Throwback

by Zeia Jameson

  My mouth wants to speak.

  My eyes want to blink.

  But I remain frozen.

  I can’t even blink!

  “Look, buddy, if you are going to sit there and do nothing but drool all night, you can take your ass elsewhere. That seat is for paying customers only.”

  She scowls at me. The scowl contorts her beautiful face into something frightening. She means business and I’m suddenly terrified. I’ve got to pull myself together before she throws my ass out. And by the account of her height, broad shoulders and muscular arms, I believe she could physically remove me from this seat all by herself.

  Finally, I clear my throat and attempt to accumulate some moisture in my mouth so I can speak before she makes good on the promise I am assuming her eyes are insinuating.

  I look at the menu. “Um, I’ll have a pint of ah…um.”

  Why is this so fucking hard to say?

  I want a pint of Stella.

  It’s the only beer I drink.

  “We just tapped a good IPA from Colorado. It’s hoppy but since it’s distilled at such a high altitude, it’s very crisp and clean. Wanna try it?” she asks me with that mellow, rich voice of hers. I don’t know how to respond and suddenly the insides of my hands are wet. Really wet. Oh dear God I think my palms are going to drown everyone in the room with the amount of sweat pouring from them. Why is my body being so rebellious against me right now? I move my hands down to my slacks and wipe them off. I look at her. Her eyes have softened to what they were before. Her gaze, her voice and her scent are melting my entire body, as indicated by my liquefied palms.

  Except for one part. That’s staying rather firm.

  “Yes,” I squeak out like a fucking thirteen year old.

  What am I doing? What is an IPA? Stella. I want a Stella.

  But she walks away before I have a chance to change my mind.

  Screw it. What the hell. If I don’t like it, I’ll just drink it slowly. That’ll at least give me an excuse to stay at the bar longer and try to loosen up enough so I can perhaps actually speak to her without sounding and looking like an idiot. I can’t leave this place without finding out her name and number. I have to talk to her. I want to know everything about her.

  Or maybe I just want to sleep with her.

  Well, definitely the latter but I really do feel compelled to ask her a million questions until I know her like no one else does. And I can’t even come up with a good enough reason as to why. I’ve been sitting here less than five minutes and she’s only said like seven sentences to me. And not flirty sentences. There were just a few questions, some informational facts and I think a death threat. I shouldn’t be turned on right now. At the very most, I should just feel better educated about beer and slightly worried for my life.

  I also can’t ignore the fact that as she is standing there pouring my beer facing away from me, my eyes drift down toward her ass. In jeans. And it’s fucking amazing.

  Oh shit, she’s coming back with my beer.

  I dart and point my glance to the left. Then to the right. She didn’t notice me looking at her ass.

  She didn’t notice.

  I’m smooth.

  “Here you go. Maybe this’ll calm your nerves a little. You seem…pent up.” She picks up a small, glass salt shaker with her empty hand and sprinkles the napkin that she put in front of me earlier with a little salt. Then she places my beer, perfectly poured I aptly notice, on top of the napkin. She’s looking at me, faintly smiling. It dawns on me that she’s making fun of me. She noticed my uneasy reaction towards her and now she’s fucking with me.

  “Thanks.” I straighten my posture, square my shoulders and on some peculiar instinct, release an odd, manly grunt. My pitiable attempt at showing her I’m a studdly guy backfires and I end up looking even more like a moron than before. I look her in the eyes and make a valiant effort to give her at least a good smile. Perhaps a smile can save me and make me look adorable and irresistible, and she’ll forget the other stupid shit that I’ve done up to this point. I bring the glass to my lips to sample this IPA from Colorado. She points her thumb over her shoulder toward the beer taps. “Did you enjoy staring at my ass while I was standing over there?” I nearly spit out the first sip of beer that I’ve taken.

  She did notice.

  My adorable and irresistible smile just got impaled by her question.

  I manage to swallow the beer and clear my throat, “Excuse me?”

  “You were checking out my ass when I was pouring your beer. Did you like what you saw?” Her eyes change again. They aren’t sweet anymore, but they aren’t the chilling eyes she gave me before either. They are playful but not even in the way they were just a few seconds ago when she was teasing me about being a bumbling idiot. One might even say her eyes were sinister.

  But one definitely wouldn’t say that out loud.

  She’s fucking with me again and trying to make me squirm. She’s using confrontation as an intimidation mechanism and I feel like she’s testing me to see if I’ll forcibly deny that I was checking her out or own up to my automatic masculine tendencies.

  I feel like if I’m going to have any chance of getting her number—hell even her name at this point—I should choose option B.

  I look at her square in the face and give a good, confident smile. “Actually, I did.”

  Looking at her, I notice the sinister is fleeting and being replaced with slight surprise and a hint of satisfaction. “Hmmm. A guy who admits that he was checking out the goods. I like that.”

  “Well I didn’t figure you’d be wearing those jeans if you didn’t want people taking a peek.” I decide to go for a little teasing of my own. “And as long as I’m being honest, you know what else I checked out?”

  She looks at me just like I thought she would. Like she knows I’m going to say her boobs. Or rack. Or tits. Or whatever other off color term you could use to describe breasts. The smile leaves her face and she gives me a look of disappointment. I admire that even though she is let down, she still locks eyes with me, awaiting my response. It makes me wonder if she’s had this exact same conversation countless times before. She gave me a little honesty and she thinks I’m about to take advantage of that vulnerability.

  How the fuck can I tell all of this about her just by looking at her face?

  She leans into the bar, and gets closer to my face. At the V of her shirt, the fabric loses connection with her skin and if I were looking in that direction, I’d probably be able to get a great view of what was hidden underneath. But my eyes do not leave hers. “Yeah, what’s that, stud?” she says, monotone but enunciates the d in the word stud, nearly making it its own syllable. She’s indicating that I need to choose my next words wisely.

  I wait before I answer and stare at her a few seconds. She looks so sad, like she wanted me to be different. There was a small glimmer of hope in her face before and now it’s been extinguished.

  I want to reignite it.

  Here goes nothing.

  “Your eyes,” I finally say. And, as I assumed, that takes her by surprise. But her reaction is hardly noticeable. I only see the minor adjustment of her face. Her eyes widen ever so slightly and there is just the tiniest bit of a grin on the left side of her lips. But the best part is that I see the hope again.

  “My eyes,” she repeats, as she straightens and backs away from the bar. “Well, that’s new.” She tilts her head to the side slightly as if she’s trying to decipher what just happened. “You aren’t some weirdo eye fetish guy, are you? You don’t have like a bunch of women’s eyeballs pickling in a jar under your bathroom sink, do you?”

  I chuckle. “Of course not. That would be ridiculous. I keep the jar on my nightstand so I can see it just before I fall asleep.”

  She laughs and her voice infiltrates my ears. Her eyes smile so much larger than her mouth. Her face at this moment is the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. I want to put my hands on either side of that laughing face and kiss
those smiling lips.

  “Of course. That is entirely more appropriate and acceptable. What was I thinking?” She spins her head and looks over at the corner of the bar. She turns back to me and says, “Well, I hope you enjoy the beer. I’m Livy. I have to take care of those drunk bastards over there. Let me know if you need anything, ok?”

  “Sure thing, Livy.” I smile uncontrollably and watch her walk away.

  Livy and her emerald eyes that have a mind of their own.

  I want to see her laugh more.

  I want to touch her hair.

  I want to hold her hand.

  I want to kiss her.

  Five minutes with this woman, the bartender of a sketchy sports bar, and I feel more compelled to do things with her, to her, for her, than I have ever felt about any other person of the female population since the second I realized girls didn’t have cooties. It is by far the most absurd and simultaneously the most concrete cluster of feelings I have ever had. I’ve only known her name for fifteen seconds at the most. How is it possible to be so drawn into someone so quickly?

  Given these facts and these feelings, I realize at this particular moment, while sipping an IPA from Colorado, that I have to know more about Livy.

  ***

  6

  Livy

  Age 21

  Ass Kicking Thursday

  I did exactly what I set out to do. I got the fuck out of Dodge the day I turned eighteen. I packed everything that was important to me, which wasn’t much, into a medium sized duffle bag. I headed to the bus station as soon as I woke up, bought a ticket and headed toward the city. I never looked back.

  I didn’t have a plan. I was never good at planning. Fortunately, I was good at studying, which led to the GPA and the scholarship. There wasn’t on campus housing and the scholarship didn’t cover room and board. I had no idea what I was going to do once I reached my destination and stepped off that bus. My single most important priority was to get far away from Nancy and that dirt bag town. I knew I’d be able to figure out everything else once that burden was off my shoulders. I’d have more clarity then and the answers would come to me.

  And they did. Just not as easily or as quickly as I thought they would. I had always been good with taking care of myself with very little money. Food. Clothes. In high school, I tutored football players after school. Disgusting, gropey football players. I think the only reason they hired me to tutor them was because they all had a bet on who could get into my pants first. I dealt with the groping and disappointed all of them when it came to having sex with any of them. They all repulsed me. There was no way I’d drop my panties for any of those assholes. But I could tolerate sitting in a room with them for an hour after class every day to have a few bucks in my pocket for the necessities.

  The city was different though. At least in high school I had a roof over my head. The weight of Nancy telling me I was blessed she gave me a roof to sleep under was heaviest at the moment I accepted that I was alone in a city I knew nothing about. And I was homeless.

  But I was resourceful. I found a public library and used their Internet to find some shelters. I made a list of all the shelters the search found so that I wouldn’t have to come back to the library if the first shelter I went to didn’t work out. For a month, I circulated around four out of the six shelters in the city. Two of the shelters were in areas even I didn’t feel comfortable hanging out in, so I avoided them altogether.

  After a week of adjusting to the routine of living in a shelter, I decided to get serious about looking for a job. I had two and a half months before school started and I needed to find something lucrative enough to get myself an apartment before then. I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle taking classes and being homeless at the same time.

  I got a job at a bar. I didn’t have any experience but the owner, Joe, said I would brighten the place up. He also didn’t seem concerned with the fact that I was only eighteen. He knew how old I was and I certainly didn’t ask about the legalities of the situation. I needed money and he was willing to employee me and that was that.

  When I first met Joe, I made the incorrect assumption that he was just like all the guys I was used to—a douche bag. Turns out, he’s not. He just calls it like he sees it and isn’t afraid to pay a fair compliment. As far as the experience was concerned, Joe said I would mostly be pouring beers. He had twenty-three taps and rotated his stock constantly. He showed me how to pour a proper beer, the difference between the types of beer and which glass was best for each type. I told him I was skeptical of a beer tasting differently based on the shape of a glass. So, he proved his point one evening after closing by letting me sample various types in various glasses. He was right.

  He also taught me some other basic stuff, like what the terms “two fingers” and “neat” meant. He said occasionally we’d have someone come in and ask for a liquor drink but people mostly came for the beer. For the summer, I worked every night, seven nights a week and hoarded every single penny I earned.

  Just before I started school, Joe hired another girl to pick up shifts that he and I couldn’t pick up. Her name was Sara and she worked part time while she went to school full time. I on the other hand worked as many hours as I could and took as few classes as my scholarship would allow. I really needed the money and the fewer classes I took, the less time I needed to study.

  I wasn’t ashamed to tell anyone about my shelter situation. When Joe found out, he insisted I stay with him but I refused. He was a nice enough guy but I didn’t feel comfortable accepting the offer. When Sara found out, she made the same offer. She only had a one bedroom apartment but she said we could easily make the living room into a bedroom by standing up some dividers. She was hardly ever home and I knew I would probably be scarce as well. I knew less about her than I knew about Joe but I had a feeling in my gut that living with her would be ok. I told her I’d move in on three conditions:

  1. I pay half of everything.

  2. When her lease was up, we try to find a two-bedroom we could afford.

  3. And, if she turned out crazy, I bailed.

  She agreed.

  Two people who aren’t sleeping together living in a one bedroom apartment is quite the challenge even if you aren’t there often. But we made it work for the rest of the time she had her lease. Turns out, she wasn’t crazy, so we found something that had two bedrooms. Even with the limited hours I spent there, having my own real bedroom made a world of difference.

  We still live in the same two bedroom apartment today. Sara is set to graduate soon but she’s hoping she’ll get a job in the city so she won’t have to move. Otherwise, I’m going have to figure out an alternative solution. But I’ve decided not to worry about that problem until I have to. Right now I have to focus on studying. I almost have enough credits for an Associate’s degree and I’m not sure if I want to continue past that. I’d still have the scholarship, so it makes sense but at the rate I’m going it’ll be at least another three years for me to get my Bachelor’s.

  I had one goal. Get away from Nancy and that town. I achieved that and with an Associate’s degree, I would have options to make a decent living. But again, I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

  One day at a time.

  I head into work on a Thursday afternoon. I’ve spent all day at the library studying. The last thing I want to do is stand on my feet for the next eight hours and deal with drunks. But, it’s good money. And I’m not sure I could leave Joe if I wanted to. He’s got issues with his back and only comes in if it’s necessary. He does the books at home and I take care of inventory and some other managerial concerns. We used to open at noon every day but now we open at five in the evening. The afternoon business was slow and Joe couldn’t handle being on his feet so much anymore.

  Sara only works two nights a week now. She’s been working on an internship for her degree and doesn’t have a lot of time to squeeze in shifts. However, I make plenty of money to cover any household expenses she can’t
. And I don’t mind. We’ve become decently close. As close as I can let myself get to anyone. Certainly as close as I’ve ever been to another person. I could even consider her a friend, I suppose.

  It’s about six-thirty and the crowd is starting to grow. There are three men sitting at the end of the bar who’ve been here since I opened the doors at five. They are already shitfaced and are beginning to get rowdy. I may have to kick them out.

  As I’m considering this, a guy sits down on the opposite side of the bar. He’s young. Close to my age I’d guess. But he looks really worn out. He certainly looks like he needs a beer.

  I’ll take care of him first before I deal with the rowdies.

  I walk over to his end of the bar. At first, he is looking down at a beer menu but when I get closer, his eyes travel north. But only when I speak does he look me in the face. “What can I do you for?” It’s a stupid expression of a question, but Joe uses it all of the time and now it’s kind of just habit to greet customers that way.

  I take notice at what this guy was looking at before I spoke to him. I’m pretty sure he was staring at my tits. But what’s new? They all do it. After I place a napkin down onto the bar in front of him, and ask him the question, his entire body freezes. He doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t move. The look on his face is peculiar. I give him a minute to figure out whatever the fuck it is that is going on in his head.

  “Cat got your tongue? You want something to drink?”

  No response. Great. Another stupid asshole who is so enamored to have boobs in such close proximity to his face that he’s too stunned to order a fucking beer.

  Except he’s looking me straight in the eye and the look on his face is kind of weird. It’s not a look of lust. It’s more like he’s listening to music in his head and studying every lyric of the song. This is wildly odd and I’m suddenly slightly uncomfortable. But the discomfort doesn’t completely overshadow the fact that I’m also annoyed by this guy’s refusal to answer a simple fucking question.