Probably because Jamie had warned me about the cowboy at the end of the bar, told me that he'd call me "Sugar" and Iıd melt, I took it as a kind of challenge. I took my half-empty Appletini and sidled down to where he sat, and stood between him and the suit to his right.

They weren't talking to each other. The suit was making friends with a double vodka on the rocks, and the cowboy had a headless draft going flat in front of him, and he was writing in a little book. He wrote with a yellow pencil covered with tooth marks, and I was reminded of fifth grade when I used to bite my pencils just so theyıd be really mine.

I stood there for a while, ignored, which is not something Iım used to, sipping my drink. The suit finished his vodka and Jamie, who keeps watch to see that his patrons are refilled right up to the legal BAC, appeared. The suit nodded, and Jamie gave him another.

Cowboy didnıt even look up. Jamie and I exchanged glances, and I winked, so he asked me about another Appletini though I still had an apple ring afloat. I said a few things to Jamie, the usual banter, and Cowboy finally took note.

He had eyes I'd pay to drown in, a scar like a lightning bolt on his cheek, and the whitest teeth I'd seen outside of a magazine ad for toothpaste. "Goes down easy," he said to the bartender nodding in my direction.

When Jamie said, "Those sweet ones do," and nodded in my direction too, I took in a quick breath. I was still off balance but then I realized they were talking about the Appletini, and I murmured, "And anyway I'm not all that sweet."

Cowboy looked at me, holding the pencil in his teeth the way a cartoon pirate holds a dagger when he swings on a rope. He smiled around the pencil. I was waiting for him to say, "Sure you are, Sugar," but instead he took the pencil out of his mouth and said, "Used to smoke."

"I heard you still do," I said, and put my glass on the bar near his beer. "Or was that just a pleasant rumor?"

"Refresh?" he asked. You knew he'd kept drinking company, the way he said that.

When Jamie brought my new drink, I poked the apple slice floating on top of it and licked off my finger. "Makes you think you're drinking something healthy," I said.

"Life's all about illusion," he said, and I told him I knew just what he meant. I tried to get a look at his notebook, and I saw ragged lines that might be poetry, but I couldn't make out any words, and he folded the book closed and put it into his pants pocket. He couldn't be casual about that since he had to stand up to do it, and, when he stood I didn't step back and neither did he, so we were as close as if we'd been slow dancing. Even in the bar I could tell he smelled like fresh-cut grass.

I fed him the slice of apple floating on my drink, and though he wouldn't switch to Appletinis, he liked it each time I lifted that dripping slice, folded it and fed it to him with my sweetened fingers.

It took until last call before he called me "Sugar," and, fuck, if Jamie wasn't right.

Turns out Cowboy isnıt a poet, or if he is, he's the first one I've met who hasn't made me listen to him read his rhymes. I told him my name, but all night he kept calling me Eve, and even though I asked him, he never would say why.