She looked exhausted.
“I think that’s about it,” Drew murmured, coming up the stage stairs after carrying a box outside to Denny’s truck. “I guess a bunch of people are headed out to the lake for an after party. You going?”
It took a minute to realize he was talking to me, even though we were the only two people standing there. But my mind had wandered a bit as I watched Ilsa out of the corner of my eye. The weary sloop to her shoulders as she washed one glass after another. One of the other barmaids had called in sick, and the other had skipped out right after the bar had closed, leaving Ilsa with the bulk of the work. I was a little pissed on her behalf. A cleaning crew would show up for the floors and bathrooms, but all the little things still needed to be done.
“Uh, Cody?” Drew said, waving his hand in front of my face. “You, um… you wanna ride out to the lake with me?”
“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head to clear it. Mentally chastising her coworkers for leaving her high and dry wasn’t going to do anyone any good. It just seemed to get me worked up. “What were you saying?”
“The lake… the party…?” Drew chuckled. “Earth to Cody. Dude, you’re even more spacey than usual tonight.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty wiped. I think I’m gonna head home.”
“All the chicks will be heartbroken. Big ol’ sweet teddy bear Cody isn’t coming out to play. You know, Maggie’s got a friend in town who’s just dying to—”
“Drew,” I interrupted, “the last thing I want to do is to hook up with one of Maggie’s friends. It’s bad enough seeing you get led around by your dick.”
“Fine, then,” Drew laughed. “More for me, then. This is one of those friends.”
Drew’s tumultuous relationship had its perks, for him anyway.
“Doesn’t that kinda weird you out, man?”
He looked at me like I’d grown two heads. “Two chicks? Fuck no. That’s hot.”
“Maybe now and then, but all the time? Do you guys ever just do it with the two of you?”
“Do it? Dude, you sound like a twelve-year-old girl,” Drew laughed. Part of me totally saw what he was trying to pull, though. Things had turned a bit sour for the couple lately. They fought more than they fucked, although they did that a lot, too. They just rarely did it alone. Maggie had a penchant for always inviting one or two others along. Generally female, but she wasn’t too picky with the gender.
Drew obviously didn’t want to see the glaring issues that were staring him right in the face, so, while he was like a brother to me and I actually did give a shit, I let it drop.
“Whatever,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Go and get your pussy before she takes off with the friend and leaves you in the dust.”
I saw a glimmer of worry go through him. He wasn’t so sure that she wouldn’t. After all, she’d done it before. He quickly covered it with a false cocky confidence.
“She likes dick too much to totally leave me behind.”
“And there are no other dudes going?”
He scowled at me because that had also happened in the past.
“Go home and go to bed, you fucker. It’s past your bedtime. I’ll be thinking about you when I’m the meat in a pussy sandwich.”
That made me laugh as I followed him down the stairs. “Please don’t.”
He chuckled in response to my discomfort and started for the back door. “That’s so not what I meant, dickhead.”
“Right, well… later.” I turned towards the bar rather than outside, motioning over to the main barroom with my thumb. “Doug wanted to talk to me about some drums. He’s thinking of replacing the house set and wants my opinion. Then I’m heading home.”
It wasn’t a total lie. Doug was thinking about it. Granted, we’d kind of already talked, but I didn’t know if he had done anything about it yet.
I mostly wanted to ditch Drew, though. Ilsa was still here. Still working. The bar was quiet. I had an excuse to hang around and maybe… something.
“Okay,” he shrugged and hollered back on his way out the door. “Later, dude.”
As I headed towards the office, I saw Ilsa jerk her hand out of the soapy sink with a sharp, pained gasp. She grabbed a bar towel and pressed it against her palm, but not before I saw the blood.
Needless to say, I didn’t go back to the office.
Instead I went to Ilsa.
“Shit, you’re bleeding,” I said, and her eyes flew up to meet mine. “Let me see.”
“It’ll be fine, just a broken glass in the water,” she murmured, shaking her head, but I caught her hand and pulled it towards me, focusing my attention on it.
The instant I touched her, I felt a sense of something powerful. Her slender hand shook slightly as I ran my finger along her palm.
“It’s not horrible, but you should clean it out,” I said, avoiding her eyes, yet aware they were on me. “There’s a first aid kit at the end of the bar. Let me grab it.”
“It’s not that bad, Cody,” she gently protested. “I just need to apply a little pressure. It’ll stop.”
When she actually said my name, I felt a little thrill run through my body. I wondered what it would be like to hear her breathe it into my ear… to hear her moan it.
Fuck.
Down boy.
“It needs to be bandaged,” I argued.
“I’ll bandage it later. I need to finish these glasses, so it won’t do any good to dress it now.”
“I’ll do them,” I shrugged, “after I've got you all fixed up.”
“You’re not a dishwasher.” Her voice sounded a little exasperated, yet there was a hint of a smile in it. “You’re a drummer.”
I looked her right in the eye. “I want to help.”
“Why?”
“Because you need me to.”
Her mouth fell open just a touch, then she shook her head a little. “It’s fine, Cody,” she said softly.
Shit… I could listen to her breathy voice say my name all night… fuck…
“It will be,” I replied, and turned to the end of the bar to grab the kit. I totally took my time cleaning the cut, if for no other reason than how nice it felt to hold her delicate hand. To stand close to her and soak her in. To take care of her.
She sort of smelled like sunshine.
Warm and sweet. Soft. The scent tickled my senses and stirred up all sorts of thoughts, some innocent and some definitely not so much.
As I swabbed the cut with an alcohol pad, my eyes flicked up to meet hers. She seemed fixated on my face, watching me with a slight bewilderment, as though nobody had ever really cared for her before.
I realized as soon as I touched her that I had wanted to do this ever since we’d met. I wanted to come to her aid, in any way I could. I wanted to be her hero. To right all the wrongs done to her, even if I didn’t know what the fuck they were.
She didn’t say a word, and I didn’t want to scare her away, so I didn’t either. I downplayed my attention, dropping it back to her hand. The knowledge that I was touching her, even so innocently, blazed through my body making me feel stronger and weaker all at once. I applied some antibiotic ointment, and placed a soft, loose bandage over the cut. Smoothing the tape down, I gave her a light, easy smile that completely belied the depth of the feeling in my chest. I then turned a bit at the waist, grabbing a clean, dry bar towel and handing it to her.
“Now,” I said, “I’ll wash and you dry.”
She looked at the towel for a minute before taking it from my hand with a whisper of a sweet smile and a faint nod.
“You should drain the sink,” she said, “and get the broken glass out first. The last thing we need is for you to get cut, too.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I grinned.
Working side-by-side without really talking a whole lot should have been way more awkward than it was. It felt comfortable, though, for some reason. After a few minutes, she relaxed a little, and we traded smiles back and forth. One of us occasionally murmured a ‘than
k you’ or some other polite nicety. Her voice, while subdued, was rather enticing with a slightly husky cast. We moved around each other, keeping far enough away to maintain an easy comfort, even though I would have been happy to brush up against her at any given moment.
All too soon, the glasses were done. The night cleaning crew had made its way around the dance floor and lounge areas, heading towards the bar, our cue to move on.
“That’s it,” Ilsa murmured, looking down the length of the bar.
Everything was in its place, clean, organized. Nothing more to do. Just when I expected her to turn away and head back to the office, she leaned her hip up against the low sinks and gave me a sweet smile.
“Thank you for your help.”
She stood only inches away from me, close enough that I could have reached out and touched her. I wanted to so badly my fingers tingled. She nervously twisted her long hair over one shoulder, revealing the smooth, fair skin at her neck, and it took all the strength I had in me not to lean over her and place a tender kiss there. The desire burned hot in my mind.
There must have been a glimmer of it in my eyes. She trembled almost imperceptibly and swallowed hard, dropping her gaze down to the clean, white bandage on her hand.
“Thanks both for helping with the glasses and for this.”
“Don’t mention it,” I replied. My fingers reached out before I even thought about it, stroking softly down the cotton gauze and tape.
This time, her hand jerked back a bit, as though my touch held a static shock. She took a step back, and her tremulous breath rattled through me, making me instantly regret the sudden distance she put between us. With another quick step towards the end of the bar, she nodded.
“Well, goodnight, Cody.”
“‘Nite, Ilsa.”
She met my eyes for a brief moment, just a split second, and then turned and fled down the hall to the office.
I watched her leave, and the mystery of her swirled around in my mind. I wanted to know her, but wondered if I ever really would. She seemed so cautious and hyper-aware, and I ached a little thinking she might simply remain a wonder that would filter through my consciousness, never to truly come to light.
It was the following Friday night. While she’d flashed distant smiles my way over the past week, Ilsa had kept her distance. She was aware of me, though. I could feel the constant energy between us. I wanted more of it, to feed off it.
So I’d arrived at the Copperline earlier than usual that night. I needed fuel to play, so I generally went and ate before a show. Tonight, however, I ordered it to go and took it with me to the bar to eat. I just kinda wanted some time to hang out before the main crowd surged in. I told myself it was to pump myself up without all the distractions that would be flying in my face later.
There was a huge distraction, though, in the form of an enigma of a girl that I thought about more and more all the time.
If I was honest with myself, I was only early because I just wanted to be around Ilsa.
After a quiet ‘hey, Cody’ when I showed up, she went about her usual routine, checking the stock behind the bar, making sure the tables were wiped down. She seemed to be in her own little world, yet still aware of my presence as I ate my burger and fries and tried really hard not to watch her.
It was an almost impossible task.
I’d sat at the section of the bar that was angled right into the wall, primarily so I could lean back while I ate and, thus, be able to look around the room. I’d be able to kind of surreptitiously be with Ilsa. Maybe I could catch her eye and she’d chat with me a little.
Karma kicked me in the ass for being a creep, though. As I sat there, Pauline sashayed in and slid onto the stool next to me.
Fuck.
“Hey, Cody,” she said with a flirty tilt to her head. She reached over and grabbed a French fry from my dinner, running it along her lips before she took a small, snapping bite.
“Pauline,” I murmured. Please go away, I thought to myself. Please, please. I didn’t know much about Ilsa, but I figured my chances of getting to know her better would be severely hindered by Pauline’s presence.
Pauline sort of forced my undivided attention. I couldn’t very well face the wall, and, as much as I really didn’t want her there, it went against my nature to be a total dick, especially since I had nailed Pauline once in the past. I didn’t want to be one of those guys. Not that I wanted a relationship with the woman, but I didn’t want to be an asshole to her either.
So, I just kind of continued to eat, hoping she’d get the hint and go away.
She didn’t.
She reached over for another French fry, brushing her breast against my forearm. I leaned back and out of her way, but she leaned into me even more, making me think that maybe I did need to be a dick.
“You can have these if you want,” I said, pushing the fries over to her in an attempt to keep her further away. “I’m full.”
“Don’t you need to eat?” Trailing a long fingernail down the thick muscle of my bicep, she ignored the fries and moved closer to me. “You have to keep up your strength for when you’re getting all hot and sweaty on stage.”
By the time she said ‘hot’ and ‘sweaty’ in a breathy pout by my ear, I was practically falling off my stool and more-or-less plastered against the wall.
“Pauline—” I began, but was interrupted by a quiet voice behind me.
“Cody?”
It was Ilsa.
Fuck me.
I damn near flew from my seat to stand before her. She looked over at Pauline with a quiet ‘excuse me’ then back up at me. “Um, could you come help me move a keg? I need to get at a box of wine that’s behind it, but I can’t budge the damn thing.”
I damn near said I’d move a fucking mountain for her, but I didn’t think she’d be too receptive to something like that from me. We’d known each other, played this little cat and mouse, for a couple months, but, in all reality, we’d not actually spoken a whole lot.
“Sure thing,” I replied, hoping like all hell that I was coming off kinda cool and nonchalant. I glanced back at Pauline as I started walking away. “Gotta go. Duty calls.”
Pauline, rather displeased with Ilsa’s timely interruption, called out after me as I followed Ilsa back to the cooler.
“I’ll catch you later, okay?”
Yeah, nah… not if I had anything to say about it. She wouldn’t catch me at all. Now or later. Been there, done that.
“So which keg?” I asked as Ilsa and I stepped into the walk-in cooler.
Turning to look at her, it suddenly hit me that we were alone. I’d never really been this alone with her, not even when we’d been washing glasses. Even then, there’d been the cleaning crew in the room, but now… it was just her and me.
I’d actually daydreamed about this. Being this close to her made me remember how pretty her eyes were. It reinforced her slender, yet curvy build, her fine-boned features. Her breath was visible in the chilled air as she exhaled nervously. I had to swallow back a little groan when she bit her lip and shrugged, looking a little guilty.
“I… well, I kinda… made that up.”
The strangest feeling swirled around inside me at her confession, dazed and excited all at once. “You what?”
“Well, you seemed like you wanted to get away from her, but she wasn’t really taking the hint.”
I chuckled and looked down at my feet. “Yeah, she’s a bit… forward.”
“I just thought I’d give you a hand,” she said with a shy tilt to her lips.
Shit… she really did kinda like me. She had to.
I knew it!
I liked it!
Actually, I fuckin’ loved it!
Unable to help myself, I grinned wide. “You were just trying to lure me into the cooler, weren’t you?” I teased.
“Okay, now who’s being forward?” she asked wryly, rolling her eyes.
Yet she still wore just the slightest smile.
&nbs
p; “Sorry,” I laughed, holding up my hands. “Really, I appreciate your help. More than you know. Feel free to come to my rescue anytime.”
“I’ll keep an eye out,” she replied, and quietly left the cooler.
I stood there for a minute after she left, allowing the frigid air to surround me, to chill the raging heat that suddenly burned through my veins. It occurred to me that, while I’d been watching her without watching her, she’d been watching me without watching me, too. And she just indicated she was going to keep watching me. There was a certain satisfaction that arose from her need to step in and save me.
If I had been crushing on her before, that little interlude in the cooler had shot my imagination into overdrive.
I managed to catch her eye a couple times that night as us guys played. She rounded the tables, waiting on the crowd.
She smiled brightly at me from clear across the room. Such a little gesture, but… wow. It felt like a massive victory.
And at one point, after I had just finished shredding a solo for one of our best songs, I looked up to see her looking almost hypnotized as she watched me play. Her eyes were hot and intense, studying my movements. She was close enough to the stage that I could see her breath catch in her chest. I felt the sweat drip down my back, a slow-moving trickle that I could almost pretend was her touch.
Holy shit! She was turned on.
Progress!
Right about then, I managed to totally flub up, crashing down on the cymbals way early. All three of my band mates turned to look at me, but I ignored them and kept playing along as though they were the ones who’d made the mistake. The audience didn’t notice, or at least most of them didn’t seem to, and the ones that did didn’t seem to care.
Ilsa caught it though. She sheepishly glanced away, taking another deep breath, and turned, focusing diligently on the customers at the table behind her.
And then the next table.
And the table after that.
Avoiding eye contact. One step forward and two steps back.
Shit!
Feeling like I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar, I tried to focus, to get back in the zone and play like I should have been all along. I did fairly well, mostly because Ilsa didn’t look my way again.
Easy Little Lick (Copperline #3) Page 3