you're too young & eager to love

More AU Madness! I don't know why my mind went to 1920s bootlegging ... but it did. Oh well!

This piece is a bit of a trickster. It looks like it's going to be a full piece because of how it starts, but oh no, nope, no way. I fizzle out at the end. But hey! Writing! That's a thing.


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They don’t talk about the war.

Decades from now, people will reflect on this stoicism and say it’s unnatural. They will discuss the effects of trauma in sympathetic tones and try to imagine the cold-blooded horror of the trenches, of men choking on yellow gas, of soldiers clutching their breasts while the old world tumbles. They will speak of war from a distance with all the nuances poetic imagery grants. The Great War, they will say, is a World War. The Great War that bred the Greatest Generation.

In truth, their silence is a shield. Their shattered lives only pave the way to more pain.





Unloading crates of alcohol isn’t much different from unloading medical supplies, food rations, or weapons. It’s the same push and pull of muscles, the same overseeing of inventory, the same hurried, methodical ways. If it wasn’t for the back-alley exchanges, shipments arriving in covered trucks armed by men with metal guns as black as night, Palmer wouldn’t know the difference.

He steps lightly over the wet cobblestone, slicking his hand back through his hair before lighting a cigarette. There’s a dozen men around him; their shirts are sweat-stained, the sleeves rolled up to their elbows, their hands full of boxes and callouses. They speak in grunts, ferreting the crates into the back of The Emerald with all the efficiency illegal activities like theirs require.

Sunniva stands close to the car at the front of the line of trucks. She seems out of place against all the masculinity. “How many boxes does that make?”

Harrow is a knife sliver, leaning gracefully against the side of his Cadillac, the car a mix of intimidating steel and luxury glass. He glances at Sunniva the way men glance at wasps and turns to Palmer to respond. “This should cover you for the month. We have another shipment coming in from Chicago in two weeks.”

“Chicago? What do they have that we don’t have right here?” Palmer grins as he pulls an envelope from the inside of his pin-striped jacket. He hands it over with the smooth flourish of a man accustomed to dealing cards.

“Ask my sister. It was her idea to expand business and all.” Harrow lets his driver take the envelope. They’re already ducking inside of his car, but he hesitates at the last moment, sticking his head partially out the passenger window. Sunniva steps away, shifting to let Palmer slide past. “How’s the new girl working out?”

“Fine. She can light cigarettes and deliver drinks. About all we need.”

Harrow’s nod is curt. He thumps his fist on the hood, and his driver takes the signal. The engine rattles powerfully as they drive off.

“You didn’t tell him?” Sunniva asks once they’re out of sight and the last of the loading men are shuffling to their trucks.

“What’s to tell?”

Palmer recognizes the look she gives him – one mixed with disapproval and surprise. He’s seen it plenty of times before, but they don’t talk about that either.






Chason has dark hair, dark eyes, and, as far as the majority of The Emerald’s clientele believes, skin that’s a touch too dark to be white. They think he’s one of those wops, another filthy immigrant suckling at America’s great teat, or a spy sent in by Masseria to compete with the Vries’ booming business. It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. To them, he’ll always be the bartender who can’t speak their language, his mouth too slick with olive oil and his mother’s tomato sauce to get any words out properly. To them, he’s fit for shining shoes and sweeping stoops.

He could tell them that he doesn’t speak a lick of Italian, wouldn’t understand a single word if he heard it, and that his mother would burn water before making any type of sauce. He could tell them that he was born in Atlantic City, that he knows the boardwalk and the beach as well as he knows his bones. He could tell them that their affluence doesn’t protect them as much as they think it does, that their blood is the same as his. But he doesn’t. He cleans his bar, he gets their illicit drinks, and he lets them think what they want.

When the Vries deliver a new shipment, he oversees where the crates are stored, choosing certain unlabeled bottles for the back of the bar. He’s lining up glasses when the pianist arrives for the night, cracking his fingers dramatically before sitting at the stage and beginning his warm up. There’s a few working girls around, smoking cigarettes and sipping champagne, resting their heels before the night begins. They all have freshly sheered hair, their bobs softly curled and framing their heart-shaped faces. They look like dolls – replicas and waxen – and their clucking chatter mingles with the piano melodies.

The one whose name he can never remember has a bridge of freckles across her nose and a shock of red hair. She’s Irish, still fresh off the boat after six months of American living, but the women at The Emerald bond over shared bruises, broken hearts, and booze all the same. He’s about to offer her a light for the cigarette she’s been holding, but they go silent, their words cut off abruptly. Chason follows the path of their scrutiny, pocketing his lighter.

Coming in from the faded street, the new girl is a fresh field of snow, her arms so white that they seem to shine. She’s wearing another slip of silk, the silver fabric iridescent and cut on the bias so that it bunches and gathers near her hip, the folds somehow sinuous and showing stretches of leg as she moves. A rope of ivory beads shivers around her neck. With her hair slicked into a neat chignon at the nape of her neck, not a strand out of place, she looks more like a guest than an employee.

The smile she wears is cautious, and none of the other girls return it.






“Are you seeing him again tonight?”

The question is sudden, jarring, and for a moment Ita thinks the bar itself must have spoken to her. “I’m sorry?” she asks, her voice as silvery as her dress, and more quiet than the voices Chason is used to hearing.

He pours her two fingers of whiskey and slides the tumbler across the bar. She palms it awkwardly and fixes him with a curious look.

“Would you prefer champagne?”

“That’s what the other girls drink?”

“You don’t seem like the other girls.”

Ita is surprised he doesn’t tack a sweetheart onto the end of his sentence like Palmer and the other men would, their drawling accents syrupy thick with drink and suggestion. The corner of her mouth flips for a moment, trying to picture the way his voice might lilt at the syllables, and then she blushes. “You don’t really know me well enough to say that, do you?”

Chason’s face is indecipherable. It makes her blush more. She ducks her eyes and takes a sip of the whiskey, her lipstick smearing the rim of the glass.

“… It’s not bad,” she says at last then takes another sip.

Chason laughs, a barking, biting sound. It’s harsher than it needs to be. She smiles anyway, softly.

When he turns to leave, she says, “I’m not with him.”

Chason pauses, wiping a nonexistent spill from the bar top before meeting her blue gaze evenly. “That isn’t what I asked.”

Ita doesn’t say anything, so the silence fills the space between them.







The Emerald is in full swing when Harrow arrives.

Chason isn’t surprised to see him.

And although Ita’s smile remains cautious, she finds herself pulled to his table and his entourage. When he fingers the rope of beads around her neck, she bears it.