Happy Birthday to Me. OPEN!

“Oh, gotta see, gotta know right now. What’s that riding on your everything? It isn’t anything at all.”

Nell believed one of the best purchases with her father’s money was the iPod. It was a glorious device, and it took quite a few explanations from her friends to get her to understand how exactly it worked. Technology had never been too kind to her, but she tried her best. Especially since she was developing a love for music. Well, she’d always loved music. But when she was younger and her sister was upset—silent tears because Tilly always felt the need to be the strong one even when she wasn’t—Nell used to create songs and sing to the girl. Now she could actually listen to music, a privelege never available to her before.

It was a part of her freedom, she supposed. Being able to walk along these cliffs was also a part of her freedom. Every day when she was able to move around, to do what she wanted, she thanked whatever higher power there might be. Mostly she just thanked the sky for hanging above her and being so wide open, beautiful even at night. She always looked up there and wodnered what it’d be like to fly, and figured that climbing up the cliffs would be as close as she’d ever get. Of course, climbing the cliffs at night was never a smart idea, but Nell was not known for her prudence. Her life was filled with terrible decisions and reckless behavior.

“Oh, gotta see, gotta know right now. What’s that writing on your shelf? In the bathrooms and the bad motels.”

A shame she didn’t have the best singing voice. No training, no vocal lessons, just a childhood filled with Spanish lullabies invented on short notice. She knew there were quite a few musicians in her family, like her aunt and opera singers of the past, but she didn’t think she inherited the talent gene. She didn’t really think she had any talents. Except when it came to board games and card tricks and folding paper cranes. Well, and her bartending skills. She actually thought it was fun, though she’d rather work at a…nicer bar. Which is why she was looking for a new apartment and a new job. In spite of her lack of talent, she wasn’t going to become a rich jerk who sat on her ass all day and fed off her father’s money. It was merely revenge that she was now doing this. If she didn’t have any money, it would be just as well.

Except she wouldn’t have the glorious device known as the iPod.

“In the motions and the things that you say. It all will fall, fall right into place.”

Then she noticed another voice, not belonging to her. Patting at her hair, making sure the crown of flowers around her head wouldn’t fall off as she walked over in her slightly skipping, teetering gait, she found Ace. “And what wish would that be, Mr. Ace?” she called out, cupping her hands around her mouth before hopping up to him. Looking down, she saw that he had a nice little set-up. “Do I have to report you?” she teased. Yeah, the underage bartender reporting innocent ol’ Ace, how hypocritical. Of course, she didn’t go around flaunting her job. If people asked where she was some nights, she usually just said work—only a select few knew about the bartending job, and a lot of them because they went to the bar while she was on a shift. “So whatcha doing up here all by your lonesome?” Her voice was curious as she tilted her head. Nell plopped herself down next to him, pulling out her earbuds so she could give him her full attention.

Nell looked on curiously as he raised his glass, wondering if there was something wrong. Usually people didn’t hang out on the cliffs with wine. People were allowed to be eccentric, but it didn’t stop her from worrying. A lot. She smiled at his joke. ”I’ll let you off with a warning, then,” she said. She wasn’t one to stop others from having fun. The only thing was that she had to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn’t fall of the ledge if he got a little too tipsy. At the question of the iPod, she waved the device and said, ”Yeah baby.” One of the many things she now owned that represented how she was moving on up. She even had The Jeffersons theme song when she felt in the mood. ”Over two-hundred songs. This thing is my precious.” She lowered her voice to immitate Gollum from Lord of the Rings, chuckling afterward. Everything she bought now she appreciated greatly. It wasn’t like she was turning into a spoiled brat—she appreciated it all.

Nodding as Ace mentioned these girls, she commented with a straight face, ”You now, I think I saw them coming up here. They seemed greatly disappointed.” She drew her head back in surprise when he mentioned it was his birthday. ”Shouldn’t you be out partying till you drop?” she said, then she shook her head with a smile. Picking up the glass, she clinked it against his and said, ”Happy birthday, Ace.” Taking a sip, she scrunched her lips to the side. ”Really, why aren’t you out celebrating?” Not that she ever celebrated her birthday, but that was thanks to the circumstances of her childhood. Then she thought that maybe there was a reason Ace decided to be all alone on this day. Either way, she'd make sure to get him a belated birthday present.

His next question caught her off-guard. Well that was certainly random. She tilted her head, blinking. “Are you drunk?” Nell was only half-joking, her light tone making it apparent. Then, turning her face to the stars above, she considered it seriously. It seemed like Ace was having some love problems, and as his friend, she was going to do her best to help him out. His guy friends would have taken a different approach, though—the punch Ace and ay he’s a pussy approach. Of course, she had zero experience with love and so she wasn’t exactly one to go to for relationship advice. ”Well, I know that there’s a quote about letting love go and if it comes back, it’s yours to keep. But I won’t waste your time with cliches.” What did you do when someone you love didn’t love you back? That was a tough question indeed. ”Well…there’s the art of courtship to win a girl over. But if she loves someone else…” Nell cast him an apologetic smile. ”Then the best thing to do is wish her the best.” Out of curiosity she asked, ”So who’s the girl?”

Nell gave a two-finger salute to Ace with a serious face. He seemed pretty impressed by her iPod, and she just rolled her eyes playfully. Teenagers these days all had them, she was pretty sure. They had a lot of things she was now just recently obtaining. She didn’t have a cellphone until she came to Canada, so goes to show how much she had in her child. Mocking offense when he suggested they’d been illegal downloads, she protested, ”How could you think I would do anything so detestable!” All of them had actually been completely legal, paid with her father’s money, of course. Ah, the luxuries she now had that she made sure to appreciate every day of her life.

”Wonder why they left then?” she jested. A nice, friendly ribbing. Apparently, he did a lot of partying, which she guessed she could relate to. Even though she was always the responsible one of the group, looing out for people to make sure they didn’t get completely drunk off their asses and get in trouble with the law. But when she got drunk, well…that was not good. She smiled wide as he thanked her. Swirling the wine in her cup, she listened as Ace told her that he didn’t like attention on him. That’s understandable. ”Habit?” she asked, moving her brown eyes to him. Then, knowing how it was similar to why she didn’t tell people her birthday, she said, ”Ah, you don’t have to explain. I get that you don’t like having all this attention on you. It can get overwhelming.” No, she didn’t understand how that felt, actually. It was just another day on the calender for her family. Even when Tilly was alive, birthdays had been…morbid. Because on her birthday, she’d managed to cause her sister’s long and drawn out death.

She lifted her eyebrow as he counted, laughing a bit. ”I’m a bartender, so I must tell you I’m trained in the art of the cut-off,” Nell said, deciding it was okay to tell Ace about her occupation. It wasn’t one of her best kept secrets, anyway. And he wouldn’t be one to snitch. As for cutting him off? Well, if his safety was in danger, then yeah. But she also remembered cutting Josh off, and that didn’t work out too well. Of course, she had to cut-off other people since, but that had been the most memorable of them. Clearly Ace didn’t want to lose whoever this girl was, which was understandle. When you were in love, it was very difficult to consider that person to be with someone else. Especially if you thought you were the best one for them. Nell hadn’t been expecting a full-on description of her, but she listened patiently and with a friendly smile. Then the blind part caught her ear, and she was about to take sip of her wine when she shifted her gaze to him with the glass raised to her lips. Her name. Oh. He loved Elaine. ”Elaine is a…a good friend of mine actually,” she said, lowering the glass and running a finger around the rim. She got it now, why Ace was so heartbroken. ”Do you know…who this other person might be?” If he didn’t know about Elaine’s feelings for Alex, she didn’t want to compromise a secret shared between two girlfriends at a sleepover. That was just cruel. Even if Ace didn’t know, she wouldn’t say who it was that Elaine had her heart on.

”I’m your woman,” Nell said with a thumbs up. ”Seriously, if you do have any problems, I’ll be more than willing to give you the money.” It wasn’t hers, after all, and therefore she could be as wanton as she liked. Oh my god, you’re a terrible person. But she reminded herself, as she always did, why she was doing this to the man—he abandoned her and thought he could fix it with his money? Fine. She’d let him think that. And she’d spend all of his money in the same time.

Nell took a few moments to finish off the glass of wine, then set it down beside her, leaning back with on her arms to gaze up at the sky. She wondered if she’d pull an Ace on her own birthday. Probably not. She’d just go around acting like it was any other day. Hang out with friends, probably, but she might even get herself a birthday cake. Hey, it was food. Even thinking about it made her feel pathetic. Honestly, she just didn’t want to celebrate her birthday when she should be celebrating it with Tilly. It felt wrong.

”Oh, I’m sure I’ll be able to resist.” Though she couldn’t say how many times she’d seen someone at the bar strip off their clothes—Nell would mostly just laugh. She bit her lip as she thought about it. It would be awesome if it was more like Coyote Ugly or Cocktail, but her life wasn’t a movie and the pay was crap, though now that wasn’t something she had to worry about. Nell kept her job because she didn’t want to be a lazy rich bitch—or rather, more of a bitch than she’d already become. She always wondered what her friends like Ace would think of her if she ever revealed what she was doing ot her father. They’d probably not want to be friends with her anymore, thinking they’d judged her completely wrong. After a moment, she said ”It can be fun. It’d be better if I didn’t work at a crapsack bar, but you learn a lot of interesting things.” Like how to juggle bottles and mix drinks, though the former was learned from movies—awesomeness by analysis, one could say.

Nell lifted an eyebrow as she heard Ace sigh. ”Don’t worry, I will.” Poor guy, she didn’t want to crush his heart by saying that Elaine really liked this guy, even though he most likely knew. She didn’t know how much the blind girl had told him, but it was enough to make him feel pretty down in the dumps. ”Yeah, well…I’ve never seen a love triangle before save in the movies, so I…I wish I could help you out more.” This was honest. She felt sort of pathetic that she couldn’t offer more advice, but her love life was equally as pathetic so it made sense. She refilled their glasses, and held hers up saying, ”I have another cliché for ya. There’s other fish in the sea.” She lifted her glass up in a sort of toast before taking a sip, and then said, ”I hate to see you this way, Ace. Is there anything else I can do? Go and get some food, maybe?” Because Nell knew all the world’s problems could be solved with food.

”Oh, so I’m innocent, am I?” Yes, in one way she was, but for everything else, such was not true. She was probably less innocent than Ace, if he hadn’t killed anyone lately. But when speaking in…sexual terms, she was as innocent as you got. But she couldn’t help but think of some of the things her mother did, the times she carved words into her skin like ‘whore’ and ‘bitch’ and even though Nell chose to clear her thoughts of those memories—but never completely, the remnant would remain—there are the faint scars of those letter. She took a large drink. Yeah, she didn’t think she could show anyone her body. ”There’s a lot of tricks I can do to get more tips, like tin tricks where you flip bottles around.” She tapped her chin as if thinking, and then said, ”I don’t know, young one, it takes years of mastery. If you think you are ready for it, then I may teach you the ways of the bartender.” In actuality, it wasn’t too hard, but it did take a while to get things right. And in the beginning there was a lot of broken bottles, which wasn’t very good, considering how much she hated broken glass.

She gave a mock confused look. ”Wait, I thought I could marry food!” Shaking her head, she muttered, ”I’ve been lied to my entire life.” Deciding to take his question more seriously now, she leaned back a bit, scrunching her lips to the side. ”Nope, there isn’t anyone. I’m enjoying my single swag, ya know?” What she wasn’t saying was how totally inexperienced she was when it came to even simple schoolgirl crushes. She’d never had one before, never been attracted to anyone else, so she didn’t even know what it was like to have feelings like that for another person. When the right one comes along, maybe then I’m know…? Yeah, she was really loving these clichés. ”Hey, let’s toast to being single. Love is just too darn complicated. All we need is good booze and friends.”

After holding up her glass in a salute, she said, ”You know, if you really wanna learn some tricks, I can take you to the bar. I have a shift tonight, anyway.” Nell took her phone out from her bac pocket and checked the time. Wow, it was sooner than she thought. She just wanted to come up to the cliffs for some relaxation time before she had to head out to Maple Hollow, but it looked like she only had an hour left. Which was just as well, considering she was technically already dressed, and her apron was already at the bar. ”But I must warn you, I have the most hideous car in the existence of transportation.” It was almost embarrassing for her to have that bulky PT Cruiser. Whenever she gave someone a ride, she wondered if they wished they didn’t have to be seen in a car like that.

Nell laughed too, but more of a ‘oh my god, he is getting so drunk right now’ laugh. Instead of focusing on his slurred speech, she thought of how less-than-innocent she always felt. She wondered if Ace really thought that of her, even when he was sober. Did she give off an angelic vibe? Did she really seem innocent? Because that’s not what she felt whenever she thought about herself—she believed she was the impurest soul there ever was, and that didn’t even mean sexually. She just felt like a terrible person most of the time. ”Well, I’m not about to let you go flipping bottle unsupervised, Mr. Superman,” she said, recalling a conversation of theirs, one that occurred earlier in the war. Yeah, she didn’t think Superman here would be faring so well with shards of glass stuck in his hands. ”Well if you think you really are ready…” she said this slowly, as if considering. Nell wouldn’t mind taking him under her wing at all.

She couldn’t help but crack up at the whole donut thing, shaking her head. Oh god, he was already pretty damn smashed. ”I would never eat my husband!” she said, as if accusing Ace of thinking that she’d do such a terrible thing. Nell couldn’t help but blush at his next comment, and inwardly scolded herself for behaving like a little schoolgirl. Still, it was flattering to know that someone out there thought you were cute. Even if you had to disagree, even if you thought that no matter who they were, you wouldn’t be a good person for them. ”Well, tell him thank you, but Nell Doe Shepherd is strutting her single swag.” She winked at him, and moved around a little, as if showing off this ‘single swag’ of hers. Yes, to bachelorism. It was a freeing state of mind. But honestly, if she let her defenses down and thought about it, it’d be nice to have someone who you love and who loves you back. It would be great, actually.

Nodding in the affirmative, she smiled. ”Great!” A little wary about bringing him to a bar when he was already pretty much shit faced, her concerns intensified when he sumbled as he stood. She quickly stood and brushed herself off, slipping an arm around his waist and placing his own on her shoulder. ”Like you have a broken ankle or something,” she said wryly, helping him down the cliffs. She burst out laughing when he mentioned his car. ”Trust me, when I had my Monte Carlo, it’s ugliness was the only thing that kept it from being stolen. I know exactly what you mean.” It was true. Living downtown, she was always fearful of going down to the parking lot and discovering the car perched atop cinderblocks. She couldn’t even restore it or anything since it wasn’t a classic. Though, in the future when she did have enough money and her Lambo, she’d love to take a classic muscle car and restore it. But she didn’t think she’d ever drive that baby around, considering she’d be afraid it would get scratched or dented.

She helped him into the car she owned now and it wasn’t too long of a drive to Maple Hollow. The bar was already busy, and she led Ace around back. ”Let me give you a tour,” she said as she led them through the storage area. ”This is storage…and this is the bar.” Nell finished with a chuckle as she led him up to her working area. She wondered if he had ever been behind the bar. ”Nell, can’t have that kid back here,” the bartender who was usually on shift with her said as he got ready for his own shift. As she wrapped the apron around her waist, she said, ”Just duck under there and take a seat at the bar.” The place she designated was the little door that the bartenders use to get in and out. Going about her bartender duties—cleaning off the counter and organizing her little utensils—she asked, ”What would you like to see me do first?”

Nell watched with a worried gaze as he attempted to do a trick of his own with the wine bottle. He tossed it into the air and she leaned over, ready to catch it if he missed. But the bottle ended up falling down to the lake, and she snorted. ”Can’t be the hard, huh?” she said, looking at him in a teasing manner. ”My inner green freak as an Earth student greatly disapproves.” But she wasn’t just about to tell him to go down and fish it out of the lake. That’d be incredibly stupid and dangerouns, needless to say, not even something that she would do. Ace saluted to her and she rolled her eyes. ”My students are not allowed to say words like ‘totally’. They only speak in pirate voices.” She wondered if he’d actually believe her with how drunk he already was.

She tried to hold back her smile by forcing her mouth into a frown, but really, she couldn’t help but grin at him and his drunkenness. Nell felt like a terrible person whenever she laughed at people who got completely smashed, usually at parties, but when it came down to it if they got themselves into trouble, she’d be the one to help them out of it. ”You’re right, with my appetite, it’ll happen sooner or later,” she said ruefully. At his teasing, she stuck her tongue out and said, ”I’ll show you cute when I go Lex Luther on your butt and try to take over the world.” She reached over to wrap her arm around his neck, grounding her knuckles into his head in a noogie. Of course, she was not strong enough to make anything like that hurt, but most still cried uncle to get her off of them.

Nell rolled her eyes, poking him in the stomach with her free hand. ”Getting frisky, are we?” she said. Grinning at his motorcycle comment, she said ”Bikes are pretty sexy. I don’t think I’d be able to resist you if I saw you on one.” In truth, the real way to her heart—other than through her stomach—was with a car. She loved them so much that she didn’t think motorcycles could ever compare. Sure, they were cool, but they were also too…small for her. To each their own, though, even though her mechanic heart stuck by her cars forever and always.

It was terrible, but she couldn’t help but crack up at Ace, burrying her head in her arms as she leaned against the counter to stifle the laughter. Regaining her composure, Nell sighed and shook her head with a smile, leaning against the bar. ”I see there is a lot I have to teach you, young padawan.” She took out a glass and filled it with ice cubes before reaching underneath the bar. Pulling out the rum and tequila first, she flipped the bottle of rum up before pouring it into the glass, and tossed the bottle of tequila behind her back before putting it into the same glass. With those two done, she put them back under the bar with lightning speed and next to come out was the vodka and gin, which went through similar tricks before being poured into the glass. Finally, Blue Curacao and sweet and sour came, finished off with 7-Up. It was one of the mixes she was most proud of when she pulled off correctly, since she could only guess at the amount she was pouring in while flipping bottles around. ”Like Tom Cruise, baby,” she said, referencing a movie she wasn’t even sure he’d seen. Nell pushed the glass over to him and said, ”Adios motherfucker.” She didn’t apologize for the foul language, since mixed drinks tended to have the oddest names. ”And I’m not saying that just because it’s the name. That will probably be your last drink of the night. Consider it a birthday present.”