But no. I wasn’t. Not yet. Because I was here now. And each time I came here, it reminded me, reassured me. That I still had the ability to break loose a little. And I needed that.

After tossing my jacket around a chair, I walked to the bar on the opposite side of the room, waited for the super unfriendly butch bartender to notice me. She was here almost every time we came to Moonie’s and had never smiled at me once. I was equal parts terrified of and deeply in love with her.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

Claire: Harry just vommed all over the nice rug

Kort: truly disgusting

Claire: going to have to cancel the sitter

Kort: ugh, why are babies

Claire: I’m so sorry :(

Kort: we made poor life choices

“You need something?”

I jumped. Fuck. Scary Butch Bartender finally noticed me while I was oblivious on my phone, which definitely meant she hated me even more now. This was an ominous start to the evening.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry. Just a Rainier.”

She plopped the can on the counter and wordlessly stuck out her hand for my card. After I handed it over with what I hoped was my most charming, so-sorry-again, I-am-gonna-tip-you-so-hard smile, I slinked back to our table. Well, my table, currently. Should I make ÜberTable now, to make sure we had it? Except…with Claire and Kort out, that meant their weird neighbors likely wouldn’t come, either, which sucked, because even though they were fucking weird, they reliably provided at least half of our most memorable Moonie’s moments.

With a groan, I remembered Nate was out of town, too. So he and whatever randoms he normally pulled in were also out.

We might not even have to shove an obnoxious number of tables together at all.

I slumped down into my seat at my singular table, accompanied by my cold can of lager and my friend, Instagram. Which I definitely had already caught up on while I was eating cheesy puffs in my apartment.

Sigh. Twitter it was.

Things only began to look up when Kiki, the karaoke jockey, walked by on her way to her station fifteen minutes later and gave me a wave. I smiled back. Kiki was without a doubt our favorite KJ. She liked us, didn’t let the same people hog the mic over and over, and was cute as hell. I was pissed Claire and Kort were missing out on a Kiki night. Their loss for deciding to raise spawn.

I’d finished off my Rainier by the time another text of doom appeared on my phone, this time from Rae: I am so sorry, if I don’t get this brief done this weekend I am royally screwed.

So. Claire, Kort, Weird Neighbors, Nate, Nate’s Randoms, and Rae were officially missing out on a Kiki night.