Either way, his extremities were red and felt numb from the cold as he tucked his hands up under his armpits. “Pull yourself together,” he muttered to himself.

But how could he when he was missing so many important pieces?

It was a melodramatic thought, but that didn’t make it any less true, so when Micah eventually pushed himself away from the brick building he found himself leaning against and looked up, only to see that he’d subconsciously settled in front of a bar – not a popular club, just some hole-in-the-wall called Artie’s Pub – he thought, why the hell not?

A blast of heat hit him as soon as he entered the place.

Although he’d never been there before, it looked like any other dive bar he’d visited. There was a pool table and some dart boards in one corner and a decades-old jukebox in the other, currently playing some crooning country song he didn’t recognize. The actual bar was stretched across the back wall, the rest of the pub filled with mismatched tables and chairs.

There were only a handful of customers milling about, and all of them were huddled on the side near the pool table, none of them paying a lick of attention to Micah as they laughed – the sound loud and boisterous – at some joke one of their companions had made.

Satisfied with their lack of interest in him – he was there to drown his sorrows in liquor, not make friends – Micah took a seat on the other side of the bar.

The lone bartender, a pretty girl with the top half of her hair tied up in a messy bun and the bottom half completely buzzed, greeted him with a smile. Micah noted that she had an intricate sleeve of tattoos crawling up one arm, disappearing where it hit the cuff of her t-shirt.

“Hey there, handsome, what can I get for you?” she asked.

Micah forced a smile on his face, but it felt like a brittle thing. “I’ll take a vodka soda, please, and a shot of the strongest whiskey you have.” He pulled out his wallet and handed over a card. “You can start a tab.”

The woman’s smile wilted a little, like she was concerned that a young man with wounded, red-rimmed eyes, sitting all alone, was opening a tab so early in the evening, but after a moment, she simply shrugged. (After all, it wasn’t her job to interrogate every sad-faced customer coming in desperate to get shitfaced, just to help them accomplish the task.) “Sure thing, honey.”

Micah didn’t blame her.

In fact, he felt nothing but grateful for the woman when she returned a minute later with both drinks in hand. He wasted no time downing the whiskey, the alcohol a painful burn down his throat. He followed it up with a swallow of his vodka soda.

“Let me know if you need anything else.”