They Always Come Back

I stumbled out of the sun onto the weather beaten porch.  There's no way this place should be standing after so long.  The parking lot was riddled with tumbleweeds instead of stacked with sedans.  The "Free Lunch Buffet" sign had faded from red to pink and hung by one chain from the eaves.  She'd been gone for years, of that I was sure.  And if she wasn't gone that picture sure wouldn't be the same.  I shook my head with a sad laugh and shoved open the door.  I had to see.

Haphazard Christmas lights were strung along  piles of nostalgic junk.  A silent jukebox winked at me from the back wall.  Vinyl chairs with torn seats gathered around stained tables.  At the back stood a bar with a woman behind it.  A smile warmed her pleasant face.

"Drink?"

I ran my hand over my face, trying to ditch the road-weariness.  I'd been on the road for hours before I saw the battered tin sign.  It was the same sign I saw fifteen years ago, the first time I saw the beautiful girl she was, not the exquisite woman behind the bar that she'd become.

"You were a Heineken guy if I recall."

"There's no way you could remember me."

"A girl always remembers her first."

He gripped the cold bottle in his hand and went back in his mind.  His buddies had kidnapped him for an impromptu bachelor party and brought him here.  The club was hopping back then.  Girls danced on a stage that seemed rickety even then.  The serving girls wore high heels and cowboy hats, not a stitch else.  He laughed and said he'd have a few beers and be out the door.  But then he saw her by the jukebox.  Dark curls framed her angelic face.  Her lush mouth begged for his cock.  Her body was perfection.  He had to have her.  He did, in the back of the bar on a beat up old sofa she gave him everything.  He'd never forgotten her.  Through countless rounds of self pleasure in the shower and the flaming destruction of his marriage, this girl never left his mind.  And she was here.

"I own the place now.  Not that it's much of a place.  Some of the girls still dance on Fridays.  I leave my clothes on these days."

"Sad shame," I said with a smirk.

She smiles and sets me up with another beer as I drain the first.

I remembered the first night.  The way she felt beneath me.  Her sweet taste.  The sound of her voice.  The music thumping in the bar as I pounded into her in the back room.  The reality that never lived up to her.

I shook my head and did what I came to do.  I took off my ring and left it on the bar, there in the place I'd lost so much else.  I never had a chance.  I wanted a repeat, a second shot, but her faraway look told me I'd never get it.  I tipped my bottle in her direction and threw a handful of bills on the bar.  it was the ring she grabbed.  I watched her pull a glass jar from the bar and toss it. It disappeared among so many others.  How many, I wondered.  How many like me had she ruined?

I stumbled back out into the sun, somehow finding peace.  At least she'd remembered me for a moment.  At least I hadn't faded in asking the masses.  I may have been her first. I sure as Hell wasn't her last.

Not like she was for me.

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A day late and way too long.  Forgive me this one, it's a bit tablet.  More of a concept than a story.