The beer slid right against his palm and the coolness felt like more than just a tactile sensation.
Arel Khomie had gotten a job as a prep cook at The Crow’s Nest.
This was his first shift drink. To the kids in Sunrise Heights, a gig at The Crow’s Nest was making it.
Oliver Edmundson insisted that his employees have their shift drink at the antique mahogany bar with the rest of the customers.
“If you’re good enough to make their food, you’re good enough to share a laugh with them.”
Arel thought Oliver was just enough less full of shit than the rest of the Clubbers that he might even like him.
“I recognize you, son.”
The man who spoke had just leaned into the bar, the angle of his watchband showing a sliver of pale skin next to deeply tanned arms.
Arel never heard the man say anything to a bartender, but a bright red drink with an orange slice the size of a salad plate appeared in front of him.
“You’re the fruit man’s boy.”
Arel’s father had a fruit cart near the bridge to the island. He sold more water and Vernor’s than bananas and peaches, but on a beautiful summer weekend he could make a couple hundred bucks. During the winter months they lived off his mom’s disability and a bunch of odd jobs, both Arel’s and his father’s.
“You’re an artist, if I recall.”
Arel could have taken his cocktail napkin, made a paper airplane out of it, got in and flown it out the window of The Crow’s Nest with him riding it.
When he was younger, he had taken his drawings to the fruit cart, hung them up and tried to sell them.
He started with super heroes, then moved to buildings, like the Yacht Club and Perkins Tower and the LaSalle Fountain.
He sold about three a month.
That some Island yachter would remember was beyond…
Arel suppressed the smile, nodded, and said “Yes sir.”
“Mackenzie,“ the man said, “you must recognize this young man.”
The young woman next to the man turned and looked at Arel.
“Of course,” she said sweetly.
Arel , looking past her lightly freckled cheeks and into her eyes, knew it was a lie.
But he remembered her.
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