-Me-

  It only took a semester to officially drop out.

  By then, I was making better money as a bartender here at the Cornerstone than I expected to make right out of college, at least without a master’s degree or doctorate. And as much as I’d enjoyed my first chemistry set in the bathtub or the shed lab before I’d burned it down, I found it harder and harder to go back to the university lab and the formulas every day.

  This shitty bar wasn’t a science lab. The drinks I made weren’t anything new—even if I added a new ingredient sometimes, it wasn’t chemistry. But serving drinks felt a lot more real than the lab, and I could get most of my chemistry fix from watching videos. When I couldn’t, that was okay; the boss was always willing to see a new drink mix, even if he never put it on the menu.

  Besides, I liked it here.

  “So you’re here because you fell into it?” Barry asked. “You’re right. That wasn’t dramatic at all.”

  The TV still wasn’t running. I hadn’t pressed play, and I didn’t intend to. Not until Barry gave me what I wanted. The remote sat above the taps, in easy reach for both him and Randal, but neither of them had moved a muscle.

  “Yeah. I’m comfortable here, and I don’t want to travel halfway across the country again to get home.” I snorted, not because it was funny, but because with the missiles coming in, it all felt like it didn’t matter. Who cared if I didn’t want to get on a plane, or drive for a few days? “It’s always felt too far away.”

  The Cornerstone went quiet. A dog barked outside, but whether it was a block away or halfway across town. I couldn’t tell which. There wasn’t a single engine running, or anyone shouting. Somehow, in the forty minutes we’d sat, talked, and drank, the world had gone silent—like it was holding its breath and waiting.

  The bar was. And after a minute, Randal coughed into his empty drink. “Well, I’m heading out. I’m going to watch the missiles come in. It’s been an honor to be at the last call at the Cornerstone.”

  “I’m going, too,” Anette said. She raised her glass at me, and I topped it off. The Cornerstone’s policy was that no one drank outside, and no one left with the bar’s glasses. But screw the boss; it wasn’t like he was here to stop her from having one more drink. She nodded appreciatively and headed for the door; it closed with a jingle.

  I started picking up the vodka and the gin, and the beer glasses I’d filled with cheap light beer. I did it out of habit—and because the Cornerstone deserved one last clean-up after last call.

  The cups went through the auto washer, and I returned the bottles to the shelf where they belonged. I started toweling the counter dry with a rag, wiping the spilled liquor away. I always did this after everyone left; it was my favorite ritual during closing time. Sometimes, I’d plug in the perpetually stuck jukebox and let it play until I locked up for the night.

  But tonight was different.

  There was still a pair of elbows on the counter.

  Barry hadn’t left, and the old jackass looked nervous. He wasn’t staring at the TV, and though his eyes flicked to the bottle of Jack Daniels I’d poured from for myself, he didn’t ask for a drink. Instead, he cleared his throat. “I was a paratrooper.”

  -Barry-

  Barry wasn’t a math genius, and he didn’t have a gift for words. He wasn’t an athlete, either. He graduated, but only just.

  The army got him when he was eighteen. Fresh out of high school, he didn’t have a ‘next thing.’ There were lots of guys like him—young, no plan, no future staked out for ‘em. Mom and Dad couldn’t afford to have him stick around, his grades wouldn’t cut it for college, and he didn’t see himself building houses for forty years.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Still wearing his robes and mortarboard, he walked his ass right over to the recruiter and told them he wanted to be an Army Ranger.

  They laughed themselves stupid. Told him to go infantry. They always needed more infantry, and he could get into the Rangers from there if he worked hard enough. So, being eighteen, unemployed, and dumb, he said sure.

  I poured the whiskey; so far, I doubted he’d lied at all, but it was hard to see the man at the end of the bar just going for it.

  Barry went for it. That was in 1980. Boot wasn’t memorable. Work your ass off, follow directions, try to learn, try not to be the best, and try like hell not to be the worst. He only made one choice the whole time: signing up for paratrooper school. The 82nd Airborne was looking for people crazy enough to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, and one look at Ranger school convinced him he’d never make it—that he wouldn’t even make it in. Those guys were all insane—and in insanely good shape. He couldn’t compete.

  But to eighteen-year-old Barry, being a paratrooper was pretty damn close and a hell of a lot less work.

  Fast forward a couple of years, and he was jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, alright—out of a C-47 a few hundred yards over an airstrip on an island called Grenada.

  “Grenada?”

  Yep. Grenada.

  The world’s eyes were on the Commies, but there were all sorts of little wars no one talked about. Grenada was one of them. Barry and his squad jumped, hit the ground, and mopped up the ‘resistance.’ Not that there was much; the locals weren’t ready for the kind of firepower coming their way. The Rangers were hitting the beaches, the 82nd was falling out of the sky, and about a thousand Caribbean countries all piled in. It was a real hush-hush operation back in the States. Barry never figured out exactly what the operation was all about, but it was over in less than a week, and his ass was back on a plane heading home.

  I’d served Barry whiskey every day, and I’d never heard so much as a single part of his story. There was still so much I didn’t know about it—about who he’d been before Grenada, or what he’d done after.

  Then again, it wasn’t like Anette or Randal had shared everything about themselves, either. There hadn’t been time—there never would be time—to learn everything about the Cornerstone regulars, and I hadn’t shared everything about my own life, either. Just the most important moments—the moments that I thought would tell my friends who I was.

  The bottle of Jack Daniels came down, and a pair of ice cubes clattered into one glass, then another. I poured both drinks, handed one to Barry, and nodded. “Thanks for telling me.”

  “It was the worst place I’d ever been.” Barry reached for the glass, then hesitated. I smiled, and he picked it up. “The locals never had a chance against US Rangers and paratroopers. We wiped them off the map. And I never did figure out why we went there, other than to fight Communism. The usual reason, back then. It’s ass-backward that after all that, it’s weapons built when I was a grunt that’ll end up killing us all.”

  “The missiles?” I asked. My drink burned, but I didn’t drain it all in one pull this time. This time, I sipped.

  And so did Barry.

  Barry was a regular. He was in six days a week, and I’d never seen him sip his drink. He stood up. “I’m going to watch, too. You coming with?”

  “Yeah, just a minute.” I set my whiskey aside but didn’t drain it or dump it. Then I finished cleaning up. As I worked, the seconds ticked by.

  My friends, the Cornerstone regulars, hadn’t needed to share their whole lives. The stories they’d chosen to share at the end of the world were their most personal memories—memories of their worst failures, their biggest triumphs, and the things they wished they could forget. And they’d chosen them because, in their last moments, they’d wanted to be understood by someone. To be known.

  I flipped the switch on the ‘Open’ sign, and it buzzed as it died. The Cornerstone sat empty, chairs stacked and floor clean, waiting for tomorrow’s patrons who’d never come.

  The door jingled for the last time as I stepped out onto the sidewalk. My glass stayed inside, on the bar, next to Barry’s unfinished whiskey.

  The four of us weren’t the only people outside in the dark.

  Our little corner of New Jersey was quiet, but the streets weren’t empty. All around, people stood, staring at the dusk-filled sky. At the stars and the half-full moon. Waiting for the end. I could feel the hopelessness in some of them. The fear.

  The loneliness.

  I joined Barry, Anette, and Randal outside. But I didn’t stare up at the sky, and neither did they. I looked at them: the old, grumpy bastard, the woman who’d had it all, and the kid whose life had barely even started before heartbreak hit him again and again. And they looked back.

  “I’m glad I got to say that,” Anette said, “even if it wasn’t to my kids.”

  Barry nodded, but none of us said anything. There wasn’t anything to say. I think we all felt the same way.

  A shiver ran up my spine. It hadn’t been easy for any of us. And in a minute—maybe less—the last forty-five minutes wouldn’t matter. A glow lit up the horizon far to the east, over the Atlantic; the missiles were almost here. Every person in town was waiting for them, and not everyone had someone to tell their story to. But the four of us were the lucky ones. Our stories had been heard, and for a few minutes, we were known.

  I stood shoulder to shoulder with my three newest and closest friends outside the only place that felt like home, and waited.