Moon Tower

20.

this chapter has been edited and updated. enjoy!xx

Sparkly Harry was back in full force tonight.

I hadn't seen this side of him in quite some time. He was a little excitable the couple of times we had gone out with his friends, but nothing like the night he'd crawled around the floor of my childhood home. Maybe it was the way it was just us and a handful of locals, or maybe it was the prospect of karaoke, which he seemed particularly ecstatic about. But for whatever reason when we got to the bar, he let himself go and encouraged me to do the same.

He'd even called us an Uber so that there would be no excuses for not drinking tonight.

The bar, Marnie's, was exactly what I had told him it was: a dive. It was a little run down, but some might say that's what gave it its charm. There were tables scattered about with mismatched chairs, framed pictures of owners past and present mounted on the wall behind the bar, and photographs of patrons throughout the years adorned the rest of the space. Some were framed like the owner's photos, others were little polaroids stuck inside other frames with dates written on them, and a whole wall was covered from top to bottom of images of families, and bachelor parties, and college students, and regulars. I, too, was up on that wall somewhere, having been here with Tico, Austin and Sara to celebrate Tico's twenty-first birthday. When I showed Harry that picture later that night, he couldn't get over how long my hair had been a few years ago. That and the fact that the picture managed to capture how drunk we all managed to get that night.

And finally, in the back of the bar, was a little karaoke machine. There wasn't even a stage set up, just a space cleared of tables by the back exit. I was a little surprised when Harry didn't immediately make his way over to the machine, having been excited about it at the house and on the drive over. But he just told me that he needed a few drinks in him first before he could go up there.

"Don't you perform in front of thousands of people for a living?" I asked, slightly perplexed.

"That's different. The people who come to see me are my fans. Plus, this doesn't really look like my demographic."

Harry was certainly right about that. Since this was the off-season and Marnie's didn't really scream "young," most of the people in here tonight were upwards of fifty years old. Harry and I were probably the youngest ones in here tonight, aside from the bartender, who looked to be in his mid thirties. With Harry's hand in mine, I pulled him over towards the bar, picking two stools at the far end.

"How's it going?" The bartender asked, placing two menus down in front of us.

"Good, thanks. And you?" I sat and chatted with the bartender, Mark he introduced, for a few minutes. Harry chiming in a little, but staying quiet for the most part. I'd noticed that out of the two of us, I was a little more outgoing in situations like this. Harry was great with people, but it also took him a while to warm up to strangers.

Mark left us alone to get our drinks started for us, gin and tonic for me and a vodka cran for Harry. We were silent for a few minutes while we perused the menu.

As promised, dinner was pretty good, though I find it's pretty hard to mess up chicken tenders and fries. Looking back now, Harry's drunken state might have had something to do with the fact that he only ate a salad and a few of the fries off my plate, and kept piling on the drinks. I didn't mind. It was good for Harry to let loose a little bit, especially since he'd been somewhat tense with all the work he'd been doing.

But after dinner, and about three more vodka cranberries, he'd opened up like a flower in bloom. He was talking animatedly with Mark, and then he was talking to two older men a few stools down, and then a couple at the table behind us, charming the pants off each and every person he spoke with. That didn't surprise me though, Harry was absolutely lovely to each and every person he met. But it was interesting to watch Harry interact with the bar's patrons the way he did tonight, carefree and without reservation. I think it might have had something to do with no one at Marnie's knowing who he was, and if they did, they kept it to themselves. Harry didn't talk about it much, but I knew that anonymity was something that he enjoyed when he could have it, and tonight it was handed to him on a silver platter.