Familiar Stranger

Harris

Somewhere along the way I wish I had asked myself, “how do you keep getting into these situations?”

The bar I walked into at 2am—one I’d never been to, tucked between a laundromat and a nail salon with a blacked-out window—smelled like cheap cologne, fruit lotions, and bad decisions. The kind of place where the floor stuck to your shoes and the music was just loud enough to give everyone permission to pretend they couldn’t hear each other. Bass-heavy R&B rattled the bottles behind the counter, something early 2000s, the kind of song that gets played at 2am because no one’s sober enough to complain about the playlist.

I should’ve turned around. The neon sign above the door buzzed like it was one flicker away from dying, and the bouncer didn’t even card me—just looked at my face, then my shoes, and stepped aside like he’d already made up his mind about me.

I walked in like I belonged. And from the look of the crowd—half of them leaning into conversations they wouldn’t remember, the other half staring into their phones like lifelines—I probably did.

I found her at the bar.

Head on the counter, right hand gripping a glass of water she probably intended to drink hours ago. The ice had melted down to nothing, just a pale lukewarm puddle she was holding onto like it meant something. The bartender had placed a stack of napkins near her elbow. The small mercy of a man who’d seen this before.

I took a seat on the stool next to her. The vinyl was cracked down the middle, and the cushion had long since given up on being comfortable. I settled into it anyway, resting both forearms on the bar top, which was tacky with something I chose not to identify.

And waited.

The bartender drifted over—mid-fifties, thick forearms, towel slung over one shoulder. He raised an eyebrow at me, then looked at her, then back at me. I shook my head. He poured me a water anyway, set it down without a word, and moved on. The glass was cold enough to sweat. I wrapped my hand around it just to have something to do.

She lifted her head five minutes later.

Face flushed. Mascara smudged beneath her left eye. Her braids had come partially undone on one side, a few loose strands clinging to her cheek where she’d been pressed against the bar top. She blinked at me—twice, slow, like her brain was buffering—and then smiled. Wide. Toothy. Uninhibited. The kind of smile that doesn’t know it’s being watched.

And all I could see was the seventeen-year-old I’d loved since the day we first met.

There was the problem.

She wasn’t seventeen. I wasn’t seventeen. We were thirty, and we broke up twelve years ago. I should’ve deleted her number and blocked her after how it ended. But I couldn’t. I was still in love with that fucking seventeen-year-old.

“Heya buddy.”

Her voice was syrupy. Thick with alcohol and something softer underneath it, something she probably didn’t mean to let out.

“I ain’t cho buddy.” I didn’t look at her when I said it. Kept my eyes on the row of bottles behind the bar, the labels all peeling at the edges. “You must’ve had way too much if you called me.”

“You must’ve had quite a few yourself seeing as you came.”

I let that one sit. She wasn’t wrong. The phone had buzzed at 1:47am—her name lighting up my screen like a fire alarm—and I was in my rental car before I’d even finished reading the text. Didn’t put shoes on first. Drove twenty minutes in slides and basketball shorts, jaw tight the entire way, telling myself I was just making sure she wasn’t dead.

“It’s 2am and you’re in what looks like the rough side of town.”

My eyes met the bartender’s and he nodded. Slow, deliberate. The kind of nod that says *yeah, man, it’s exactly what it looks like*. I took it as confirmation.

“It’s a three-hour drive from home.” She propped her chin on her fist, wobbling slightly on the stool. “Must’ve been awful worried about lil ole me.”

I hated that she was doing the accent. The playful drawl we’d invented together one summer, sitting on the back porch of my parents’ house, making up characters while the cicadas screamed in the trees. It was our thing. Had been. It was a memory now. Hearing it come out of her mouth felt like finding an old t-shirt that still smelled like someone who’d moved out.

“Rina, I was in town seeing my parents.”

“I know.” She picked at the edge of a napkin, tearing it into strips with the kind of focus only drunk people can summon. “I stalk you on Facebook. How’s mamma?”

“Mrs. Walker. And she’s fine.”

“That’s cold, Harris.” She stopped tearing. Her fingers went still on the napkin. “You said I’d always be family.”

Something tightened in my chest. I swallowed past it.

“This is how I talk to family. Especially the drunk ones that drag me out of bed at 2am.”

“Don’t pretend you ain’t happy to see me.”

She sat up straighter on the stool, squaring her shoulders, leaning back just enough to accentuate her curves. It was practiced. The kind of move a woman makes when she knows her body is a good argument. She tilted her head, braids falling to one side, and gave me a look that was half dare, half inventory.

“I still got it, don’t I?”

She was attractive. She’d always been attractive. But the image of the girl I actually loved kept overlapping with who she was now—like trying to look at two photographs stacked on top of each other, both of them slightly out of focus. The Rina in front of me had sharper cheekbones, fuller lips, a tiredness behind her eyes that hadn’t been there at seventeen. The Rina in my memory still had that gap between her front teeth she’d gotten fixed sophomore year, still wore her hair in two braids instead of the cascade of them she had now. I couldn’t see either one clearly. They blurred together every time I tried.

“Sure.”

“You’re not as fun as I remember.” She poked my arm with one finger, and I felt it through my jacket like a static shock. “Don’t I make your heart flutter anymore?”

“I’m still very much in love with you.”

The words came out flat. Not romantic. Not tortured. Just honest, the way you’d tell someone you still owe them money. A fact you’ve been carrying around that doesn’t get lighter with time.

“The old you. I don’t know who you are now, Rina. It’s been over a decade. We’re strangers.” I turned the water glass in my hand, the condensation leaving a ring on the bar. “Why did you call me?”

The playfulness drained out of her face like someone had pulled a plug. Her shoulders dropped. The smile folded in on itself, and for a second—just a second—I saw it. The thing underneath all the flirtation and the accent and the body language. She looked exhausted. Not sleepy. Depleted.

She put her head back on the counter. Cheek pressed flat against the wood. Her eyes stayed open, staring at nothing.

“Erving left me.”

I knew the name. Of course I did. I’d never forget it.

The guy she dropped me for, at my graduation party. At my parents’ house. The whole thing had been public—loud and ugly, played out in a living room full of people who were supposed to be celebrating me. By the time it was over I was standing there, punch still in my hand, watching her walk out the front door with him while the room went quiet in that specific way a room goes quiet when everyone already knew and you’re the last one to figure it out. Not my best friend Quincy. Not my teammates from the football team. No one had told me shit. I was the side piece in my own relationship, performing in a show everyone else had already seen the ending to.

That broke me. Killed my passion for life for a while. I quit football. Stopped caring about classes. My grades dropped like stones and I bombed the SATs so badly my guidance counselor pulled me aside and asked if everything was okay at home. Ended up at community college, which felt like drowning until I met a professor—Dr. Tillman—who saw something in me I’d stopped looking for. She pulled me back to the surface, one office hour at a time.

All because of the name Rina just said into the bar top like it was nothing.

I resisted the urge to laugh. Pressed my tongue against the back of my teeth and held it there until the impulse passed.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“No you aren’t.”

“Nah, dead ass.” I turned to face her. She was still cheek-down on the counter, one eye looking up at me. “I’m sorry you’re hurting.”

She studied me for a long moment. Searching for the lie. I let her look.

“I should have picked you.”

The words landed like a rock thrown into still water. I felt the ripple of it spread through my chest, my stomach, the base of my throat. Twelve years I’d imagined hearing that. Twelve years of constructing the perfect response—cool, detached, something that would make her feel the weight of what she’d done. And now that it was here, all I had was the truth.

“Nah. You needed to be with him to become you, and I needed you to leave me so I could become me.”

“And you like who you are?”

“Most days.”

“And for the days you don’t?”

“I have a good therapist.”

She was quiet after that. The bar had thinned out around us—last call had come and gone while we weren’t paying attention, and the few remaining stragglers were settling tabs and pulling on jackets. The bartender wiped down the far end of the counter in slow circles, giving us space. The music had shifted to something slower. Sade, maybe. Something that made the room feel smaller.

Her eyes stayed on me. I could feel them even when I wasn’t looking—a steady weight, like a hand resting on my shoulder.

“Do I come up during therapy?”

“Yeah.”

She gave a half smile. Barely there—just the left corner of her mouth lifting. “How often?”

“Not often.”

The half smile faded. Her fingers found the napkin strips again, lining them up on the counter like tiny soldiers. “Oh. I suppose it has been a while. More women to break your heart.”

“Exactly.”

Her shoulders tensed. Just slightly—a small gathering of muscle across her upper back that she probably didn’t know I could see. “So there have been others.”

“Several. Too many, maybe.”

“Ever thought about why?”

“Only when I can’t sleep at night.”

“And how often is that?”

“Every night.”

A pause. She sat up slowly, the stool creaking beneath her. “And this therapy, right?”

“Yup.” I popped the P.

“Is it helping?”

“I don’t know. My therapist says I might have a hole I’m seeking to fill.”

“Oh.” Her eyebrows lifted. “And how are you trying to fill it?”

“For a while, by filling the hole of miscellaneous women.”

Her expression went blank. Completely flat, like a screen that just powered off. “So just by slinging dick?”

“Yeah.”

“Stupid.”

“Perhaps. I thought maybe if I fucked enough women, I’d find the right one.”

She let out a laugh. Short and sharp, punching through the quiet of the mostly-empty bar. The bartender glanced over, then went back to his closing routine. “Like a Cinderella for pussy?” She slapped the bar top, delighted with herself. “A Pussyrella?”

“Yeah. That might be it.”

“You are so dumb.”

“I’m in pain.”

The laughter stopped. Not gradually—it just cut off, like a song that ended mid-note. She looked at me, and for the first time all night her eyes were clear. Focused. The alcohol was still there, swimming behind everything, but something had sharpened. Something that recognized the shape of what I’d just said because she lived in the same neighborhood.

“…sorry.”

“For?”

“Nothin’. Everything.” She ran her thumb along the edge of the bar, tracing a groove worn into the wood by years of elbows and spilled drinks. “I’m just sorry.”

“It’s all good.”

We sat in silence for another five minutes. The bartender killed the music and the quiet rushed in—the hum of the refrigeration unit under the bar, a car passing outside, the distant rattle of the laundromat’s dryer through the wall. Without the music the place felt like what it was: a room where people came to not be alone, now emptying out because the night had used up all its reasons to stay.

I stood. The stool scraped against the floor.

“Okay. That’s enough chatter. Let’s get you home. You can tell me the address in the car.”

She picked up the water glass—the one she’d been holding since before I arrived—and took a big gulp. I watched her throat work as she swallowed, the muscles pulling tight beneath her skin. She finished it and set the glass down carefully, centering it on the napkin like it mattered.

“I don’t have a home.”

I looked at her. She looked at the empty glass.

The bartender cut the lights behind the bar, and the room went dark except for the neon sign in the window, casting everything in a low, buzzing red. In that light, her face looked younger. Or maybe older. I couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

I picked up my keys.

“Yeah you do. Come on.”