SAVE ME FROM YESTERDAY

RASTRO 02

💙🌻

Glaiza de  Castro carried a frothy lager in each hand, plunking them on the bar in front of the two men seated across from her.

"Haven't seen you guys all week. I was starting to think you'd found a new bar."

She pressed a hand against her chest.

"Don't break my heart like that."

Kian laughed heartily, reaching for his glass.

"Wouldn't dream of it, Glai."

"Been working late, is all," Ketchup added.

"Well, I missed your handsome faces," she told them affectionately.

Kian and Ketchup had been coming to Himawari's every evening for a beer after work since Glaiza was a little girl, doing her homework in the back room at her dad's desk while he tended bar. As her list of regulars dwindled, she'd come to depend on their business as well as their company.

"And we missed you," Kian told her.

"Glad to hear it," she said as she slid down the bar to check on the loner a few stools over who'd been drowning his sorrows in whiskey for the last hour.

"Another?" she asked.

He nodded.

She poured his drink, and he took it with muttered thanks, his gaze dropping to the glass in front of him.

"Bad day?" she asked, offering a sympathetic ear.

Bartending 101, her dad had called it.

"Lost my job," he told her before taking a gulp of whiskey.

"Budget cuts."

"That's terrible," Glaiza said.

"I'm so sorry to hear it. Next one's on me, and after that, you need to slow down, okay? Drink some water."

"Yeah, yeah, thanks." He drained his glass, eyeing Glaiza.

"What time do you get off?"

"I don't," she told him with a smile, taking that as her cue to move down the bar to where her best friends Chynna and Gabby sat in their usual seats, deep in conversation.

"More beer?"

"Yes, please," Chynna nudged her empty glass in Glaiza's direction.

"Did that guy just ask you out?"

"He sure did." Glaiza took both of their empty glasses, bending to load them into the dishwasher below the counter.

"Wish he'd ask me out," Gabby commented, glancing down the bar.

"He's hot, in a nine-to-five kind of way."

"I don't think you have a shot with him," Glaiza told him,

"but didn't you have a date last night anyway?"

She grabbed two clean glasses and began to fill them from the tap.

"I did, but..." Gabby made a face.

"That bad, huh?" Chynna asked, smoothing back a black curl that had escaped the knot on top of her head.

Her skin was flawlessly smooth, a byproduct of her current job selling all-natural cosmetics at a little shop in Chelsea Market.

The three of them had been friends for years, and consequently, Chynna and Gabby were regulars at Himawari's, showing up almost as frequently as Kian  and Ketchup