Chapter Text
Life’s kind of always sucked for Patrick Zweig.
He tells himself otherwise.
He convinces himself that he’s fine, that he’s still young enough, strong enough, with time to ‘turn it all around.’
He keeps a script on repeat in his head like a prayer: I’ll get back to tennis, I’ll get serious again, I’ll fix it.
But it’s been years now, and if he was really going to fix it, wouldn’t he have already?
He’s a popular guy.
Well…
He’s always been liked.
Liked in the way that his classmates at the Mark Rebellato Academy liked him: he was good to be around, easy for a laugh, the kind of guy you invited for a beer when you didn’t want to be alone, but never the guy you actually called when you needed someone.
Six years at the Academy, and not one real friend to show for it.
No roommate who became a brother, no rival who sharpened him into something better. No group of guys he could call when he was bored. Not even a fucking long term girlfriend. Just faces and names that had blurred together over time.
He toured for a little while after he graduated.
That was always the dream, wasn’t it? Professional tennis, not just percentage tennis. Except it wasn’t glamorous, not for him. After his parents cut him off when he made it clear that his dream really was tennis and not following in his father’s business, there wasn’t money for a real coach, or a physio, or flights that didn’t involve at least three layovers and sleeping on airport benches.
So he played the small circuits, the cheap tournaments where the prize money barely covered the entry fee.
He won sometimes, lost more often, and told himself he was just building towards something. But every year, the savings bled thinner. Every year, he was just one injury, one missed rent payment, one minor fucking inconvenience away from total collapse.
And one day, it finally came.
So he quit.
Or paused, as he likes to say… even though that pause seems to have stretched from ‘just a couple of months’ into a couple of years.
He still swears blind he’ll go back.
But for right now, he takes whatever jobs he can get: hauling boxes in warehouses, cleaning offices at night, stocking shelves in stores where no one remembers his name and his cheque comes in the form of a fistful of cash.
He tells himself it’s temporary every single day, that it’s just money in his pocket until he gets back on his feet.
But… his feet have been in the same place for so long now, it’s getting harder and harder to pretend he’s not stuck.
The first year after Patrick quit touring is one of those stretches of time he doesn’t talk about.
One he can’t even think about. It sits like a shadow behind everything he does now, the memory of it so raw that he has to smother it with jokes and with shrugs, and with a forced half-smile as he says “yeah, those were rough times” if ever it comes up. But the truth of it was darker than he’ll ever admit.
Because at first, he pretended it was fine.
That he was fine.
He sold what little he had of value, an old stringing machine, a stack of tournament kits he once thought he’d sign and give away. It bought him another couple of months.
Then it ran out.
So he started living in his car. Not because he wanted to, but because rent was too high and jobs too scarce. The car was a second-hand sedan he’d bought years ago, the kind of shitbox his father had felt more appropriate for bringing to and fro from the academy. It had already fallen apart, never intended to be more than a temporary thing, and now it had become his everything: his bed, his closet, his kitchen table. He parked it in the lots of twenty-four-hour gyms, or behind supermarkets, anywhere he thought the police wouldn’t bother him.
At night, he folded himself into the backseat with a blanket that smelt faintly of mould, and tried not to think about how far from grace he’d fallen.
It’d been miserable in ways he hadn’t expected. The way the cold seeped through the windows in winter. The way the heat suffocated him in summer. The constant ache in his back from trying to sleep curled against a fucking car door. The embarrassment of washing up in gas station bathrooms, of brushing his teeth in the sink while avoiding other people’s eyes.
His diet became whatever was cheapest: instant noodles, chain fast-food burgers, whatever he could grab for the few dollars he had in his pocket.
His body, once trained and fine-tuned for tennis, softened where it had once been sharp, and slimmed where it’d once been muscular. Not enough food dropped the muscle mass, left his jeans too loose, new holes fashioned into his belt with the tip of his pocket knife. He kept a gym membership, took advantage of the showers and the toilets and the water fountains, and he worked out too, but never quite to the level he’d been at.
He’d quickly lost his strength, his stamina, his reflexes.
But worse than the physical discomfort, was the loneliness. The way days blended together when he didn’t have a home to anchor them. He spent hours just sitting in the driver’s seat, staring out at parking lots, trying to remember what the hell he was doing. Sometimes he drove aimlessly, as if motion might trick him into believing he was still moving forward, still chasing something.
But there was nowhere to go. Not anymore.
He watched his peers on social media, guys he’d trained with at the Academy posting photos from tournaments, racking up wins, climbing the rankings. He told himself he didn’t care. He told himself they just got lucky. But every scroll through the endless string of pictures was like another knife in his chest.
There were nights he cried, quietly, into his pillow in the backseat. He hated himself for it, for how pathetic it felt. He hated himself for not being stronger, for not finding a way to push through. But he couldn’t. He was exhausted, worn down, and humiliated.
That year was the lowest point of his life.
By the time he’d finally scraped together enough to rent the dingy apartment he lives in now, the relief was so overwhelming he nearly collapsed. He’d slept for most of a week straight, never realising before how much he could appreciate four walls. A roof. A mattress, even if it was on the floor.
To anyone else, it was nothing. To him, it’d been his salvation.
But the relief was sharp-edged, because beneath it was fear. He knew how close he came to disappearing entirely. He knows how fast it could happen again. And the scars of that year never healed. Not really.
Even now, when he shuts the door of his apartment behind him, there’s a little flare of panic in his chest, the same one that used to flicker when he sat in the driver’s seat at two in the morning, wondering if tonight was the night someone would bang on the window and tell him to finally fuck off and move along.
He still keeps a blanket and a pillow in his trunk, just in case. He still can’t look at supermarket parking lots without his stomach twisting. He avoids driving at night if he can, because the glow of streetlights on an empty lot reminds him too much of nights spent alone, shivering in the backseat, trying to convince himself tomorrow would be better. Every bill feels like a test. Every late paycheque feels like he’s about to loose it all again. He hoards canned food in the cupboard, not because he likes it, but because he remembers the nights he had nothing but gas station snacks and lukewarm water.
There are nights he lies awake and thinks about the Academy. Not fondly, exactly, just with that dull ache of nostalgia for a time when everything at least looked like it might mean something. Back then, he thought he was destined for greatness.
He laughs a lot, still. He’s good at that. He knows how to make people think he’s fine. He goes for beers after work with colleagues he doesn’t know, cracks jokes, gets called a good guy. He knows how to pass as happy. But when he comes home alone, and he looks at the racquet shoved in the corner of his closet, he feels it.
That empty, gnawing, cavernous fucking pit in his chest.
He tells himself he’s not miserable. He tells himself things could be worse. He tells himself he’s okay.
And he tells himself he survived it. He tells himself it made him tougher. But deep down, he knows the truth: that year broke something already fragile deep inside of him. And no matter how much he tries to patch it over, he’ll never really get it back.
Because more than anything, it simply proved that Patrick Zweig is completely and utterly alone.
He always has been.
He always will be.
Patrick loses his job on a Tuesday.
It’s the kind of one he hates the most, warehouse shifts, unloading deliveries, hauling boxes until his back feels like it’s being pulled apart, but it pays just enough to keep him afloat.
The manager calls him into the office and tells him they’re making budget cuts. “Nothing personal,” he says, like that makes a difference.
Patrick nods, forces a smile, shakes the man’s hand on the way out. He tells himself it’s fine, it’s just another bump, he’s been through worse.
But walking home with his last paycheque folded in his pocket, the panic gnaws at him. He knows how fast the bottom drops out. He knows how quickly a couple of weeks without income can spiral into catastrophe.
So he spends the next few days trawling job boards, facebook posts, circling ads in the local paper, calling numbers taped to lampposts. Nothing sticks. The few interviews he gets, he can tell from the moment he walks in that they’re not interested. He’s too scruffy, too worn, too obviously out of place. He tries to sell himself, easygoing, hardworking, reliable, but he can see the polite disinterest in their eyes, and in the very gentle dismissals.
“We’ll be in touch.”
Then he sees it: a dishwasher position at a small restaurant across town. It’s humiliating, in a way. He once hit balls in stadiums, trained for a life that meant something, and now he’s chasing after the chance to scrub grease and soap off plates. But he needs it. He cannot afford pride.
When he walks into the restaurant, he feels it immediately. They don’t want him.
The manager, a wiry guy in his forties with tired eyes, looks Patrick up and down and it’s clear he’s already written the rejection speech in his head. The kitchen staff glance at him and then away again, unimpressed. Patrick feels the weight of that old familiar shame settle on his shoulders, but he doesn’t let it show. He leans into his charm.
“Look,” he says, hands spread like he’s letting them in on a secret. “I know I’m not exactly the guy you want, but I can work. Hard. I’ve done worse than dishes, believe me. I’ll be the guy who shows up on time, does what you need, no questions asked. You won’t even know I’m here.”
The manager frowns, unconvinced. Patrick feels his chest tightening. He pushes harder. “And hey, I’m good company. You won’t have to deal with someone who sulks or complains. I’ll keep the mood light back there. You need jokes, I got jokes. You need quiet, I can do quiet. Whatever works for you.”
It’s desperate, he knows it. He can hear himself rambling, pitching his own dignity away, but he can’t stop. He’s terrified of walking out of here with nothing. He thinks about the car, about the blanket in his trunk, about the ache in his back from nights sleeping cramped in the backseat. He can’t go back to that. He won’t.
Something in the manager softens, not much, but enough. Maybe he hears the desperate truth under the patter, or maybe he just needs someone cheap and willing. “Fine,” the man says at last, scribbling something on a scrap of paper. “Trial shift tomorrow. Don’t be late.”
Patrick nearly laughs in relief. He shakes the man’s hand a little too enthusiastically. He tells him he won’t regret it, that he’ll prove himself, that he’ll be the best dishwasher he’s ever had.
The manager just shrugs, already moving on.
Walking out of the restaurant, Patrick tells himself it’s a win. A step forward. Work is work, and he’s lucky to have it.
He shows up half an hour early for his first shift, because he can’t afford to risk being late. He doesn’t go inside right away though, he sits on the curb across the street, a cigarette between his lips, trying to tamp down the nerves. He watches the back door of the restaurant, the staff ducking in and out for smoke breaks themselves.
It’s just dishes. It’s just work. He’s lucky to have it.
When he finally goes in, the manager barely looks at him, just jerks a thumb toward the kitchen. “Back there. Malik’ll show you what to do.”
Malik, the line cook, is a big guy with tattoos covering every inch of visible skin save for his face and absolutely no patience. He gives Patrick a once-over and sighs, like he’s already going to be a problem. “You ever washed dishes in a place like this?” he asks, shouting over the clang of pans and the hiss of fryers.
Patrick shakes his head.
“Then keep up and don’t complain.”
The dish pit is hotter than hell and twice as loud. The sink is already stacked with plates caked in sauce, pans scorched black, knives tossed carelessly in with everything else. The spray hose is so powerful it feels like it could take his skin off. He fumbles through the first few minutes, water soaking through his shoes and clothes, burning his hands, clums of food splattering onto his clothes, and trying his hardest to keep up with every order Malik barks at him whenever he slows down.
Patrick smiles through it. That’s the pitch, right? He told them he’d be good company, told them he’d make it easy. So he cracks jokes over his shoulder as he scrapes burnt cheese off trays, shouts back something funny whenever Malik grumbles. A couple of the line cooks laugh. Even Malik snorts once, though he tries to hide it.
But the hours drag. The pile of dishes never gets smaller. The steam from the sink makes it hard to breathe. His shoulders ache, his hands sting, and every time he turns around there’s another mountain waiting for him.
By the time the dinner rush hits, he’s running on instinct, dunking, scrubbing, spraying, stacking, moving so fast he barely thinks. His shirt is soaked, his arms trembling, his whole body slick with sweat.
At one point, Malik comes by and claps him on the shoulder. “Not bad, man. Most new guys tap out by now.”
It’s the closest thing to approval Patrick’s had in months. He swallows hard, keeps grinning. “Told you. Best dishwasher you ever hired.” His voice cracks a little, but no one notices.
By the end of the shift, his legs feel like they might give out under him. He limps out to his car, smelling of grease and bleach, his fingernails rimmed in gray no matter how hard he scrubs at them in the sink. He lowers himself onto the plastic bench out the back and laughs, breathless and bitter.
This is his life now.
But the weeks at the restaurant settle into a rhythm. The work is endless, circular, the kind that erases itself as soon as it’s done. Clean a plate, two more appear. Scrub a pan, another one’s already burning on the stove. It’s thankless in the truest sense: no one notices unless you fall behind.
But Patrick doesn’t let it show. He can’t. He needs this job, and he knows the only thing he has to offer besides his labour is himself, his charm, his humor, that easygoing grin he’s been rehearsing his whole life. So he leans into it. He makes jokes when the fryers spit oil onto his clothes, when Malik curses under his breath, when a server storms back with another plate “sent back by table six.” He teases the other dishwashers, shouts encouragement to the line cooks, tells stupid stories during the rare quiet minutes between waves of dirty pans.
And people like him.
They really do. The waitresses start lingering in the kitchen just to chat, laughing at his impressions of customers. Malik, who gave him hell that first shift, takes to calling him “rookie” in a way that’s almost affectionate. Even their manager, gruff, exhausted, and apparently allergic to compliments, gives him the occasional nod, like he’s begrudgingly impressed. Patrick hasn’t been part of a group in years, not really, and even though this one is stitched together by long hours and mutual misery, it still counts.
It’s not enough to make the job good, though. His hands are always raw, nails cracked, skin red and burning no matter how much lotion he slathers on at night. His back aches so badly he sometimes can’t sleep. The shifts stretch late, and he walks home with his clothes reeking of dish water and fryer grease. He hates how small it makes him feel, standing at that sink for hours, scrubbing someone else’s mess, knowing no matter how hard he works, tomorrow he’ll start all over again.
And yet… he finds himself laughing more than he has in years. The staff pull him into their orbit. They tease him when he shows up half-asleep with his hair a mess. They invite him for after-shift beers, and for once he doesn’t feel like an outsider tagging along.
Patrick becomes the funny guy.
That’s his role now, the dishwasher who never shuts up. He knows how to read the room: when to push the jokes, when to shut up and let people work.
But it eats at him, the thought that this is all there is now. He can’t help replaying the years at the Academy, the tour, the dreams he once had. It’s pathetic, he knows, but he still keeps his racquet in the closet. Some nights he’ll take it out, bounce a ball against the wall of his apartment until the neighbours bang on the ceiling. And that’s when it hits him: maybe he can’t get back on the tour, but he could at least try to get back on the court.
That’s how the coaching idea starts.
Kids tennis. Not glamorous, not anything like what he once thought he’d be, but it’s still tennis. He imagines standing on a sunlit court again, showing a kid how to hold the racquet, tossing them balls and watching their eyes light up when they finally connect. It’s not the future he wanted, but it’s a version of the game he can still touch.
So he makes flyers. They’re bad ones, printed at a copy shop, with clipart tennis balls and his number in bold at the bottom.
Affordable lessons. Beginner friendly. All ages welcome.
He tacks them to grocery store boards, slides them under the windshield wipers of SUVs in school parking lots. He even drops off a stack at a local community centre, plastering on his most charming smile as he explains he’s a “former tour player” looking to give back. It’s stretching the truth; his time on the tour was brief and bleak, but it sounds good enough to pass.
At work, he doesn’t tell anyone about it. He keeps that dream tucked close, fragile and a little embarrassing. But when he’s rinsing plates in the dish pit, up to his elbows in suds, he catches himself imagining a kid swinging for the first time, hearing the thwack of the ball meeting strings. It makes him smile to himself, even as the water scalds his hands.
Still, the reality presses in.
He doesn’t know if anyone will actually call.
He doesn’t know if he’s kidding himself, if the racquet in his closet is just another relic of a life he’s never getting back.
But it’s a lifeline. Something to hold onto. Because if all he is is a fucking dishwasher who tells jokes, he doesn’t know how much longer he can keep laughing.
But then the first call comes on a Tuesday morning, just after Patrick drags himself home from a brutal closing shift.
He’s half-asleep on his mattress, still in yesterday’s shirt, when his phone buzzes across the floor. He almost ignores it, probably a bill collector, or worse, the restaurant asking him to cover another shift, but then he sees the number isn’t one he knows. He answers groggily, voice scratchy, and a woman’s voice comes through, polite but cautious.
“Hi, I saw your flyer at the community centre. You do tennis lessons for kids?”
Patrick bolts upright. His heart does a weird flip, his exhaustion dissolving in an instant. He swallows hard, forces his voice steady, cheerful. “Yeah, yes, I do. Absolutely. Happy to work with beginners, any age. Who’s the player?”
“It’s my son, Alex. He’s nine. He’s never really played before, but he’s been asking. I thought it might be… fun for him.”
“Perfect,” Patrick says too quickly, too brightly. “Nine’s a great age to start. I can absolutely get him going, make sure he’s having fun while learning the fundamentals.” It’s the kind of patter he used to roll his eyes at when real coaches said it, but now it pours out of him.
They settle on Saturday morning, at the cracked old courts behind the community centre.
When the call ends, Patrick sits there, phone still in his hand, staring at the racquet leaning in the corner.
It’s something.
It’s something.
Saturday comes, and Patrick shows up an hour early. The courts are nothing like the country club ones he used to muck around on when he was 9, the nets are frayed, the paint faded, weeds pushing through the cracks in the surface, but right now it feels holy.
He bounces a ball against his strings, stretches out muscles that haven’t been asked to move like this in far too long. His body remembers, even if it’s slower, heavier, aching in places it didn’t used to.
When Alex arrives with his mom, Patrick feels lighter than he has in years. The kid’s shy, hiding half behind her leg, clutching a cheap beginner racquet. Patrick crouches down to his level, makes a joke about how “that racquet looks like it’s better than mine,” and watches the boy’s face crack into a smile.
The lesson itself is clumsy, but it works.
Patrick keeps it easy: starts by showing Alex how to hold the racquet, how to hit simply underhand tosses, lets him laugh when he whiffs the first few swings. No matter what direction the ball goes, every time it connects with the strings, Alex’s eyes go wide in excitement and Patrick cheers like it’s a Grand Slam point, pumping his fist, waving his arms. It makes Alex smile, and it warms Patrick’s heart.
By the end, Alex is sweaty, red-faced, and begging his mom for another lesson.
She thanks Patrick, presses a couple of folded bills into his hand, it’s less than what he used to spend on stringing alone, but it’s something.
Long after they leave, Patrick lingers on the court.
He stands in the centre, staring at the faded baseline, listening to the silence after their laughter. His chest aches, not just with pride, but with longing. This isn’t the life he dreamed of. He isn’t the player he thought he’d become.
But for one hour, with a kid who just wanted to hit a ball, he felt like someone again.
Patrick keeps the restaurant job, obviously. He has to, rent won’t wait, and neither will the bills, but he carves out time for coaching, too. It’s never much.
A few flyers pull in the occasional parent, a couple of kids show up after school or on weekends.
Some weeks, he gets no one at all. He drags his old racquet bag down to the courts, sets up cones, and waits until the sun dips low, pretending he’s not just sitting there alone. Other weeks, he might have three, maybe five kids, all chattering and distracted, their energy spilling out in every direction but towards the game.
He makes it fun. That’s the only way to hold them. He invents silly drills, hitting balls into buckets, calling out superhero names when they swing, running relay races with tennis balls balanced on their racquets.
The kids laugh, sometimes so hard they can barely breathe, and Patrick laughs with them, though underneath it’s always bittersweet. Because when he stands on that cracked baseline, watching little bodies dart and stumble, he remembers what it was like when he was their age, when every serve and every volley felt like a doorway to the life he was certain he was destined for.
On nights when work is especially grim, and money seemingly tighter at the end of his shift than it was at the start, when the pile of dishes is higher than his head, the floor slippery with grease, his hands raw and cracked, and the manager calls out for anyone willing to pick up another few shifts during the week, he thinks about quitting the coaching altogether.
It barely pays. It barely even counts.
But he never does.
He can’t.
Because even if it’s just once in a while, even if it’s just a handful of kids chasing stray balls across a court that should’ve been condemned long ago, those hours are the only time he feels close to who he used to be.
And as much as it hurts to miss tennis, to stand there knowing he’ll never play for real again, it hurts worse to let it go completely.
So he keeps both jobs.
The restaurant for survival, the coaching for scraps of meaning.
It’s not balance. It’s not even stable.
But it’s something. And Patrick Zweig has long since learned that sometimes something is the best he can hope for.
The months crawl by in the same endless cycle.
Then one night, after a brutal Friday rush, the manager gathers the staff in the alley behind the restaurant for a smoke. He mentions, offhand, that they need a new barback, someone to keep the bar stocked, run ice, clean glasses, haul kegs.
And Patrick doesn’t hesitate. “I’ll do it,” he blurts before anyone else can speak.
The manager gives him a long look, like he’s not sure if Patrick’s cut out for it, but then he shrugs. “Fine. Trial next week.”
The difference is immediate.
The bar is loud, chaotic, but it’s alive in a way the dish pit never was. Instead of staring at a mountain of plates that only ever grows, Patrick is weaving through crowds, lugging bags of ice, keeping pace with bartenders who move like they’re playing jazz on speed.
He likes the rhythm of it, the constant motion, the little bursts of adrenaline when the bar gets slammed and everyone’s shouting for glasses and mixers at once. His body still aches, but it’s a different kind of tired. Lighter. Less soul-crushing.
And then there are the people. At the dish pit, he was hidden away, an invisible cog in the machine. As a barback, he’s in the mix, bartenders snapping jokes at him, servers grabbing him for quick favours, even customers nodding at him like he’s part of the show. He’s not just tolerated here; he’s noticed. He starts to feel like his old self again, the guy who could win over a room with a grin, who could turn on the charm and make it stick. The tips help, too. They’re not huge, but they’re more than he ever saw in the back.
It’s enough to make the walk home a little easier, to let him buy a drink without calculating how much it’ll take out of rent. Sometimes, when the bar staff split their tips at the end of the night, one of the bartenders will clap him on the back and say, “You’re killing it, Zweig.” And Patrick will grin, swallowing the lump in his throat.
It’s not glamorous by any means, he’s still hauling kegs, still mopping up spillages and sweeping up broken glass at two in the morning, but it’s something closer to living. The noise, the bustle, the fast camaraderie of a busy bar and restaurant keeps his head above water. It doesn’t erase the ache for tennis, or the hollow stretch of his days, but it makes the nights bearable.
For the first time in a long time, Patrick doesn’t dread going to work. And that, he realises, feels almost like happiness.
Months pass, and Patrick settles into a rhythm.
Malik still teases him endlessly when Patrick appears in the kitchen, or when they slip out to the back to smoke together, still calls him “rookie” even though Patrick has earned every ounce of respect he has now, both in the kitchen and behind the bar.
The waitresses leave him little notes on the bar, reminders of tabs or just jokes to make him laugh. The head bartender teaches him tricks, how to hold multiple glasses at once, how to predict a customer’s order based on what table they’re sitting at and who their server is, how to upsell. Patrick absorbs it all.
Amid all that, he clings fiercely to the coaching.
His Saturdays are sacred, a few hours where he feels alive in a different way. He teaches fundamentals, tosses balls, cheers at every connection, laughs at mistakes.
Watching their small triumphs, the ball finally landing where it should, the swing improving by inches, he feels that old spark, that pulse of joy he thought he lost forever. It’s fleeting, patchwork, but it reminds him who he is underneath the grime of bar shifts and tired hands.
Even as he builds these pockets of life, the longing never fades. Tennis still aches in his chest. When he handles a racquet, whether teaching or in his lonely apartment, the memory of stadiums, tournaments, and that impossible drive for perfection fills him.
The months roll on.
And on.
The restaurant is stays chaotic, the kids stay unpredictable, but Patrick thrives in the margins.
He starts expanding the coaching quietly, almost subconsciously, the way he’s been building his life bit by bit for months.
Word spreads slowly, parents recommend him to other parents, a couple of kids bring friends, and before long he’s juggling more than one session a week.
Some of the classes are tiny, just one or two kids learning the basics, while others are closer to five, rowdy and chaotic, bouncing tennis balls everywhere. The kids get better, more engaged, and Patrick finds himself teaching, as well as just coaching.
At the bar, things change quickly too.
His promotion to bartender comes unexpectedly, a mix of luck, timing, and the relentless charm he’s been honing for years. The manager pulls him aside one quiet Tuesday afternoon, when the bar’s empty except for the hum of the neon lights.
“Zweig,” he says, leaning back on the counter, “we need someone behind the bar. You’ve got the energy, the face, and… whatever it is you do that keeps people talking. You want it?”
Patrick’s answer is immediate. “Absolutely.” He can feel the blood rushing in his ears, because a promotion means more, more money, more responsibility, more feeling human again.
And he’s good at it.
He knows all the regulars by name, to the point where they start asking for a “Patrick special,”. New tip extra when he comes over to them in his too-tight work shirt and overexplains the cocktails they “just can’t decide between”.
He flirts shamelessly, and people respond. Birthday shots, bad jokes, impromptu stories about the week. They can’t get enough, drunk patrons sitting up at the bar just to chat to him, servers passing on tips from tables ‘for the bartender’, the occasional tipsy person shooting their shot with him… It all makes him feel… less lonely. It’s fullfilling, in a way.
And Patrick starts coaching new hires, showing them the ropes in the same way he shows the kids how to hold a racquet or time a serve. “Don’t lean on the bar while you’re taking an order,” he says to one new bartender, grinning, “unless you want to get hit with a bottle.”
The responsibility of it all weighs on him, though.
Because it’s more than just drinks.
He has to manage stock, has to monitor the cash flow, has to ensure the bar runs smoothly during the rushes. He has to keep things together and it’s such a step up from barback. He feels every ounce of it all now. Because his mistakes carry consequences now, he doesn’t just get a slap on the wrist and or a judgemental glance, because he’s not just washing dishes, he’s not just stocking bottles. He’s working.
But his colleagues adore him, even when he makes mistakes.
The head bartender relies on him to read the room, to call out when the kitchen or floor needs backup, and keep customers entertained when the staff are stretched thin.
Even the manager, gruff, usually so apathetically indifferent, calls him “essential,” and Patrick treasures that more than any tip.
He still gets in trouble. Sometimes he talks too much, or lingers in the bar when he should be running tasks.
Occasionally, he steps out of line, confronts a customer for being rude or disrespectful. Management doesn’t like it, they shake their heads, mutter warnings, but the staff… they love it.
They see Patrick step up, they see him defend them, they see him protect the rhythm of the bar, and it earns him a kind of loyalty he’s never known before.
When a drunken customer insults a waitress or knocks over a glass in anger, Patrick doesn’t hesitate. He stands firm, voice calm but unwavering, and the others watch him, grateful.
It’s not that he’s fearless, far from it, but he’s willing to stake a claim for decency, even when it puts him in the manager’s crosshairs.
And people respect him for it.
They care about him, for it.