What do you do when the past comes back to haunt you.
How far ahead do you think? Short term, for me. I think at the most, a few days ahead.
I wasn’t thinking that far ahead, but suddenly, this day turned out to be the beginning of the rest of my life.
Cheesy right, well you’ll see.
_-_-_
I woke up with a weight on my chest. I seem to get that a lot lately, but it never gets old.
I look down at my chest and see a pair of big pink eyes looking up to me. I smile, and she returns it. She gets off of me, but I grab, and pull her back down.
“Can’t we stay here? I don’t want to let you go…”
“Well if you want to open a bar, you have to get up eventually, and I have been falling behind in practice due to a certain somepony. So I have to get up and start my day, and you need to get your lazy flank out of bed and ma--…” I interrupt her with a deep kiss.
“Please?” I ask after I break the kiss.
Dash rolls her eyes and smiles. “No! It’s one o’clock already. I like to procrastinate as much as the next pony, but we both have stuff to do.”
My eyes widen in realization, and Dash laughs at the silly look on my face. I sit up, and Dash gets off me again.
We say our goodbyes, and she leaves. I get out the money for vinyl and walk down stairs.
In the bar, there is now something on the stage, lights hung around it, and speakers placed around the room. I find Vinyl on the stage, setting up a dj station. I set the money on it, and nod to her.
“Finnally woke up didja?” she asks.
I nod “yea and you set up the stuff while I was asleep. Was it hard, are you okay working tonight?” I respond, and then I yawn.
“I’ll be fine, but are you sure you will be?”She laughs at me.
I nod and start walking to the bar. “Well I got stuff to do, and Pinkie should be here soon. We open at three, so hurry!”
“Yes, boss.” She says it in a tone that I imagine a teenage filly talking to her manager. Then I remember she is! Ha!
_-_-_
“So what’s its name?”
“What?” I ask looking up at all my friends from the monitor under the bar. It’s a secret only me and Twilight know about.
“What yall gonna name the bar?” Aj says.
I realize I hadn’t thought about it. Ten minutes away from opening, and I don’t have a name!
I know one thing; it has to have my brother’s name in it. “It has to have Jack in it.” I see a knowing look on Dash’s face, but she says nothing.
“Bar jack?”says a uninterested Twilight.
“That’s a fish!” says a disgusted Rarity.
“Jack in the box?”
“uh…no I… don’t like it.” sick thought to put that as the name.
“Jack o lantern,” Says AJ.
“Jack and the Beanstalk!” yells Pinkie.
I just shake my head.
“Jack of Hearts,” Dash speaks up.
All the more reason to love her, she thought of the exact thing I wanted. Really showing of my brother’s name, all the others seemed to make fun of him, but this one is different. It has meaning behind it.
Without hesitating I jump over the bar, and hug and kiss her fiercely…I think everypony was surprised, including Dash. But I don’t care, I just know that she is the only one I care about this moment.
I let her go and walk up on stage. Vinyl is there and I tell her the new name for the bar. She nods and returns to setting up her station for the opening in…2 minutes!
I run back to the bar, and start pouring drinks. The girls watch in confusion as I make one after another and place them under the bar.
Two minutes later, Pinkie walks to the door, opens it and greets everypony outside with a loud. “Welcome to the Jack of Hearts, have fun at its grand opening.”
As soon as the first pony to recover takes one step into the bar, Vinyl starts spinning a record. The bar room becomes filled with music, and somponies start to dance. Some sit at a few tables and start talking. Most ponies however, head straight to the bar. The drinks I had been making beforehoof come out from under the bar and are handed to ponies that walk up. I don’t get to see their reaction and only hand them a drink.
I continue to make drinks for everypony, and then start on the refills. I talk the whole time I’m doing it. It was fun meeting new ponies, and hearing about how fun the bar was. My biggest worry is that I will never get this crowd again, and will never have this much fun again.
My fears are replaced with other fears when Dash, who had been watching me says, “your forgetting, you’re friends with Pinkie Pie.”
I laugh and I don’t have time to notice she isn’t drinking her drink, nor did I see the orange earth pony walk through the door.
_-_-_
Three o’clock was a dream gone, and was replaced by ten. Finally I was getting a chance to look around my bar. Ponies were dancing, talking, and having fun. And mostly Pinkie had done no work in preparation for this night.
There is a small interruption in the music, “Welcome one and all to Jack O’ Hearts. I hope your having a good time, cause I sure am. I would like you all to thank the proprietor of this establishment, over at the bar there, and be sure to tip him for all the work he, and his friends, put into this bar. Well! Now that that is done, let’s take it up a level!”
With that, the thumping base returned full force, and this time extreme compared to the base of before.
Dash had at some point stepped behind the counter and started helping with the incoming bits that had begun to pile up in the register. However, with the lull in business, she was sitting with me on a pair of stools behind the bar.
“You didn’t have to help you know. And your friends didn’t need to help with the renovations either.”
“Well if I’m gonna be with you for a long time, I might as well help you with the bar. And as for YOUR friends, that’s what they do, they help you and you better damn well help them when they need it!”
“Oh, I plan to help! Even if it’s the death of me… but your... OUR friends are too nice, they wouldn’t ask a lot of me right?...”I turn to Dash, and she shrugs.
Thats when I see him…
And orange stallion coming up to the bar…
And I instantly recognize him…
But what confuses me is, I wouldn’t be able to make a drink for him if I had wanted to.
“Why couldn’t I make a drink for you?” I ask the stallion, knowing who he was. Hoping for a certain answer…
“Because I hate alcohol. It ruined my life, killed my wife, got me sent to jail. It is an unforgiving drug in the wrong hands.” Not once has he looked at me. He gave me the correct answer, and if he had looked into my eyes, he would have seen the forgiveness.
“That was the correct answer. Can I get you anything else to drink, or perhaps a place to stay if you need one?” he looks dirty, tired, and thirsty and hungry. Hearing what I said, he finally looks up.
There is fear in his eyes, and with the scar on his forehead, he looks weak. But without a doubt, his smile was genuine. He sat at one of the stools. “Anything without alcohol, and I’m sorry but I have no money.”
I hand him a glass of soda. “How did you find me, and why are you here?”
He resumes staring at the floor. “I got here around three. I had heard from an old neighbor of where your old apartment was, and they said you had moved here. As for why I’m here, I need to know how you feel. If you hated me or liked me. I need a path, but weather that path starts here or somewhere else is up to you.”
“You sound wise. I guess age and experience really does give you something above the rest. I’m glad you’re sober, and I’m glad that you can hold yourself together, however I need to know you won’t go back,” I say calmly but forcefully. If you stay here you never go back, and if you do, I will personally have you banished to the moon. I have friends that could do it,” I chuckle at the joke.
I pull out and fill a few drinks for customers while I say this. I notice dash had gone back over to her friends. “My life has been good recently after moving to Ponyville. It could be good for you too, but also if you screw mine up, I’m done for the last time. Is all this understood,” I ask very in a tone that explains how honest I’m being.
I look at him, and he has a very dejected look on his face. He nods. He looks me in the eye, “Yes, I have no intention of going back, but I hope you’ll take me?”
“There is an extra bedroom in his place, you can stay there. You look like you have been mauled by a timber wolf, so get some sleep. We will talk more later, but get some rest. I will be in the bar for the rest of the night, and please stay in your room until I get you tomorrow, whenever that happens to be.”
He nods, and sips his drink. “Hey Dash!” I call. She floats over, and lands beside me. “this is my father, as you may have guessed. He is kinda tired, so I’m gonna take him up to a spare bed. Will you watch the bar while I’m gone?”
“I guess… how much am I getting paid?”
“So living with me for free doesn’t count?”
“I have my own house, thank you!”
“But do you want it,” I cocked my head, and gave my best puppy eyes, “without me in it?”
She laughed and pushed me away from the bar. “Fine, point taken. I am not a bartender though, so you better hurry up.”
“Okay.” I turn to my father, “okay, come on…”
We make our way through the crowd to the stairs. When we reach the top, my father following me says, “You know she's pregnant right?”
I stop in shock. “wh- what?
“Alex; remember, my talent is being a doctor. I might not be able to fix the problem without magic, but I can still diagnose things.”
OHCRAP, now what do I do? Does she know? This is gonna be rough…
“Okay d-dad here you go. You sleep here, and I’ll see you later, all ri-right?”
He nods and walks in. I shut the door behind him.
_-_-_
Almost two in the morning and the bar is almost empty. I think I made closing time.
I hope the bar runs as well tonight. I leave the clean up for tomorrow, and help the stragglers leave. My friends, except Dash, have left already. Vinyl was packing and I walk up and tell her goodnight.
As I walk back up stairs, and into my room, I find Dash awake waiting for me. She was sitting on the bed, and was waiting patiently. Looked like she was thinking until I came in.
I smile. So she does know, that explains why she wasn’t drinking, and seemed lost in thought sometimes. “So you knew; that’s good. How did you find out? I already know, so we can skip that part.”
The look on her face was priceless; first she was stunned, then confused, then relived, then confused again. “How did you find out?”
“I never told you my dad was a doctor. He could never keep a job because he drank too much, but he was still a really great doctor.”
“So, he told you that I was pregnant. Celestia, this is annoying. I worried all freaking night, and now I find out i didn't have to. I went to Nurse Redheart because I wasn’t flying very well, and she told me pegasi start having problems in the early stages of pregnancy, hormones and stuff. It was way- way too early to be sure, but a whole lot of … You know what, I don’t care. So now what? What does this do to us?”
I walked up and lay down on the bed, and she laid next to me. Then I started, “well I would assume that this would make you the mommy and me the-“ she punched me…HARD. “Ow… I deserved that but it was worth it.”
“Stupid…I mean what are we gonna do?”
I reach around and turn off the light on the table.
I turn to her and kiss her shortly on the lips. I whisper, “Are you happy?”
She nods, “then everything will be alright…”we both say.
We fall asleep in each other’s embrace.
And life goes on…
END