This is the third and final part in a series of excerpts from Dallas writer Callie A. Bentley’s unfinished novel A Legend of Fire. Click for Part I and Part II

There’s a funny flutter in my heart, maybe my stomach, it’s hard to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. I can’t explain it, exactly—I mean, obviously they’re flirting with me, but being a female bartender and still, I suppose, relatively attractive—in the dim light anyway, where the bags under my eyes and my deathly pallor aren’t so obvious—I get that often enough, the flirting I mean. But it seems like these guys are different, somehow. Again: it’s hard to explain. Maybe because we have a lot of regulars, and the guys in the bands, and they all know I’m married, so their flirting’s friendly, teasing, joking. Something about these guys seems more serious…they’re looking for something. There’s something hungry about them. Kind, friendly still, but hot and hungry. And also—usually, Larry’s here with me. If anybody so much as cocks an eyebrow at me, Larry’s got my back, like a protective uncle or older brother. And Larry’s burly appearance, if you don’t know him, can be a little intimidating.

I set the drinks down in front of them. I’m opening my mouth to ask if they want me to keep the tab open, when the redhead takes hold of my left wrist, cocks an eyebrow at me. I know he’s seen my wedding ring, the plain white-gold band. “You’re married?” he asks.

I smile, sadly, and avoid his eyes a little. “Technically,” I say, hoping my tone of voice will indicate my disinclination to discuss it, but apparently it has no such effect.

“On the rocks?” the blond nods empathetically, jerks his head toward the redhead. “Robert and I’ve both been there, sugar, believe me. Both fairly recent divorcees.”

I feel a little jolt inside of me, again I can’t tell if it’s my heart or my stomach, or both or neither…my lungs perhaps. A small but agonizing wrenching twist. I look up at them again, look at the redhead, who’s sipping his whiskey and water, and watching me, his eyes sort of guarded now. “Robert?”

He nods, bemusement crossing his eyes but otherwise his expression doesn’t really change. “That’s my name,” he admits levelly.

I shrug, the pain still there in some deep, buried part of me. “I had a friend named Robert,” I explain. “His hair was the same color as yours. He went by Bobby though.”

“Ah,” the blond remarks. “Boyfriend?”

I laugh a little, wiping down the bar with a damp rag just so I appear busy and not at such a loss. “No. More like a brother.”

“And you’ve lost touch with him?” the blond persists, politely.

Another little laugh. “In a manner of speaking. He’s dead. Died about eleven years ago.”

They both look sufficiently surprised, and regretful. “Jesus,” the blond says. “I’m sorry.”

I smile, stop wiping and gaze at my hands. “Well—I mean, it happens. Dying. Even to kids. But it was a long time ago.” Still, there’s a lump in my throat, and I try to swallow it down. I look at Robert. “It’s just strange, that being your name,” I say, “because you reminded me of him when I saw you.”

“He wasn’t your brother though?” Robert asks, sort of hopefully I think. “Just like a brother?”

I smile again. “In more ways than one. My sister’s husband, my husband’s brother…and one of my closest friends.” My smile fades. “But—that’s all in the past. You guys need more drinks?”

They do, and I collect their highball glasses and replenish them. We’re talking now of things of little, or no, consequence…the weather; they’re remarking on the basketball game. (It is indeed basketball; I’ve hazarded a glance at the screen.)

I go over to check on Fred and Earl…they’re finally approaching the bottoms of their pints of Bud.

“You guys need refills?” I ask, trying to come across as bright and cheerful.

Luckily they don’t seem to notice anything; don’t seem to observe any difference in my demeanor since the arrival of the younger men. “Nah, Amie darlin’, better get the tab,” Fred says, clapping Earl on the back with brotherly affection. “Not as young as we used to be, you know.”

I smile. “Okay,” I assent, and go to get their tab for them.

As I pass Robert and his friend, the blond clears his throat. “Sweetheart…what’s your name?”

I pause, turn slightly to my right to face them, smile. “Amie,” I say. “Dr. Amie Joy Spencer Calloway.”

“You’re a doctor?” the blond asks.

I shrug and resume movement toward the register to calculate Fred and Earl’s bill. “A Ph.D.”

“Oh,” he says, a little bemused, and leans back in his chair like he’s settling in for the evening.

“What’s your name?” I ask as a sort of afterthought as I turn away from the register with Fred and Earl’s check safely in hand and head back toward the other end of the bar.

“John,” he says.

Something pricks at the back of my mind…a sandy-haired boy named John, a red-haired boy named Robert…something that causes the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end…but whatever it is doesn’t penetrate the surface of my consciousness, it stays safely buried wherever I once buried it, and I go about my business.

“And where are you guys from?” I ask, resolutely brightly, conversationally, returning to stand in front of them as I wait for Fred and Earl to count their money.

“St. Paul,” Robert says, and contemplates me as he sips his whiskey and water. “Are you from here?”

I shrug. I remember a conversation I once had with Jesse, the first conversation we ever had in fact. “Yeah,” I muse. “For all practical purposes. I was born in Colorado but my mom and sister and I moved back here when my sister and I were just babies, when our dad died.” In my mind I can hear the alarms going off. I don’t want to tell them the whole story but I’m afraid it’s going to come spilling out anyway…the way it did that long-ago June afternoon when I was first meeting my future husband. I decide to change the subject back to them, curb further questioning: “What brings you guys here?”

Collectively, they shrug. “New beginnings,” John says, swirling the liquid in the highball glass he’s holding.

I nod and realize that Fred and Earl are trying to catch my attention to tell me ’bye. I walk back to them; Fred hands me their money, grins and winks. “You watch out there, little girl,” he advises me in an undertone. “Them boys is after somethin’—don’t be forgettin’ yer a married woman.”

I smile, squeeze his hand as I take the money. “I won’t, Fred.” I glance at Earl, who’s nodding in agreement with Fred. “You guys take care,” I say. “See you tomorrow night?”

Fred gives a single decisive nod. “Termorrer.” He pats my hand, and they get up and amble toward the door, shooting suspicious looks at John and Robert on their way out.

I watch until the door closes safely behind them…then I feel a sort of exhilarating rush, similar to drunkenness but I haven’t even had anything to drink yet. Just a feeling, I think, of the night being entirely mine now, to do with as I choose. No one left to keep an eye on me…

“Dr. Calloway,” Robert says, jolting me from my reverie, “seeing as we’re now your only patrons, would it be appropriate to buy you a shot?”

I turn and flash a grin at him. “Completely, I think,” I say.

He gives a brief decisive nod similar to Fred’s. “Of your choice, then,” he says, with a straight face but there’s a smile masked somewhere in his eyes. “Seeing as you are the bartender.”

I keep grinning and turn to survey my array of options. “Yup—I sure am.” I’m already considering whether I want a straight shot or a mixed one…even though in the back of my mind I know full well I shouldn’t be drinking when I’m the only one here. But—the reckless abandon is still with me, and doesn’t seem likely to dissolve soon. It’s like getting out of school for the summer or finishing your last final, or finally handing in your thesis. It’s the encompassment of freedom.

I decide a mixed shot’s probably better, weighing my options: I can’t do tequila these days; there was much too much of that in high school and in my undergraduate days when I shared an apartment with Janey. And I could never handle straight whiskey unless I was already drunk…rum’s out, vodka’s out, and Jaegermeister and tuaca fall into the same category, these days, as tequila…essentially I was too much of a drinker as a kid to be able to handle liquor now. Finally I decide on a Royal Fuck, and I pour one for each of the boys as well. “On me,” I grin as I plunk the shot glasses down in front of them.

They grin back; we raise our glasses and clunk them together. “To shitty relationships,” John says with a sardonic twist of his lips, and we tap the bottoms of the glasses on the bar in tribute, then raise them again, this time to our mouths, and shoot them.

I cough, laugh, wipe my mouth a little with the back of my hand. “Either of you got a cigarette?” I ask.

John smiles and produces a pack from the pocket of his shirt, pulls out a cigarette and offers it to me; I take it, he lights it. I’ve gone through this charade, this sequence of actions, a hundred times with a hundred boys and men but I can sense the difference this time. What the difference is, that’s a different story: maybe it’s because at the moment I’m so lonely, so hungry, so sad, so full of some cruel compilation of apathy and desperate longing. It’s hard to say.

I make them more drinks and make myself one. It’s been a long time since I’ve been recklessly drunk but I have a feeling it’s going to happen tonight. We’re talking, joking laughing but again we’re typically sticking to safe subjects: temperamental Oklahoma weather, music, different shots I could make, various stories of drunken college blowouts—although I have a feeling my college experiences were not as stereotypical and all-American as theirs. My undergraduate years, save the first part of my freshman year maybe, were characterized by grief and withdrawal; it was the end of my freshman year when Jolie, Bobby, Aunt Sara, Nan and Jake died. I wasn’t living at home then—Janey and Jesse and I were all living in the dorms at the University of Tulsa—but it was a Friday night that it happened, and we were home for the weekend. It was hard getting back into the swing of things after that. By my junior year, it started to get a little better: Janey and I got the apartment; we were attempting to be normal, well-adjusted twenty-year-old girls, trying for a while to be social, to encourage and nurture friendships, to throw parties on the weekends…which was when we were at the height of our alcohol abuse, probably, worse than we’d been in high school because our high school exploits hadn’t had at their root desperation and grief. Or…our earliest high school exploits hadn’t…and the grief had been bad then but it hadn’t engulfed us as much. It didn’t really last for long, though—the height of the college abuse I mean. Jesse and I were bad for a while our sophomore year, when the world seemed like such a dark place and we were seeking solace wherever we could find it, but had a scare that literally sobered us up pretty well for a long time. Then, when I relapsed living with Janey, Janey and I pretty quickly started to grate on each others’ nerves…of the two of us she was always, of course, naturally the most stubbornly social, even when I was pretty sure she didn’t really feel like being. I began to call her out on it… “You don’t have to go out tonight.” “They’ll understand if you don’t go.” “Why are you doing this to yourself, Laila Jane?” That was probably the worst thing I ever could have said to her: after Jolie, she never liked being called Laila Jane. Even though it was by all rights her name. Probably because it had always been Jolie, or Aunt Sara, who’d called her that the most. And Bobby, mockingly.

But—the summer after our junior year Janey got pregnant with Isaac, and Lila met her mountain man and decided it was high time she escaped our deadly circle and moved to West Virginia with him, and when Lila left we couldn’t leave Uncle Jim on his own with Chelsea, so Janey moved back home, and Jesse, who’d been living with a few other guys and was sick of it too, moved in with me. There was no one left to pass any type of judgment on us: Uncle Jim certainly couldn’t have cared less.

The night wears on; we eventually make our way, the drunker we get, around to talking about the shitty relationships: John tells me about his ex-wife Christine, a college sweetheart, who was a lush, he says, and would black out all the time, and was a little crazy too, and tended to sleep around even though she was married.

John shrugs, sucks down a whiskey and water. “We got married too young, too fast,” he explains, starting to slur just a little but Robert and I are no better off. I’m thankful, now, that I haven’t had any more patrons since Fred and Earl left, and it’s already nearing closing time. I doubt I’d be able to pour a decent drink, or count anybody’s money. “We just didn’t get to know each other sufficiently,” John continues. “I knew she was wild but I thought it was sexy—until I married her and realized that nothing was sacred to her, definitely not marriage vows. I mean—I was wild enough in my time too, I got around in college, but I never cheated on Christy, I never even thought about it. It took me a while to realize her real character.”

I eye his empty glass. “Another?”

He smiles weakly; his eyes are having trouble keeping their focus on me. “Maybe I oughtta switch to beer, sweet Amie.”

Sweet Amie. Somehow those words melt my heart. I can’t remember the last time Jesse addressed me in any term of endearment. And I’m pretty sure he’s never called me “Sweet Amie.” But—of course, we were friends for so long, we knew each other so well, so through and through, in and out, that it would have been strange for him to call me anything like “Sweet Amie,” unless we were fighting, and he was trying to patronize or mock me. Now, Bobby—Bobby, I realize, used to call me “Sweet Amie.”

I smile weakly too, I turn to pour, at his specification, a Bud Light. “So what finally brought it all to a head?” I want to know.

He shrugs, gulps his beer. “Oh—I was supposed to be gone for the weekend, but I came home early and found her fucking another guy in our bed.”

“Jesus,” I breathe. “I thought that shit only happened in movies or on T.V.”

He smiles wryly. “Nope, darlin’. In real life too.”

“I guess so,” I say.

I glance at Robert. He’s been quiet for a while now, nursing the beer to which he switched a while ago, gazing into its depths with hooded eyes. I assume it’s because he’s already heard John’s story so many times, there’s no more he can really say about it. “What about you, Robert?” I ask, touching his arm.

He jerks out of his reverie, looks at me with eyes as wide as they can go in his present state, like I’ve caught him doing something he shouldn’t be doing. “I’m sorry, what?” he wants to know.

“What’s your story?” I ask, gently.

He shrugs. “I was married to a girl named Sara, and she wasn’t wild or crazy or a bitch or a tramp but she broke my heart anyway.”

I feel a pang for him, squeeze his arm. “What happened?”

Another shrug. “She decided she didn’t really love me, she wasn’t happy and she wanted to leave.” A heavy sigh. “I mean, we probably got married too young too. But I loved her. I think maybe my love overpowered her so much that she thought she loved me.”

I nod, sadly. “I think that does happen sometimes. But I’m really sorry it happened to you.”

It’s his turn to smile wryly. “Yeah. Me too.”

John looks at me. “I think it’s your turn, Dr. Amie. Why does your relationship suck?”

I think, suddenly, that I might cry. I’m realizing that the only one I want is still Jesse. What am I doing here, with these other guys? Am I intent on destroying anything I have left? They’re good guys, really sweet and kind; I like them a lot. They’ve gotten me really drunk. I only get emotional these days when I’m really drunk. God—what am I doing? What was I thinking? What am I trying to find? If I’m trying to rediscover Jesse it’s not going to happen here—separation anxiety is threatening to utterly engulf me. I want my husband, my lover, my best friend. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.