Wait for It

by Mariana Zapata

  He sounded just like Miss Pearl.

  I kept myself from coughing and from glancing down at his hands, and somehow even rolled my eyes, trying to keep this light and playful even though it felt like something more. “Ten bucks. That took me fifteen minutes, tops, Dallas. It’s a friend discount, and don’t think about tipping me. I’ll sneak the money back in your bag during practice.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You help me all the time. I can avoid shoving a stinky pit in your face and make sure I leave you without any cuts.”

  “You sure? I know you charge like a hundred bucks for a haircut.”

  I’d do it for free at my house if he wanted, but in that moment, that seemed like a dangerous idea. “I don’t charge a hundred dollars for a haircut. It’s like eighty, and it takes me over an hour to do that usually. Ten bucks. Cough ‘em up, Captain.”

  That slow smile crossed his harsh features, lighting up my gut. “As you wish.”

  I started grinning before I stopped. What did he just say?

  Before I could ask myself if he’d really just said what I thought he said, Dallas added, “And it’s Senior Chief, Peach. Not Captain.”

  Was I having hot flashes? Was I imagining things? I tugged at the collar of my shirt with my good hand and replied, “You got it, Senior Chief.”

  He snickered and shook his head. As he handed over a ten-dollar bill from a scuffed leather wallet, he asked, “You putting me down for two weeks from now?”

  I blinked and even my hands stopped moving. “You’re serious?”

  He was dead serious. I could tell from the expression on his face. I’d seen it before. And he confirmed it. “I’m serious. Put me down.”

  “Why don’t you just come over to my house and have me cut your hair there?” I offered, whispering. I could do it. I could keep my hands to myself.

  “I like having an excuse to come see you,” he replied in a low voice that went straight to my chest.

  I eyed him and nodded, slipping the cash into the register before reaching over to take the computer off sleep mode. “Is Monday fine?” I managed not to croak.

  “Sure, baby.”

  I was not going to make a big deal about the “B” word. And I didn’t. Words were just words sometimes, with no special meaning at all, and Dallas and I had been through some stuff together. Trip called me “honey” all the time too. Maybe Dallas was just practicing terms of endearment on me? Yuck. “All right.”

  “You got me down?” he asked before I’d even saved the date.

  “I’m about to.”

  “Good. Make me your six o’clock from now on. Any day you want, I’ll make it work.”

  My index finger hovered over the mouse for a moment and I held my breath. There was something about this that felt different. Heavy. “For how long?” I asked slowly.

  “For as long as that calendar will let you.”

  * * *

  “That whore.”

  Ginny let out a laugh from her spot across the salon where she was cleaning out the sinks we used to wash customers’ hair. “Your tip was that bad?”

  The fact she knew why the insult was called for didn’t even register to me. We’d been working together for so long doing this, we were both well aware that there were only a handful of reasons we would call our customers names. It was either they missed an appointment, complained about a haircut they specifically requested even though we tried to talk them out of it, or we were tipped like shit. Under normal circumstances, we didn’t usually complain about our tips. I mean, shit happens; sometimes people have less money than they do at other times, but in this case…

  “She just finished telling me she got promoted at her law firm. She left me five dollars, Gin. Five dollars. It took me half an hour to blow out her hair after I cut it. My hand hurts like a son of a bitch from holding the dryer.”

  Her laugh exploded out of her, because that kind of shit happened to all of us on a semi-regular basis. Some weeks were better than others. It was why I never tipped waiters badly. While Ginny paid us based off a fair commission structure compared to other salon owners I’d worked for in the past, every penny still counted, especially when you had bills and kids. Today alone I’d had six stingy customers. On the other hand, I’d had to cancel her original appointment because of my hand. Her roots had been pretty brutal.

  “Ugh,” I groaned. “It’s just been one of those days.”

  “Aww, Di.”

  I sighed and dropped my head back before shoving the five-dollar bill into my wallet. “I need a drink.”

  “I don’t have the kids today,” she mentioned slyly, earning a look from me.

  “You don’t?”

  “No. Their dad called last minute and said he’d keep them for the weekend.” She glanced up from her work at the sink and raised her eyebrows repeatedly. “Mayhem isn’t that expensive.”

  “I probably shouldn’t be spending money when I have a perfectly good bottle of wine at home,” I said. I hadn’t been back at work long and my checking account was still crippled.

  “I’ll buy you two drinks. One of my guys left me an extra good tip as a wedding gift, and I’m not having a bachelorette party. Let’s do it. You and me, one last time before I become a married woman again.”

  I knew where she was going with this and I approved. “Two drinks, no more?”

  “Only two,” she confirmed.

  To give us credit, we were both straight-faced as we recited the greatest lie ever told.

  * * *

  “One more!”

  “No!”

  “One more!”

  “No!”

  “Come on!”

  My face was hot and I’d hit the giggly level two drinks ago. “One more, and that’s it! I’m not kidding this time!” I finally agreed, such a total fucking sucker.

  What was this? Drink number four? Number five? I had no clue.

  Watching as Ginny leaned over the bar and asked the bartender, who had been very attentive to us tonight, for two more whiskey sours, I wiggled out of the soft button-down shirt I’d put on over a lacey camisole for work that morning. I was hot. So damn hot considering the November temperatures had dropped. The bar was packed. It was Friday night after all, and we’d fought for our two spots at the counter, smashed in between two burly men with motorcycle club vests on and two guys we’d learned a drink ago who worked at Ginny’s uncle’s garage.

  What happened to our two-drink limit? Ginny’s uncle happened. The most weathered-looking man I had ever seen in my life had come straight for us the second we sat down and told the bartender the drinks were on him tonight. The man, I learned moments later, was named Luther, put a hand on the back of the chair I was sitting on and said to me, “I heard what you did for Miss Pearl. You’re good here anytime you want.”

  “You really don’t have to do that,” I told this man I’d never even seen before.

  His intense attention didn’t budge for a second. “My grandson is in love with you. You’re good,” he decided.

  Oh my God. Dean.

  The man named Luther continued on, “Ginny, I can’t afford your drunk ass. Consider tonight a wedding gift,” he drawled, patting his niece’s shoulder as she choked on a laugh.

  And then, just like that, the Alcohol Fairy was gone. And Ginny and I silently said “fuck it” and decided to take advantage of it, which was why and how I found myself five drinks in to an evening at a biker bar, laughing my ass off with someone I loved.

  I was fanning myself when Ginny turned with two glasses of the yellowish concoction. Reaching back, I started tying my hair up. “Is it hot or is just me?” I asked.

  “It’s hot,” she confirmed, sliding the drink over the counter in my direction. “Last one and we’ll go home.”

  I nodded, smiling at her, my facial muscles feeling pretty tingly. “Last one. Seriously.”

  “Serious,” she promised.

  The much older man to my right, the big biker Ginny and I
talked to for half an hour earlier, turned in his seat to look down at me. His bushy gray beard was long and in definite need of a trim. “What’cha drinking now?”

  “A whiskey sour,” I replied, taking a sip.

  He scrunched up his nose and looked back and forth between Gin and me. “That’s an awful lot of liquor you’ve had for being so small.”

  “I’m okay,” I told him, taking another sip. “I’m just going to call a cab.”

  He looked horrified. “Honey, that sounds like a bad idea.”

  “Why?” Ginny piped up from her spot next to me. She’d been talking to him too over the course of the last couple hours we’d been at the bar.

  “Two drunk girls in the car with a stranger?”

  Well, when he put it that way…. We’d taken a cab the last time and it was fine. Plus, how many other times in the past had I done the same thing?

  “Ginny, have Trip drive you two home. I know his ass hasn’t drunk that much tonight. He’s upstairs dealing with club shit. I’ll go get him for you, or shit, call Wheels. He’ll come get you. No problem.”

  She shook her head. “He’s asleep. I don’t want to wake him up.”

  “I can take y’all home,” a man sitting on the other side of Ginny, one of the two mechanics, offered.

  I didn’t need to look at my boss and friend to know that, though the guy seemed nice enough, we weren’t idiots. We’d learned not to get into cars with strangers. Shit, we’d taught our kids not to get into cars with strangers.

  “No. I’m taking you both home,” a new voice claimed from somewhere behind me unexpectedly.

  I felt the two arms come down on either side of my chair before I saw the twin columns of heavily muscled forearms cage me in. It was the beautiful brown and black lines of a bird’s wing stamped onto the inside of the biceps by my face that told me who was in my space. I didn’t have to look up to know who was talking. It was Dallas.

  I’d like to think it was all the alcohol that led me to drop my head back as far as I could. “Hi.”

  Dallas tipped his face down to look at me, his expression harsh, no-nonsense even through my hazy brain. “Diana,” he said my name solidly without a single trace of the familiar affection we’d grown for each other.

  “I didn’t know you were here,” I said, still looking at him upside down.

  He might have blinked, but his mouth was drawn so tight I couldn’t look past it. “I’ve been here the entire time.”

  I swallowed and only managed to nod, my face getting hot all over again. Even in that position, I could see his eyes flick over my face and my throat and some other place I couldn’t confirm. “You could have come said hi. We’re friends. We can sit next to each other in public.” And that was how I would later on know I was drunk. What the hell was I thinking saying that?

  “You’ve been busy,” he stated in that same detached, almost mean voice.

  “What?”

  “You’ve had enough to drink,” Dallas said. “I’m taking you both home.”

  “But we just got this drink!” Ginny protested.

  “I’ll give you the ten bucks. Let’s go, now,” he demanded. Without warning, the arms on either side of me moved, his hands going to the handles of the stool I was on right before he jerked it away from the bar, making it scrape against the floor.

  Some reasonable part of Ginny’s and my brains must have recognized that we’d overdone the drinking, because neither one of us grumbled much at his order. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed my boss pushing her chair back, not forced out of it like I had been. Turning the stool around so I could get out and grabbing my purse at the same time, I came face-to-face with Dallas’s body standing centimeters from my knees. Glancing up at his face, ready to ask him to back up so I could get down, I couldn’t help but smile at the scowl on his face.

  “Hi,” I said again like I hadn’t just greeted him two minutes ago.

  He wasn’t amused. In fact, I’m pretty sure he sounded more pissed than he had a minute ago when he spoke next. “Let’s go.”

  I thought I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why do you sound so mad?”

  “We’ll talk about it in the truck,” he said and gestured me forward, his tone still low, even.

  “You sure you don’t want me to drive you?” the mechanic guy asked as Ginny slid out of her chair and came to stand next to Dallas.

  Dallas didn’t tear his eyes away from me as he beat us to answer, “No.”

  I’m pretty sure I heard the biker in the seat beside mine laugh.

  My ankles betrayed me as I took a step forward and wobbled, my chest hitting Dallas’s, and I craned my neck back to give him a funny look. There were more lines at his forehead and beneath his eyes than I’d ever seen. What was up his ass?

  “Bye, Diana,” the older biker called out.

  Tilting my head to the side, forcing myself to look away from my neighbor—Josh’s coach—I waved at my new biker friend. “Bye. Be careful getting home,” I told him.

  But before I could say anything else, a big, warm hand slipped into mine; the long fingers meshing through my smaller ones, and I lost my train of thought in less than a second. I knew those fingers. All I managed to do was look up at Dallas with a confused and shocked expression on my face before he was tugging me forward and through the bar and the mass of people inside of it. Distractedly, I looked over my shoulder to make sure Ginny was following, and she was. Shit. Taking her in right then, I noticed how flushed her face was.

  We really had drank too much.

  The night air was chilly, and I suddenly realized I hadn’t grabbed my shirt after I’d taken it off. “Wait!” I started to say before Dallas held up the hand not holding mine.

  “I’ve got your shirt,” he said, taking a quick glance over his shoulder that landed directly on my chest.

  I was a little drunk but not drunk enough to not notice how the tendons along his neck flexed. I was also pretty sure he muttered “Jesus” under his breath as he pulled me along behind him.

  Could I have let go of his hand?

  I flexed my fingers inside of his, linked together tightly, and decided probably not.

  Not that I even wanted to, even though I knew I had no right. I knew this didn’t mean anything. Couldn’t mean anything. How many times had he made it apparent he wasn’t interested in me other than us being friends and because he’d had a single mom and related to me on that level?

  Friends held hands when they’d had too much to drink.

  This was nothing. Just one friend watching out for another. It wasn’t the first time I’d been around him in a bad mood. I had no reason to think too much about it. He probably just thought I was stupid for drinking too much and he’d be right. I was.

  None of us said a word as we headed toward the double cab truck parked a block over at the same lot where I’d left my car. I had this strange urge to reach out and touch my beloved CRV, but the grip on my hand was too secure and I was steered right to Dallas’s passenger side door. I watched him shove his key into the lock and turn it, pulling the door open, and without meeting my eyes, he grabbed me by the hips and lifted me in—so quick I didn’t even have time to register his action until it was over.

  I’d had too much to drink, but I could have gotten into his truck on my own. Couldn’t I? I’d definitely had way too much in the past and had never had a problem getting into a car… at least from what I could remember.

  “Scoot over,” Dallas’s rough voice ordered.

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. I moved over to the middle, watching as he crossed the front of his pickup, leaving Ginny to get into his truck on her own. His entire body looked strung tight, his jaw a straight line that reminded me of my mom’s when I’d piss her off as a kid and she was planning on putting me in my place the second we had some privacy. I looked around the inside of the cab and appreciated again that, while he didn’t take care of his house that well, he treated his truck like a baby.

  “Why
did you talk me into that third drink?” Ginny muttered as she settled in next to me, the side of her jean-covered leg and shoulder touching mine.

  “What? You talked me into it,” I argued with her in a whisper.

  All she did was shake her head.

  “I’m never going out with you again.”

  “We had fun. Don’t even try to pretend we didn’t.” I bumped my thigh against hers.

  She giggled as the driver side door opened and, a second later, Dallas’s big body slid in behind the wheel, taking up all of the remaining space and more. So much more he was practically sealed to my side, gluing me to him like a conjoined twin I’d be stuck with forever. Just as I started to scoot over toward Ginny, he slid me a look at the same time his key went into the ignition, the low sound of country music cutting into the stinging silence. And there was something in that hard, uncompromising gaze that stopped me in midmovement.

  His eyes, still somehow light-colored even in the dark cab, centered right onto me. “Seat belt.”

  Dropping my eyes, I looked at my sides for the strap. I hadn’t been searching for it but maybe five seconds when that arm I’d become so familiar with over the course of the last few months reached over my lap—the palm of his hand cupping my hip for one brief moment in history—and grabbed it from where it was wedged beneath the seats almost like he’d planted it there. And slowly, with the backs of his fingers grazing across the band of my pants, going just above the zipper of my jeans, from one pelvic bone to the other, he clipped it in for me.

  I held my breath the entire time.

  And I wasn’t going to deny that I couldn’t help but glance at his face immediately afterward, feeling that electric heat from him searing every inch of exposed skin my tank top left out in the open.

  What did I do? I smiled.

  And for one rare occasion out of so many in the last few months, he didn’t smile back. Without breaking eye contact, he reached under the seat and handed me a bottle of water.

  Okay.

  “Where do you live?” he asked Ginny.

  My boss and friend rattled off the address and directions with it.

  None of us said anything as Dallas drove and I sipped on the water he’d given me, offering it to Ginny after each time. There were some country songs on the radio I vaguely recognized in the twenty minutes it took to drive to the opposite side of town where we lived. When he pulled in to the driveway of the new house in a new subdivision Ginny had bought a year ago, I hugged her before she got out and then watched as Dallas got out of the truck and walked her to her front door.