The Fallback Read online

  “Levi!” the bartender, a stout older man with a couple of inches of wiry gray beard, shouts and then yells Levi’s name again while waving an arm.

  Levi straightens, his hand falling to my back. His touch is as warm as it was the first time, feeling like an outline will surely be left behind. He leads us to the bar, never dodging or moving out of the way of the others who move instead. The bartender wipes at the bar and then pounds it with an open palm. “I wasn’t expecting to see you this afternoon. Someone finally managed to drag you out of your office, huh?” His brown gaze shifts to me, and his arms cross over his broad chest, a smile tickling his lips. “You’ve managed to achieve something I haven’t been able to in nearly a year.”

  Heat rises to my cheeks, and I work to recall the dating tips Felicity had read off to me while I was getting ready. They’re all jumbled in the recesses of my mind, keywords like “smile,” “attentive,” “laugh,” and “eye contact” are bouncing off each other with cryptic details. “He’s actually doing this as a favor to me,” I tell him.

  The bartender leans forward. “You’ve got to be louder than that in here, honey. This place is a zoo, and it’ll only get louder.”

  “She said she’s cuter than you.” The bass of Levi’s voice makes him easily heard, and the bartender chuckles while my face gets hotter.

  “You’ve got me in spades there, that’s for sure.” He looks me over again. “He better not have convinced you to date him with his risotto recipe”—his eyes travel to Levi—“because that’s my recipe.”

  “You’re getting more senile every year.” Levi shakes his head once, but a warm and genuine smile curves his lips. “Brooke, this is Jerry. Jerry, this is Brooke.”

  Jerry grins. “Take a seat, you two. What do you want to drink? You like beer, or you want something stronger? Something to finally put some hair on that pretty chest of yours?” His eyes flash to mine. “My apologies. I was referring to his chest, not yours.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you already wedged that foot of yours up there too high to salvage the conversation now, Jer.” Levi slides into the seat next to mine and then faces me. “He’s a much better bartender than he is a conversationalist. If you like mixed drinks, he has a bit of a heavy hand, but he also reaches for the good stuff.”

  Jerry waves a hand in the air, dismissing Levi’s words. “Do you like breakfast drinks? Fruity drinks? Those blue … whatever they’re called?”

  “I just got done trying to tell her you’re a great bartender, then you say something like that where you sound completely inept.”

  Jerry waves him off again, keeping his attention on me.

  “I’d love a mai tai, please.”

  Jerry nods, then looks to Levi. “Snakebite?”

  Levi nods, and Jerry disappears to start our drinks.

  The noises of the bar allow a slight distraction from the silence between us, but there’s a niggling feeling in my chest that’s been absent for several years. I wonder if this is why Gabe and I stopped going out together or if this sensation is caused because Levi and I are relatively strangers still.

  I take a deep breath and turn my shoulders so my upper body faces him. “That’s a shame work keeps you from being able to come to the games.”

  Blue eyes dance between mine, exposing a thousand thoughts yet not revealing a single one. “I’ve been very lucky. Growing up, my grandfather took me to every home game. It’s just these past couple of years have gotten pretty busy with work. I’ve had to reprioritize.” He shrugs. “I still catch them on TV, but it’ll be nice to be back in the stadium. There’s nothing quite like a live audience, and with it being early in the season and a rivalry game, the stands will be packed and the energy level will be like a living beast—constantly ready to attack.”

  “So, what you’re telling me is this won’t be a safe place to form an unbiased opinion?”

  He leans forward, his lips sliding into a grin. “I’m telling you there’s no way you’re going to walk out of the stadium today without being a White Sox. If the team doesn’t convince you, the audience will. We’re like a family, and I’m not referring to the relatives you only see twice a year that you have to prepare conversation topics and steel a smile for. No, these guys are the people you don’t mind stopping over unexpectedly and you invite them to stay longer and have another beer.”

  “Except for those few you pointed out, of course.”

  Mischief blazes in his eyes. “There are a few others as well. Wait until you meet a couple of the huggers.”

  “The huggers?”

  Levi nods but doesn’t answer as Jerry slides two drinks to us. “You kids want some food before you go, or you going to go broke buying some hot dogs at the game?”

  “Hot dogs are part of the experience, you old cheapskate. You have to eat a hot dog while you watch baseball.”

  Jerry’s bushy, gray eyebrows inch together and rise with a silent look of disbelief before he looks to me. “You want anything, honey, or are you wanting to get an overboiled hot dog, too?”

  “I appreciate it, but I’m good.”

  “I should start selling hot dogs for ten bucks…” Jerry mumbles, ambling down the bar when a man with a face painted in blue and white yells to get his attention.

  Levi shakes his head and turns to me. “So, tell me what it was like to live in the shadow of Illinois your whole life.” His arrogant smile and bright eyes confirm he’s joking.

  “You’re going to get a real kick out of hearing I didn’t visit Chicago until I was sixteen and went for a school field trip.”

  “Sixteen! How’s that possible?”

  I laugh, shaking my head. “My grandma raised me, and if you knew her, you wouldn’t be asking.” I reach for my glass but don’t take a drink. “She doesn’t like cities or crowded spaces. She won’t even leave her house after three because she doesn’t want to deal with people. She manages to convince herself she still lives in a farm town by sticking to her house and working in her garden.”

  Levi grins. “Was it just you and her?”

  I shake my head, taking a long pull of my drink. He wasn’t lying—Jerry has a heavy hand. “I have a brother who’s seven years younger than me.”

  “Does he live local?”

  “Yeah.” I nod. “He’s actually like ten minutes from where Grammy … our grandma,” I correct myself, “lives.”

  “Are you guys close?”

  “Close-ish,” I say. “What about you? Do you have siblings?”

  He grins. “I have a younger brother, too.” Levi takes a long drink.

  “Are you guys close?” I ask, recycling his question.

  Levi shrugs. “Close-ish.”

  I laugh. “Are you mocking me?”

  He takes another drink. “No. But it seems like poor taste to mention he has a tendency to be a selfish asshole and generally annoys the hell out of me.”

  “Vague-booking.” My tone sounds like I’ve come to a revelation, and it’s clear Levi hears it. He tilts his chin, and his lips curve with a smile so wide I see all of his teeth.

  “What does that mean?”

  I clear my throat, changing my tone to express less. “Nothing.” I shake my head as though to dispel the possibility it might.

  Levi stares at me, his gaze once again intense and penetrating—as though he can hear my thoughts and how quickly I’m working to backpedal from the conversation.

  However, my last relationship taught me how secrets—even those from omissions—lead to nothing positive. “I just…” A small, uneven laugh blows through my lips, breaking the tension. “After being in a relationship for so long, I’m really out of practice with how things work—the proper etiquette, if you will.”

  He continues looking at me, and for some reason, words and revelations keep coming.

  “I’ve had the same best friend since I was five and the same job for ten years.” I shrug. “Outside of a professional setting, I’m not really in the habit of meeting new people, so this is
a bit outside of my norm.”

  “I like your honesty.” His blue eyes hold mine. “It’s what made me stick around and talk to you at the club and why I’d wished I’d been smoother—smarter—and had gotten your number, because I was really worried you wouldn’t call.”

  My heart makes a lap on a merry-go-round, the old-fashioned kind you rarely find on playgrounds anymore with the metal bars you hold onto while someone pushes the contraption around in circles. Levi is the one pushing, and I’m struggling to find my footing, worried I’m going to fall off at any moment.

  “I’ll tell you what a dipshit my brother is if you want to hear the details, but I’d rather save them for another time. Another date.”

  14

  “So, tell me more about what it was like growing up on a farm.”

  I take another drink and laugh. “I said garden, not a farm.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Well, us hick folk had to learn about the big city in textbooks, which, by the way, failed to mention what bad drivers you are.”

  He chuckles, and it’s a warm and endearing sound that makes me want to lean closer. “If that’s your only complaint about the concrete jungle, I’d say you love it more than you’re letting on.”

  “Oh, did you want me to continue? I thought we were trying to keep the negativity level to a minimum, but if you’d like me to list my grievances, I can give you a list. Alphabetical? Chronological?”

  “Chronological? Is that organized by which you hate most?”

  “I was actually going to go in order of which irritating trait I discovered first.”

  “Traffic being the first?”

  “The Trump Tower, actually.”

  He laughs so hard his face dips, making me grin. The building is a monstrosity to most Chicagoans, and I know this as well as I do that most White Sox fans are from South Chicago—the blue-collar side—whereas most Cubs fans are from the north side of town and are white-collar. Nothing about Levi shouts wealth, but there are subtle details I’ve noted, like the heavy gold watch around his wrist and how his attention didn’t waver when a man sat beside us at the bar on Friday and asked for a shot that cost him two hundred dollars.

  “You mentioned you like to cook,” I say. “Is that something you picked up from your family?”

  The corner of his mouth draws up, but his eyes don’t shine with humor like they do when he laughs. He clears his throat. “No. It caused a bit of a family rift, actually.”

  “Really?”

  He nods once. “Well, in all fairness, it began with me dropping out of college.” His grin widens, revealing mirth, but there’s a trace of desolation he hides by taking a drink. “I needed a job and got a part-time gig as a dishwasher at this fancy restaurant downtown.” He pauses, moving his glass in small circles as though stirring the thoughts that brought the distant look to his eyes, like he’s reliving the past. It makes me question if I’m misreading him. If maybe he’s just a regular guy—or at least as regular as he can be looking like a Greek god. “I’d never cooked before in my life, and the head chef at this place was a total asshole. I mean, he was the worst.”

  Jerry throws a towel, hitting Levi in the face. “Watch your mouth, or I’ll send you to the back and reunite you with the goddamn dishwashing duties.”

  I sit back, looking between the two men. “Wait. You were the head chef? So, you guys really know each other.”

  Jerry’s eyebrows rise as he nods slowly. “If you’re asking if I know all the dirt on this bastard, the answer is I do.”

  Levi tosses the towel back, hitting Jerry in the chest. “He was one hell of a cook and was even crankier back then, believe it or not. He’s gotten soft with his old age.”

  “I felt bad for him, eating his shitty takeout on breaks, so I told him to get some food one night,” Jerry tells me. “I had no idea then I’d be chaining the obnoxious pain in the ass to my ankle.” He rights himself and extends his arms, going straight down memory lane and into story mode. “After eating the food I’d made, he started hovering over me. Watching everything I did and getting in my way like a goddamn shadow.”

  “It was your risotto,” Levi says, looking to me. “It was like a drug.”

  “So, you learned to cook by watching him?” The two are grinning at each other with a sense of familiarity and comradery built over time.

  “Hell no,” Jerry says. “This kid couldn’t tell a turnip from an onion and assumed if you cooked it hotter, it would just cook faster.”

  I laugh, thinking of when I first began event planning and how many errors I’d made assuming I would make things faster and easier.

  “I sucked,” Levi says.

  “You far, far beyond sucked. You were horrible,” Jerry adds.

  “But it lit my obsession with food.” Levi shrugs, nodding toward Jerry. “He got so sick and tired of me breathing down his neck that he deemed me a prep cook so I’d be busy and a dozen feet away from him.” He lifts his hands, fingers spread. I trace over the myriad of white scars that thread through his fingers. It’s like a spider web; many of the lines are nearly invisible, while a few stand out like a distinct threat. “As you can see, he was clearly trying to kill me even back then.”

  “I don’t know if I’m scared or impressed that you were so persistent.”

  “Pretty boy here deserves some accolades,” Jerry tells me, wiping his hands on a towel. “I give him a hard time, but he’s actually a class act. He’s hard-working, determined, would give a complete stranger the shirt off of his back, and he can cook … mostly…” He eyes Levi, his bushy eyebrows lowering over his gaze. “He’s mostly a … fairly good chef, but his risotto still doesn’t touch mine.”

  Levi coughs through a chuckle. “Because it’s so much better.”

  Jerry flings the same rag at him. “You kids should get going. I heard security has been increased again this year.” He stands before us, his palms flat on the bar as he looks at Levi. “Bring her back by before the next game, after she’s learned how bad the dogs are.”

  “I’m vegetarian, and don’t really like much dairy, so I eat mostly vegan…” My words drift off, wishing I’d left that part off because I know he’s going to ask how it’s possible that I don’t like cheese. “So, I’ll be okay.”

  Jerry pulls his head back and blinks rapidly, turning his attention between Levi and me.

  “You’re a vegetarian?” Jerry sputters.

  The widened gaze of disbelief and question. The chin pulling back with confusion. The nose wrinkle, judging if I’m strange. It’s all a natural reaction. “Don’t worry. It’s not contagious.”

  Jerry turns to Levi, then back to me. “You heard me say he’s a chef, right? Meat is this man’s life.” He shakes his head. “Are you willing to reconsider this detail?”

  I laugh. “Well, they actually make you sign a contract when you go vegetarian. It’s a big deal. There are candles and wax drippings, chanting—lots of chanting—and I had to take this oath…”

  Levi chuckles beside me.

  “You can’t flavor anything without meat, though.” Jerry sags back on one leg. “I mean, what do you even eat?”

  “Well, unfortunately all of my current neighbors are really on top of mowing their yards, and they don’t let the dandelions get out of hand, so it’s been forcing me to go to the grocery store a lot.” I shrug, smiling to reveal I’m joking.

  “You’re kind of a smartass, aren’t you?” A grin erases his previous shock. “Maybe the vegetarian thing won’t be such a big burden for the two of you then. You guys enjoy your date, and I’ll start researching some vegetarian dishes.”

  “Oh, this isn’t a date,” I say. “I mean, we’re not … together.” I swallow my discomfort, uncertain of Levi’s reaction because I can’t convince myself to face him. “I’m actually starting a blog, and Levi was kind enough to offer to take me to a baseball game when I told him I haven’t ever been. We’re … friends.” I try the word.

  Jerry�
�s bushy eyebrows rise, creating thick lines across his broad forehead. Again, he swings his attention between Levi and me before stopping on him. “You got friend-zoned already? What in the hell did you do?”

  15

  “Get to work, old man,” Levi says from behind me.

  This is why I wasn’t ready to go out.

  This.

  I have no idea what crazy thought or whim had me thinking this would be a good idea. Especially when I didn’t clarify with Levi or even myself that this wasn’t a date.

  It feels like a date.

  It looks like a date.

  I want to talk with him and learn about his life, his experiences, his family, even his future goals, and what’s even crazier is I want to divulge these things about me and my life as well. I don’t feel the need to dodge questions or provide half answers, because something about him is easy and somehow doesn’t feel judgmental or demanding.

  Maybe that’s because I had known this wasn’t a date? Because I wasn’t trying to impress him?

  I silence the milling thoughts and grab my purse off the back of the chair and reach for my wallet.

  Levi places his hand on top of my open wallet. “This experience is my treat.”

  His face is impassive, yet I still feel like a jerk.

  Were my words rude? Insensitive? Was I channeling Catherine?

  Objections bubble in my thoughts, but Levi drops a twenty on the bar before I can voice any of them. “Say a prayer for my Sox,” he says to Jerry.

  Jerry shakes his head. “They don’t need it. They’ve got this season in the bag.” He takes our empty glasses, depositing them behind the bar. “And I’ll see you later, Brooke.”