”
“Right? I’m guessing I’ll be taking a ton of pictures.”
“I bet! I can’t believe work is sending you there.”
“Well, they’re not really—they’re sending me to Australia and I’m taking like a week off after, traveling all around on my own, and then back to the Sydney airport. The plane ride back costs the same a week later, so the company’s cool with it.”
“Wow, that’s really awesome of them!”
“Yeah, not sure what went right there!”
“So you have a work friend going on the vacation part with you?”
“Well… just me and myself.” She opened her mouth in disbelief and I tried to put her at ease. “I don’t mind it too much, and I’ve done it before so it’ll be fine. Days are no problem because of all the touristy stuff to see and do. I packed as much as I could into the itinerary and then some, so I won’t have any downtime to even realize I’m traveling alone.”
“But still, you need people to talk to!”
“Eh, I’m not a huge people person,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t point out how I was on this rooftop, on a Monday night at that, “and there are plenty of people at the tourist sites. Even at night, there’s bars and spooky tours and all kinds of social stuff like that. Not that talking to tourists is anything good… basically the same stilted conversation you have with whomever’s sitting next to you on a plane.”
“Well, you can always scare the local girls and buy them innocent shots to chat them up,” she said, with a mischievous smile.
I almost spit out my drink. “There’s always that—very true!” I laughed, then tried to regroup. “But yeah, I’m not really worried about it, save for maybe the couple of nights I’ll be driving through the mountains where it’d be nice to have some company. But I’ll just bring a bunch of videos to watch.”
“Oh man I could not do that. I definitely need someone to travel with. But that’s awesome that you can! And videos are a great idea – comedies!”
“Oh definitely. I’m a sucker for cheesy sitcoms.”
“Me too! I’d call them guilty pleasures, but honestly… I don’t feel guilty at all.”
She was smart, a little sweet but not too sweet, pretty funny, and more importantly: she got my humor; I felt like I hit a small jackpot. I wasn’t sure about the long-term potentials here because she hated sports, unabashedly fell asleep at the movies, and cursed like someone in a sailor-adjacent role. But in any case, she was way more than I was expecting on a Monday night. Because what I was expecting was nothing. And she was definitely something.
Before hugging goodbye, we made plans to meet up on Thursday at a dive bar up the road. Her friend’s band was playing there. I hate live music, but they had booze and her, so it got a thumbs up from me.
