Bourbon...after hours

She had come home in an evening, when the sun had long set and it had left its skidmarks across the sky and the grays beneath the trees were starting to blink with the sudden staccato of fireflies.  It was humid, a dead air feel but it felt like the prefix to a storm and she welcomed that knowledge like the calendaring of a dream where she could wake up to a thunder.  She was worn thin, rubbed raw by a day that had collapsed around her like thorns and she had finally shoved her way through.  She felt ugly, raw and starved.  

She saw a lone burn of a candle on the porch, a tea-light.  A lighthouse.  The front door was open, spilling a bit of yellow in a rectangle against the front of the house.  She heard the dark murmur of crickets signalling their start of the evening.  

She was halfway to the house when she saw the dark outline.

Can I buy you a drink? 

He was in the dark, a shape, meshed against the house, sitting in a chair and waiting for her.  She briefly wondered if the interaction was coincidence but then realized the candle gave it away.  He had been waiting for her.

She moved forward, the light from the house spilling more onto her gaze and she sensed him now, like a warm spot in a room, a shaft of sun through a window in an afternoon.  But in this dark humid air it felt more like a presence...and a gravitational pull to his orbit.  

She had once pulled him into hers.  She knew how it felt.  Being on the other side.  Now, at least for now, she felt the pull of him.  The undertow.  She wasn't sure if she liked it either.  Had preferred to be the dark matter tugging him into her, or at least towards her.  In this reversal she felt her feet slipping and she did what she usually did...fled...or did nothing.

But now, in a lawnscape with perhaps a storm brewing far away and the weight of a day piling onto her shoulder blades and the beginning of a headache she stopped really thinking for a second.

Of course.  What are we having?

She heard and across the lawn almost felt the ice cubes rolling in the glass, the delicious clink.  The crystal against ice crystal.  She thought she saw him lean forward and maybe, just maybe pour something.

It's just Woodford Reserve.  And yeah, it's on the rocks.  But it is quite nice.

She paused.  How many have you had already?

A short laugh.  Now is not the time for questions.  Come.  Sit a spell.  That almost sounds Texan.  Or southern.  Or hospitable.

She smiled a fast smile and walked up the steps.  He remained seated and she dropped her stuff on the porch.  She saw in the faint light his hand reaching up to hers with something glinting.  She reached out, took the cool glass and took a sip.  It was caramel melting on her tongue.

Ahh, we forgot to toast he said.  She could see his glass in the air.

She allowed the glass to fold and fall into a plane that reached out to his, clinked it once.  

There she said.

To us he said.  They both took a sip.  

I don't want to hear about your day he said.  I just want you to listen to this evening, and perhaps in small paint layers you will peel off all of the past 8 hours---

12 hours

Fine, past 12 hours and just spend a few moments with me.  Not minutes.  Not hours.  But just a few with me.

She had sat in the wicker rocker and heard him.  She felt the glow in her throat as the bourbon cascaded down and she lost track of the headache and the shoulders and the feet and the back and she focused solely on the grainy view of an evening darkening before her.

She heard the sounds, and felt the tension of the air and the approaching clouds and she heard the crickets signalling, the evening tightening its flaps for a storm.  She forgot about a computer, a phone.  She watched a brief gust of a tree bend slightly.  She saw the flicker of the flame in the tiny candle.  She felt a bit of tension drain from her like a slow ebb tide.  She saw the drain of a blister.  She felt the release of a band tight around a wrist.  She formed into the chair.

More she said, holding her glass to him.

Silently he poured her another few fingers.  She watched as he turned, plucked some ice from a bucket and plopped it into her glass.

The evening grew another shade deeper, and was really losing light.  It was still.  Dead man still.

This is nice.  He said as he drained his glass, the ice swirling around a bit.

The evening turned mottled black and the humidity sucked the coolness out of the air and spat it back in warm fumes.  

Inside each of them the warmth from a drink spread outwardly and loomed in their heads, numbing the sharp points and mellowing the rest.

It was the kind of evening you had hoped for, but so rarely got.

agreed was all she said.  But to him it was a victory