I woke up after a couple hours of sleep in a whiskey-blurred head pounding panic that I had fucked up at work the night before. I had been drinking on the job, and though I worked as a bartender we weren’t allowed to drink while working - let alone get hammered. However, I had a good reason. The girl I thought I was seeing came in with my friend who also was my manager.  They were sneaking off to the photo booth, kissing, making out, and at one point disappeared upstairs for a quick romp on a filthy couch. Not ever being one to truly handle my emotions, I grabbed a bottle of Jameson and started throwing down shots like a fireman who just pulled a charred baby from a car. 

After my friend/manager and the girl returned from their tryst I slammed a shot glass before him and one of the owners and asked, “We’re not allowed to drink on the job, right?”  I poured a shot, looked him in the eye and said, “Fuck you! Fire me”, and then downed the shot. To my disappointment they laughed. I poured another shot. “No seriously, fuck you, fire me.” I slurped it as they again laughed and cheered me on. This not being the response I wanted I tipped my head back and poured the whiskey straight into my mouth, spit some in the air like Ol’ Faithful and yelled,  “Seriously release me from this shit dump and FIRE ME!” Too my dismay I didn’t get fired. All I got was too drunk to walk, count money, or perform any of the other basic functions one needs to bartend.

Panicked my drunkenness would get me fired I jumped out of bed, and quickly drove down to the bar to cover up my tracks. Outside of the bar the harsh morning LA sun seemed to take a jovial pleasure in making me feel even more uncomfortable than I all ready do in life.  I shuffled my way into the dirty doorway and opened up the bar. I expected find a wall burned down from a candle, or a passed out homeless man surrounded by empty bottles and cash. However, too much of my surprise the bar was totally fine. Somehow in my major stupor I was able to perform my job.

I exited the bar and realized I had no desire to go home to my empty bed, so I cut across the street and into a busy coffee shop. The inside was humming like a third world street market and with as many pleasurable odors. As I waited in line listening to music reserved for guys with slicked back ponytails I eyed a girl pouring some cream into her coffee. I had seen her around the neighborhood before, but never really had spoken to her. Every time I saw her all I could think of was how beautiful and perfect she seemed. She had this lovely head of long curly hair and a face that looked as though she was the unobtainable love interest in a John Hughes movie. She glanced my way, and I could tell for a half second she thought, do I know that guy?

The barista handed me my coffee as she passed by, and once again we made eye contact, and once again she had that, “I know you somehow,” look. Without thinking I blurted out, “I see you around the neighborhood all the time.”

“Yeah.” She said with a slight laugh. “I was wondering how I knew you.”

“I work at the bar across the street.” I said.

“Yeah. Yeah. Faith.”

She extended her soft hand and suddenly I got a little nervous, and though this conversation was basic I could tell something was different. Something was present between us. However, neither of us knew what it was.

“How’s your very early morning going?” I asked.

“Terrible. Awful.” She looked into her coffee.

“Hey!” I said with mock excitement,  “Mine’s a bunch of bullshit too!”

I then quickly told her my shitty scenario and asked for hers. Her Aunt had died the night before.

“May I buy you breakfast. I know I don’t know you, and I don’t mean it in a datey creepy guy way. Just breakfast as two people having a fucked up mornings.”

She smiled, pushed her hair over her shoulder, “Sure. I’d like that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

And with that we were out of the café and driving down the 2 talking and laughing as if we’d known one another for years. Everything was warm, perfect and as if John mother fucking Hughes had scripted it, and though my body the night before was crippled by whiskey shots and God knows what, my hangover and depression vanished and everything even the harsh LA sun seemed soft and comforting as if it belonged to me since birth.

As we finished our breakfasts she padded her lips with a napkin and said, “That was perfect.”

“Actually, mimosas would have been perfect.”

Her head dropped back as her hair fell into her face, “Fuck, I’d love a mimosa.”

“Let’s get some fucking mimosas.”  I exclaimed.

We changed locations and found ourselves in a quaint café drinking Mimosas at the bar as morning crept into noon.  As we talked, smiled, and laughed with one another I could not help but think that from the outside we must seem like a couple falling in love, and perhaps we were, but only in this moment, on this morning, and it would never extend beyond this, and that was more than either of us needed, because we were two people who were no longer having a fucked up morning.