Page 6 of Collin: Episodes 1-3
He wiped down the bar one last time, checking to see if anyone was looking like they needed a drink, and pushed the button on his secondhand iPad to open his textbook. He was one paragraph in, and the bell on the counter dinged.
His head snapped up. A woman in a rumpled button-up shirt and hair in a ponytail stood there. “My apologies, ma’am. What can I get you?”
She looked him up and down and sighed. “Jameson, neat, make it a double.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He reached for the glass and the bottle at the same time, long practice making it look smooth, and poured. He slid it toward her on a coaster with a napkin. “Anything else?”
“Company?” She raised an eyebrow and sank onto one of the stools, leaning forward, chin in her hands.
“I’m on the clock, ma’am.”
“I mean here.”
Collin thumbed off his iPad and slid it away into the shadows of the workstation. “Rough day?”
She nodded and took a sip. “The worst. No, not the worst, but on a train of worst. Tell me something, young man, have you ever cheated on a girlfriend?”
“Never had the opportunity.” He busied his hands with wiping glasses.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never had a girlfriend.”
“Boyfriends, no girlfriends.”
She sniffed. “But have you ever cheated on them?”
“No. Never.”
She peered at him over the rim of her whiskey. “Huh. I believe you. Why not?”
Collin rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, it’s an awful thing to do to someone, right? If they think they’re safe with you and you go and sleep with someone else. Like you tell someone this is reality, here’s my promise, rest in it, but then you go and do something that makes you a liar. Then that thing they thought they had, that they relied on, it’s not theirs, really. That’s an awful thing to do.”
“So, it’s about ownership, huh.” She looked away, shoulders sagging.
“No, not ownership. Trust.” Collin poured her a water with ice and set it in front of her. “It’s a tangible thing that proves whether or not you’ll keep your word to someone. Like if you would cheat on someone by sleeping with someone else when you’ve said you’ll be exclusive with a person, what else might you lie about? Whether or not you will pay a bill, whether or not you’ll stay with them through something bad?”
“So, you don’t think anything but a monogamous relationship can survive?”
“I’ve seen non-monogamous relationships do just fine. But if everyone knows and is freely consenting, that’s not cheating, is it? Cheating is when you do something you said you wouldn’t do, that the other person is trusting you to refrain from doing. It’s the veracity, not the exclusivity.”
“Those are expensive words, bartender.”
Collin smiled and shrugged. “I read expensive books. But now I’m doing all the talking. What do you want to talk about?”
The woman giggled and picked up her whiskey, looking through the amber liquid. “I want to talk about why you wouldn’t do something awful to someone else.”
Collin laughed and shook his head. He wiped down the bar, again, buying time. “I already told you I’m not into women, right?”
“Well, tonight, I’m not into guys. Humor me. Tell me what to look for in someone to know they wouldn’t cheat on me.”
Collin pressed his lips together, thinking. He rinsed out his rag, rang it out, hung it up, and dried his hands. “I think you’d need to look for someone who is aware that other people have their own realities. Their own experiences and their own internal worlds that are different from other people’s internal worlds. Someone who can recognize how to offer sympathy and see pain that isn’t pain that they know personally. Someone who genuinely wants those around them to live good lives, whether or not they themselves are part of that life. And someone who isn’t desperate, not in dire need of romance to fill a hole inside of them. Because a relationship will never fill them up, I mean, fill that hole inside of them up.”
“Huh. How’d you get so smart?”
Collin shook his head, half smiling. “I’m a bartender. Have you never watched Star Trek? This is where everyone’s problems get solved.”
She chuckled and watched him, eyes hooded, one finger up, glass dangling in her hand. “Really though, you’re, what, twenty-six at most. Where’d you learn all this?”
