//------------------------------//
// Chapter 9 - anonpencil - Berry Punch 
// Story: Bringing Back The Laughter 
// by Flutterpriest 
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I tap my hoof on the bar to get Bourbon Barrel’s attention, one more time.
“Hey, another one over here,” I say, trying to keep the slur out of my voice. “Same as last time.”
The bartender, one who is very familiar with me and my ways, casts me an uneasy eye. I can see the hesitance in his frown, the tightness of his lips, and normally I’d just shrug and go drink at home instead if he won’t pour me another drink. But not this time. I don’t want to be home. I want to be out, I want to pretend to have fun, maybe make myself believe for a moment that the world isn’t much darker than it was yesterday. As long as I can hold off this encroaching dread I feel, I’ll be okay.
I’d like to be okay for just a little longer.
But B.B. knows me too well. He knows what my voice sounds like when I’ve had too much, my expression when I’m putting efforts into appearing “normal.” I would be more mad at him for that, but I know he’s probably hurting too. There’s no sense in being angry with someone who’s doing their best to hold it together too.
“You sure?” he asks, and I can hear in his voice that it’s not a question.
Go home Berry, it says. Sleep it off, avoid the massive hangover you’ll probably already have. I’m worried, it says… maybe. Or maybe I’m reading into it too far. It’s a bartender’s job to make sure no one pukes in his establishment, so maybe that’s what’s going on instead. I’m probably just another customer to him, and he’s just being a good bartender.
“Yeah, another,” I say anyway, keeping my voice steady. “Please.”
He raises an eyebrow at me.
“You’ve had more than your usual share. It’s late, most other ponies are home with their families or mourning.”
“I am mourning,” I say pointedly before I quickly look away to avoid his gaze. “And my family isn’t in Ponyville. Might as well be here as anywhere else.”
“Mh-hm.”
“Look, just… give me another drink, okay? I have the bits.”
“Not worried about the bits.”
“Not going to throw up either.”
“I know, you usually stumble to the bathroom before you do that.”
“So… can I have my damn drink now?”
When I look back up, he’s still frowning at me with this analytical eye. I can still feel that he’s judging me up and down, trying to decide what’s making me tick right now, keeping me here. You’d think, with all he can know about me and detect just from my body language, that he’d have some inkling of what’s going on in my head right now. She came to this bar. He saw her too. He must know how empty this place feels without her laughter echoing through it. The air feels heavy without it, thick like syrup. It makes each breath into my lungs feel sticky.
At long last, I see my bartender shrug his shoulders.
“If you can promise me you’ll get home tonight okay, we’ll do one more.”
My ears prick up, and some of the heaviness pulling me down through my bar stool, through the floor, deep into the earth where she now lies, lets up a little. There’s a part of my brain that I could feel coiling up to throw a verbal punch if he said no, some kind of need more than just thirst that was wound up tight like a spring. It releases now, slowly, without the sudden eruption that was threatening.
But… wait…
“We?”
He cracks a half grin, even if his eyes don’t smile.
“Hey, drinking alone is depressing as hell. Booze is meant to be shared with friends, that’s why bars like this exist, right?”
I give a bitter little laugh. It tastes like acid.
“I suppose you’re right. I just thought, you know,” I shrug. “You didn’t drink with customers.”
He pauses, his hoof already reaching for a pair of clean glasses, and shuts his eyes. A slow, deliberate smile spreads over his face, and I know I’ve somehow said something cruel, though I can’t put my mind on exactly what it is. When he opens his eyes again, they look distant. Like mist on the ocean.
“Well, it’s an exceptional night,” he says softly. “And I figure that means I oughta make an exception.”
Who am I to complain? A drink is a drink. If he has one with me, so much the better. Maybe if I finish first, he’ll pour me another, so he doesn’t have to drink alone.
“Sure, your choice then,” I say with a nod towards the liquor bottles.
He selects the whisky I always drink, one of my favorites when it comes to well booze, and pours us a generous pair. Then, he pulls up a stool across the bar from me, and sets the two glasses down in front of me. I pull the alcohol into my hooves, cupping it towards my body like a vital medicine. If I’m being honest, it does feel like I’d die right now without it.
Bourbon Barrel raises his glass in a toast, and I wait another aching moment more to join him.
“A toast,” he says. “To a lady that always knew how to liven up a party. To a mare that wouldn’t want us to frown and cry as we toasted her name. To Pinkie Pie, who never let anyone feel like they didn’t have a friend.”
The words cut me as he says each syllable. But I also know he’s right. Pinkie would have been at my side right now, inciting me into a party mood. She would have been laughing, poking my ribs until I laughed from how it tickled, and buying the bar another round. B.B. would have been laughing those belly laughs at her antics, she would have jumped up on the bar to do some silly dance. I would have been happy. I wouldn’t have been alone.
We were party ponies. We were barely friends, but we shared a love of smiles and fun and joy. And I feel her absence in me, like someone carved out a piece of cake in whatever happiness I held deep inside. Now there’s just me. Just me. Just me.
I quickly down the whisky. The thought stops echoing and dies down as the liquor hits my throat and begins to burn. It feels like relief. And poison.
When I open my eyes again, Bourbon Barrel is staring at me with a crooked smile on his face, the kind you give to children when they’ve just said something silly.
“I miss her too, you know,” he says softly. “We can talk about her, if you want.”
I shake my head hard as the burn begins to smolder in me.
“Not tonight,” I say firmly. “Tonight, I just want to drink, and be here, among friends and company or whatever you call people who make a bar their second home.”
“Should I just let ya sit then?”
I shake my head again, harder this time. I’m lucky I don’t knock myself off the stool.
“No… keep talking I guess. Don’t care what, don’t know what you’re interested in right now or anything. The company is nice either way, even if that seems, I dunno, needy of me. I’ll pick a topic if you like. Just…” I give a dismissive shrug to hide my eagerness. “I don’t want to keep you from your other customers.”
He smiles again then, an earnest one, and a deeply sad one. And I feel a lurch in my chest, because the smile reminds me of her in a way. And it feels so out of reach right now for me, like it’s buried six feet under and far from my touch. He gestures over my shoulder in a sweeping wave.
“Don’t worry,” he says gently. “I’ve got time.”
It’s then that I realize we’re the only ones left in the bar. I feel a cold numbness fill me as my eyes glance to the door, the clock, and find it’s past closing time by far. I should go home, should have been home with my thoughts and empty rooms and quiet solitude that consumes me like a blanket. But as I turn back to my bartender, I know that I don’t have to go home, not just yet. And maybe, for right now, he’s not really just my bartender.
“So,” he says to me. “What do you want to talk about?”