“Why me?” She was surprised by the way her voice broke as she asked it.
“I already told you,” he said with a heart-stopping smile. “I’m bewitched by you.”
Chapter 2
Aullie sighed, defeated and speechless. “Do you want another beer or something?”
“Yes, please,” Weston gave her a wicked smile. “Flattered that you remember my beer, by the way.”
Aullie rolled her eyes and walked away. She couldn’t believe the boldness, the audacity, the clearly crazy man was displaying. However, she’d wasted too much time talking to him and had some catching up to do.
Weston moved quickly to the back of her mind as she made her rounds through the bar. Food, beer and, liquor orders were taken and delivered, credit cards were run and returned. Weston ate and Aullie wished he would leave, but he didn’t.
Over an hour later, she brought him his third beer. “So, when are you leaving?”
“I don’t know. Depends on when I get to see you again.”
“You’re actually just going to sit here until I agree to go out with you again?”
“Yes. I have emails to catch up on anyway.”
“Oh, from your little work from home job?” Aullie glared as she mocked his lie-by-omission he’d told on their first date.
“Hey, I do actually work from home most of the time,” he defended himself. “So, when’s it going to be?”
“Ugh. Fine. I’m off Monday night again. I’ll text you or whatever if you just leave.”
“Why? Am I distracting you?” he asked, wickedly.
“Ugh, whatever, yes. Go,” Aullie urged.
“Good, I’ll see you Monday then.” He looked smug as he slipped a bill from his wallet under his glass and stood to leave. Before Aullie could protest, he put a hand up and said, “Before you get all huffy about the money, I occupied your table for hours and that’s a fair amount, considering. Now, you have a good night. I look forward to hearing from you.”
Oh, that purr in his delightfully foreign voice. He stood so close, even in the packed, stinky bar, she could smell his musky scent. It took everything Aullie had to maintain her aloof air. “Yeah. Bye.”
Torn between relief and disappointment as he left, Aullie went back to work. She wasn’t closing, which she thanked God for. Her feet ached but she still had a few hours left to go, so she sucked it up. Rent, rent, rent, she chanted to herself as she picked up other people’s trash. Her job wasn’t a source of pride in her life, but the mundane nature of the work left plenty of free space in her mind to ruminate over Weston.
Was she really going to text him? If she didn’t, would he come back? Did she want to see him? Yeah, kinda, she internally admitted.
The last two hours at work dragged painfully by. Men whooped and hollered, glasses clinked, and chairs scraped the floor. The noise died slowly as drunk patrons stumbled their way out the door.
The music was almost overbearing in the quieter bar, and Aullie caught the bartender’s attention. She made a twisting motion with her fingers to mime adjusting the volume.
“So, how was your night?”
The chair across from Aullie squawked as Brittany sat down across from her. Two large gray tubs full of forks and knives, a mountain of napkins, and a box of sticky tabs occupied the table surface between them. With a clink, a swoosh and a stick they fell into the tedious rhythm of rolling silverware together. This nightly ritual had become prime gossip time among the girls at Tackleman’s. As each of them joined in to finish up their side work, everyone got filled in on the Weston saga as Aullie vented out her frustrations.
“Ooo, British accent huh?” a chubby redhead named Tasha asked, as she wore a dreamy expression.
“Yeah, but I don’t know. Isn’t this all kind of stalkerish? Seems like a red flag.” Aullie usually didn’t care to open up to her co-workers but it felt good to get it off her chest.
“I don’t know. I can’t even get a guy to text me back. That sounds way better. Plus, again, British.” said Janelle, the whippet-thin mom of a darling two-year-old boy.
Brittany nodded. “His accent is nice.”
The gaggle of girls clucked away, and before long the mountain of silverware before them had been rolled and placed in baskets. The general consensus had been that, at the very least, she should give him one more chance because he was so committed, and yes, the British thing came up a lot.
Aullie considered this as she wrapped up her night. After she shrugged into her coat, she took the plunge.
-Hey- was all that she texted to Weston. Aullie plunged the phone into her pocket and bundled out into a dark, freezing rain.
‘I won’t look at it the whole way home’, she promised herself. ‘I’ll make him wait’. Despite her promises, her phone burned a hole in her pocket. Every red light and stop sign she almost justified checking it, but instead turned up the radio and powered through.
The roads were slick and shiny under the dingy yellow streetlights and rain rhythmically drummed against the windshield. Thankful to finally be safely home, Aullie parked her car and trotted up the stairs to her cement box of an apartment with a white-knuckle grip on the slick rail.
She flicked on the switch and her tiny haven came to life. The light, coupled with the bright variety of colors, were a stark contrast to the melancholy world outside. Any wall space that wasn’t occupied by a painting or a pinned-up sketch was draped with colorful tapestries. Her full-size mattress, dressed in paisley sheets, sat atop a bunk bed type piece of furniture with a cluttered, messy desk underneath.
Instead of a living room, Aullie had built a small variation of a dining room. She wasn’t much into TV, so she didn’t own one, not that she could afford cable anyway. Instead, a massive turquoise dining table that Aullie had bought from goodwill and spray painted herself, dominated the space across from the bed.
On one side sat a bright yellow couch printed with Aztec-style flowers, where her massive gray cat Bruce lay curled up on his favorite corner. On the other side sat two clunky chairs that came with the table. The table top was littered with random art supplies and pieces of various sculpture and ceramic projects Aullie had been required to do over the years. Anyone that opened the door could tell an artist lived there, and Aullie loved it that way.
She hung her wet jacket on a coat rack made of real broken branches wrapped in rugged rope. As she slipped out of her work shoes, she pulled her phone out of the pocket and illuminated the screen.
A hearty rush of breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, flooded out of Aullie. There it was.
Or rather, there they were. A -Hey!- and a -How was work?- both from Weston, four minutes apart. Though she was happy to hear from him, she wanted to remain standoffish.
-Fine. How was the rest of your night?- She typed back.
She left the phone on her counter next to the fruit bowl and stripped down to shower all the restaurant off her. Under the warm drizzle, the crappy shower didn’t really get hot as she scrubbed at the grease, beer, and ketchup that always seemed to stain her worse than her paints did.
Thanks to her quick bathing session, she burned off a few more minutes which kept up her intended aloofness. She changed into a pair of oversized, black and white checked flannel pajama pants and a baggy university shirt stained with red, white, and yellow paint. Aullie scooped her phone off the counter and checked it again, giddy to see the two text notifications.
-Not nearly as good once I couldn’t see you anymore :)- followed seven minutes later by -Sorry, was that too much?-
Aullie smiled. Her little game was working. She decided to make him wait a few more minutes, filling an old metal teapot with water and putting it on the stove to boil. Grabbing a yellow mug with a black smiley face, she dropped in an herbal tea bag from the stack of boxes on the counter. She picked up her phone and typed back just two little words, -It’s fine-
Minutes passed, long enough for the water to boil. Aullie pulled the whistling pot off the bu
rner and poured the hot water into the mug, the tea began to steep and a cloud of steam rose. She wondered idly what she was going to do with her night. Bedtime usually wasn’t until two or three in the morning, she did her best work at night, so she had a few hours to kill.
She checked her phone, but there was nothing. Surprised and a little disappointed, she booted up her laptop on the desk under her bed. It was her fault anyway, really, for toying with Weston the way she had.
It was late, most normal people were in bed. After a few beers, and assuming he actually didn’t do anything else after he left, it made sense that Weston would have fallen asleep.
At least, that’s what Aullie told herself as fifteen minutes without a response became thirty. She scrolled through her Facebook feed, got distracted by a couple of random news stories that had been shared by her friends. She sipped her tea and the warmth and familiarity of her nighttime routine helped relax her. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched her phone, willing it to light up with a text.
To no avail, unfortunately. She grabbed a weathered sketchbook and a pencil off the desk, took a hearty slug of her cooling tea, and climbed up the ladder to her bed.
Her mattress was worn-in and soft and a massive mountain of pillows adorned the head. Aullie scooted into her padded little nook and thumbed through the graphite stained pages in the sketchbooks until she found a blank one.
She tapped the screen on her phone, pulling up a free music app. An edgy, modern classical music underscored by techno beats, flooded out of the tiny speaker. Music like that, dynamic and free flowing, was Aullie's favorite art music. The ever-changing beat was great fodder for ever-changing inspiration and ideas.
The inspiration, however, wasn’t coming. Her blank, dark phone screen had her feeling very distracted. She finally turned it over, willing herself to focus.
She started by scribbling. Just scribbling. Slowly, as she began to lose herself in the music, the erratic lines began to take form. The raw sketch took the shape of a deer, a beautiful, thick chested stag with a wide set of antlers. His noble face, and the collar of light flowers that seemed to just appear around his regal neck occupied her entire mind.
It was over an hour before the spell was broken and she jerked away, breathing heavily. She loved getting lost in her work and she shamelessly admired her newest creation. She’d finished the head and the body down to the fluffy tail, but the beefy stag stood on little outlines of unfinished legs. Suddenly exhausted overwhelmed by the music volume, Aullie picked up her phone to turn it down.
She broke into a grin.
-Do you still want to see me? You can pick what we do- Forty-five minutes earlier. Then, twenty-two minutes later. -I’ll bring the bug, I promise-
Maybe he’ll assume I’m asleep too, Aullie thought as she turned out the light and wriggled under the covers. She was too tired to respond anyway and happy to keep the rich boy waiting until morning.
Chapter 3
The next morning, Aullie was thankful for her indigo curtains. Not only was the dark color beautiful but the thick silky fabric blocked out all the blaring sunlight that came through her East-facing window. Since she was such a night owl, and her job rarely required her to be up before eleven, she enjoyed her ability to sleep in.
After she rolled out of bed around ten-thirty, she brewed a cup of coffee. While the dark liquid trickled slowly into yet another eccentric mug, Aullie pondered what she should say to Weston. She still wasn’t one hundred percent sure that seeing him again was what she wanted, but she was probably up to about eighty percent and figured that was enough.
-Sorry, I passed out early last night. As long as you bring the bug, we can do whatever you want :)-
As soon as the send button was pushed, she instantly regretted it. Not only was her hard-to-get game ruined but she had meant to come across as flirtatious, not sexual. The way she had worded that could totally be taken that way.
‘Shit’, she thought, wondering if maybe she should just drop the whole thing. Until recently, Aullie wasn’t really the dating type. She liked to meet guys, befriend them, have sex with them and then keep it that way. It wasn’t that she was a slut, she just usually preferred to keep things low stress.
With her ever-climbing mountain of student loans and their subsequent pressure, it wasn’t like she could afford the drama, and all this unnecessary stress with Weston was exactly why.
“This isn’t who I am,” she grumbled to herself as she choked down the bitterness of cheap black coffee. Perching her perky little butt on top of the huge turquoise table, she considered the painting she had done the first night she had really met Weston. She reminisced about their time together; his fun little slug bug, the unique hole-in-the-wall place he had taken her to, his names for all the plastic birds.
Aullie had thought she had an idea about the man. He was smart but quirky, down to earth and working hard to make his own way, just like she was.
He was not only rich but practically famous. She wondered what he actually did for work, if anything, considering how loaded his family was, what his house looked like, and if his Aston Martin was even his only fancy car.
She had let herself feel, so strongly and recklessly, that she had attached herself emotionally to a man she hardly knew. Stupid, stupid, stupid, was becoming her mantra.
It was time to shower if she was going to make it to work on time, and she didn’t even bother checking her phone. After her little rumination, Aullie was no longer so sure about what she really wanted. She thought and brooded through her shower, scrubbing her body clean and working her rosemary-mint shampoo into her long black hair. After she dried off and blew her ebony mane dry, she stared at herself in the mirror.
Aullie could admit that she was pretty, but more like waitress-in-a-bar pretty not pretty-pretty. She had pretty, slightly hooded eyes and full lips, but her nose was a little small and she hadn’t quite kicked her acne yet, so she was usually adorned with a few noticeable blemishes.
Why me?
If this man, this rich, sexy, accented man, wanted any woman in the world, he could probably have her. Exotic beauties, waif-like supermodels with extreme cheekbones, or curvaceous centerfolds. He had said something about liking her for not being interested in his money but she just didn’t understand why he was so fascinated with her.
As she fastened the buckle on her belt, Bruce emerged from whichever of his many hiding spots that he had been enjoying all morning and came to rub against her legs and purr like a little Diesel engine. While his concern that her jeans weren’t covered in enough cat hair was touching, she shooed him away.
As she gathered her keys, coat, and wallet, she also grabbed her phone. There were two texts, one from Brittany, asking if she wanted anything from Starbucks, the other was from Weston.
-Well I have a few ideas :)- he had typed, Aullie was grateful it was a smiley face and not a wink. -I’ll call you on Monday, we can work out a time. However, I’m about to catch a flight, I may be out of cell range through tomorrow night. Have a great weekend.-
Aullie was actually grateful to have a few days to herself, to decide if pursuing a relationship with a man so far out of her league, who apparently also traveled for his fancy-schmancy job, was a good investment of her time and effort.
Problem is, she thought with a sallow smile as she walked out the door, we artists aren’t known for being especially logical thinkers.
Chapter 4
The weekend passed in a blur of work, coffee, and sore feet. Monday morning broke, and Aullie was actually happy to get an email that her Monday class had been canceled. Though she usually resented any stolen opportunities to create, but she was so tired and achy that she almost hoped that Weston wouldn’t call so she could just lay in her blanket burrito all day.
Of course, the sexy Brit was a hot topic of gossip with the Tackleman’s crew. Aullie was so thankful that Brittany had known better than to tell everyone about his money too. If she had, Aullie imagined that most o
f them would fall in love with him right then and there, then she’d never get them to shut up. However, their encouragement had built up her confidence in her choice to see Weston again.
Around noon, semi-surprised she hadn’t heard from him at all yet, Aullie finally decided to get up. She brewed some energizing tea and lit some incense, happy that she had a little break to do some yoga. She powered up the yoga app on her phone and spent half an hour bending, lunging, stretching and moaning for the first time in weeks.
As she lay in savasana, consciously relaxing from her toes to her fingertips, she turned her mind inward. She realized how many parts of herself, of her life, that she loved and that she wasn’t making time for lately. No wonder I’ve been so moody, she thought.
Standing up, with a heady rush of endorphins, Aullie wandered into her little excuse for a kitchen and checked her fridge. There wasn’t much there; she really needed to go get some groceries. Her hunger overrode the nagging voice in her head that reminded that she really should try to eat better, though, as she nuked a frozen dinner in the microwave. It’s just a chicken breast and some mashed potatoes, how bad can it really be? She justified to herself.
Bruce stood up and stretched, his stripy gray back arching up toward the raw concrete ceiling, as Aullie plunked down next to him on the couch. The soft plastic slid and bent as she cut her food into bite size pieces and mixed it all together into a brownish, gravy soaked pile.
She ate, her lazy, exhausted body thankful for the bland food, and checked her phone. It was just past one, and still nothing from Weston. She wondered if she should call him but immediately dismissed the thought. This whole thing was his idea, and he had been almost too insistent.
Hmm, what to do now, she thought. There was a home painting project due in her class next week that she foolishly hadn’t even started yet. Her medium of choice had always been oil paint, the texture, and depth it provided was unmatched, but it was infamous for its incredibly long dry time. She’d have to do a quick drying base background layer in acrylic, then layer the wetter paint on top in order to finish it.
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