At Your Service

by Amy Jo Cousins

  Maybe she just wouldn't bother to breathe ever again.

  His voice was low and rough when he spoke. "Or you could say that from the moment you walked in this bar, I wanted you. And that with every day that passes, every time you tug on your hair in nervousness, or give an order to my family in my restaurant, I think I care about you a little bit more."

  The need for air, and space, became overwhelming. Grace found herself standing next to her bar stool, tugging to free her hand from the hold Tyler kept on it. This wasn't happening to her.

  Tyler was not falling for her. That was simply not possible and she refused to accept it.

  "Don't be ridiculous," she managed to gasp still pulling on her hand. "Let me go."

  He released her the moment she asked, suddenly enough to make her stumble and put a hand on the bar to steady herself. The disappointment in his eyes smacked her like an accusation. Her chest was heaving with deep, oxygen-desperate breaths, as if she'd just sprinted around the block.

  "Not exactly the reaction I'd hoped for," he murmured, a twisted smile on his face. "I should have stuck with just getting in your pants."

  Her laugh was harsh and cracked on the high note. "Listen, Tyler, you can't—we can't—"

  "Don't worry, darlin'," he interrupted. "We can pretend I never said that. Or, even better, that I was wrong."

  "Wrong?"

  "Yup, just wrong. Thought I was falling for you, got to know you better and figured out, nah, you and I are just meant to be friends, after all." She stared at him blankly. "Wouldn't be the first time I was wrong about that kind of thing."

  She didn't know why she should feel almost offended. He was giving her exactly what she wanted. But what kind of man was he, that he could toss out those devastating words and then two seconds later write them off so casually?

  Why did her heart hurt at the thought of Tyler regarding her as just a friend?

  "I can't think," she said, sitting back down on the bar stool.

  "First things first, Grace," he said and crossed his arms over his chest, stretching his white button-down tight across his shoulders. "Focus on the job. Do you want to keep it or not?"

  Two men in dirty jeans and scoffed leather boots walked in the door and came to the bar, setting hard hats down on the wood counter. Tyler strolled to take their order, and she heard him hassle them in a friendly way about quitting early for the day. He pulled them two pints of lager and walked back to her.

  "Yes." She wanted the job. Her options were nonexistent at this point, something they both knew.

  "And on December thirty-first?"

  She'd never planned on hiding out that long anyway.

  "I'll tell you everything you want to know." And then you'll hate me and I won't have to worry about whether or not you might have been in love with me. What a bargain.

  "It's a deal." He stuck his hand over the bar and, for the second time since they'd met, they shook on an agreement. Only somehow this time it felt as though she was cementing a deal where she lost something, not gained.

  "And, um, that other matter?" She felt the heat rising from her cheeks and knew she was blushing furiously.

  Tyler raised his eyebrows at her. "I'm glad you think so much of my determination. But you've got nothing to worry about." He began wiping the bar down with a clean rag. "I don't like getting shot down any more than another man would, I won't try again."

  A half hour later Sarah showed up for her shift. Grace knew immediately that something was wrong. Sarah, who'd been so wonderfully supportive and friendly to her from the moment they'd met, rushed straight back to the kitchen wilh only a wave at Grace's called-out greeting.

  When Grace followed her to the back, she found Sarah tying on her apron. At the noise of the swinging doors, the other woman pressed her hands swiftly to her eyes and wiped them dry. A quick question had her spilling out the story.

  "It's silly, I know. Vets have to put dogs to sleep all the time," she said. She wrapped her arms around herself and huddled in on herself. "And Piper was old and in pain. He couldn't walk, couldn't eat. But it's just so sad."

  Grace found herself weeping, surprisingly, at the thought of an old dog, tired and ready to die. "Of course it is, Sarah."

  "Todd says I shouldn't let it bother me." Her sudden, guilty glance told Grace that Todd was the vet Sarah worked for, the one she was dating. "He says it doesn't help to get emotional over death. That it's a natural part of life, and my feeling sad about it doesn't help the people who are there with their pet."

  "Death is a natural part of life, but so is feeling grief when someone or something dies," Grace said. The wave of fierce anger at this Todd that washed over her caught her off guard. She knew most of it came from memories of hearing similar words from her family upon her grandmother's death, and what they'd called her "excessive grief." "And if I had to put a pet to sleep, I'd want a vet who could be sad with me. Not some unfeeling, uncaring block of ice who's hardly human." She surprised herself further by reaching out and enfolding Sarah in a hug. Sarah squeezed her back and sniffled one last time before letting go.

  "Todd's not like that, really. He's just better at keeping his emotions separate from his work than I am." Sarah wiped her eyes as she pulled a scrunchie out of her apron pocket and twisted her long, straight hair up on top of her head. "He's an excellent vet."

  Grace made a noise of noncommittal agreement and handed Sarah a paper napkin. She would keep her mouth shut. It wasn't her place to give sisterly advice.

  "Did you find everything all right at the apartment this morning? I left you a note."

  "I got it." The morning seemed a lifetime ago. She smiled at the thought. "Everything was perfect. I haven't had that much hot water in weeks. I'm so grateful, Sarah, that you're letting me stay with you."

  "Frankly, I don't like living by myself, too many mysterious noises in the night and all that, so you're doing me a favor, actually. Although don't tell my brother that or he'll never let me live alone again."

  The mention of Tyler was like a splash in the face of dirty water from the kitchen sink.

  "Tyler."

  She hadn't meant to say his name out loud, certainly not with such an obvious amount of frustration in her voice.

  "What did he do now?" Sarah asked as she started setting up for the night, refilling the dishwasher soap and stacking up the trays that held the dishes to the right of the sink. "When he stopped by the apartment this morning, I told him not to hassle you. That it sounded to me like you'd had plenty of trouble from men lately and didn't need him coming on to you like some ham-handed farmboy." She glanced over her shoulder at Grace. "I hope that was okay."

  It was probably harmless, but Grace was curious as to what Tyler had been told. "What exactly did you say to him?"

  Sarah bit her lip and wiped her hands dry on her apron. "Not very much. Just that I thought you'd been involved with some guy who didn't treat you very well. I didn't mean to break a confidence, I just thought he might be better off knowing."

  Grace guessed that it was Sarah's own problems with her love life that had caused her to focus on that part of the limited explanation she'd been given at the hotel, which was fine. And Sarah's edited version also explained why Tyler was being so nice to her, letting her keep working. He thought she was hiding from nothing more serious than a bad relationship.

  Another idea gave her pause. A bad relationship? Or an abusive one?

  If Tyler thought a woman was hiding from an abusive boyfriend, his protective instincts might go into overdrive. And, she thought further, with pain, if he was attracted at all to a woman like that, learning that she was trying to escape from a situation like that might be enough to make him want to take care of her. And that might be enough to make him think he was falling for her.

  "Grace?" Sarah was still looking at her as if worried she'd made a mistake.

  "Don't worry. I was just curious," Grace reassured her. It's' just that I'm losing my mind over here. I can't decide if
I'm happy or sad, angry or pleased, about any damn thing and your brother seems to be tied up in the middle of it all somehow. Sarah still looked concerned, so she fibbed, "I assumed you'd tell him sooner or later."

  "What did he do, anyway? You sounded... Hmm..." Sarah chose her word carefully. "Frustrated."

  "Oh, he just told me he was falling for me." Annoyed again, Grace grabbed a box of red-and-green cocktail straws and began ruthlessly shoving them into side compartments of a napkin holder. She waited for the shriek of disbelief.

  "Wow." Sarah's voice came as a low, awed mutter from somewhere behind her. "Big brother's in love." The kitchen doors squeaked on their hinges and then thwapped back and forth against each other. "Hey, Mom, Tyler's in love with Grace."

  "He is, is he?"

  "Of course he's not," Grace snapped, stomping her foot as she turned around. This was worse than getting caught kissing the man in front of his mother. "He simply said he thought he might be. I told him he was crazy. Then we straightened out some other business and he decided that he wasn't after all."

  "Right," Sarah said decisively. "He's trying not to scare you off. Good plan."

  "Good plan? He's insane," Grace retorted, then looked apologetically at Tyler's mother.

  Susannah had carried an enormous bowl of tomatoes from the restaurant-size refrigerator and now began to chop them on the island.

  "My husband Michael told me that he loved me the night we met."

  Both younger women listened, Sarah smiling as she heard again what was obviously a treasured family story.

  "He was a saxophone player in a blues band playing at a club my girlfriends and I had snuck into. I was seventeen. At the band's first break, Michael came over to our table and told me I was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen." Susannah shook her head. "I looked pretty good that night."

  "You're still the most beautiful woman I know, Mom."

  "Hush. Flattery will not get you a slice of the key lime pie I'm making tonight." Susannah wrinkled her nose at her daughter. "Let's just say he was pretty charming and handsome as sin besides. He sat next to me and we started talking. When the band went back onstage after their break, he stayed with me and we just kept talking. We sat there until the bar closed, and my friends were begging me to leave, so he walked me to the door of the club and kissed me for the first time. Then he told me he was in love with me."

  "What did you say?" Grace asked after five seconds during which she made a vain effort not to be charmed by the story.

  "Say? Nothing." Susannah laughed. "I smacked him in the face. I thought he was making fun of me. I didn't believe him until he kept showing up at my house every night for weeks."

  "That's my mom. Always the romantic." Maxie strolled through the kitchen, yanking a baseball hat off her spiky mop of cropped curls, apparently having caught the tail end of the story.

  "Be quiet." Susannah threw a ripe tomato at her youngest's head, who caught it one-handed and bit into it like it was an apple. "Someday you'll fall in love and find out that it's not all light and music. Love can be frightening, if you're not ready for it."

  "No thanks. I'll pass." Maxie took another bite. "Besides, who's in love? Not Sarah and Dr. Defective, please."

  "Max!" Sarah shouted and threw a dirty wet dishtowel at her sister's head while Grace choked back laughter unsuccessfully. Max seemed to inspire a lot of thrown objects. Sarah gave her a dirty look for laughing, and struck back below the belt. "Tyler's in love with Grace."

  "Holy—" Max cut herself off with a glance at her mother, whose face clearly forbade cursing in the kitchen "—cow. Really?"

  "No, not really," Grace answered firmly. "He just thought he might be. But now he isn't."

  "What?"

  "Don't look at me like you're the one who's confused." She was finished with the cocktail straws and slammed the box back onto the shelf. "You're not the one he's saying all this nonsense to."

  Max scrunched her face up and was silent for a moment. A moment that didn't last.

  "So you're not in love with him?"

  "I can't be." The answer was automatic. She could feel the other women in the room watching her speculatively. She didn't notice when she repeated her answer.

  "Can, can't. Should, shouldn't. That isn't the question." Susannah had come out from behind the prep counter to stand by Grace. Now she laid a hand on Grace's arm, as if to hold her in place. "My son, whatever he says, cares about you. The question is, how much do you care about him?"

  Her vision blurred as the tears rose and she pressed her lips together. If she didn't answer, then none of it was true. She could retain some small hold on her sanity if she simply didn't answer the question. She felt Susannah's hand grip her arm tightly for a moment, comforting her.

  "Such a sad girl." The older woman's hand brushed softly against her hair before dropping to her shoulder and patting gently. "I'm afraid you'll hurt my boy very badly."

  Grace shook her head. I don't want to hurt anybody, she wanted to cry out. I'm just trying to find my way out of all these disasters. She tilted her head back and blinked rapidly until the tears dried. She wouldn't break down in front of these women, no matter how kind they were. When she stood straight again, Max and Sarah had moved off to another part of the kitchen. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Smiled like brittle glass and said to Susannah, "Everything will be fine."

  A moment. Then Susannah nodded in understanding and sighed herself, before physically shaking off the mood with her whole body. "So, maybe it's better this way. You won't fall in love with him. He will not fall in love with you. There are still limes that need to be squeezed for pie. Come help me, and you can have the first piece."

  "Hey!" Maxie's shout from the dish room was outraged.

  And with that, the Saturday night shift at Tyler's began, all the women working smoothly together as if in agreement that nothing more need be said about preshift matters. When Grace wiped down the menus in preparation for the dinner rush and noticed that at some time during the day, Tyler had reprinted the paper inserts to include the two vegetarian dishes she'd suggested earlier, she managed to feel only an employee's pride at making a contribution.

  When she called out her first drink order of the night at the bar and Tyler smiled and teased her like a sister, she told herself she was glad he could move on. They both could.

  She was even able to laugh with everyone else at the bar when a heavily made-up blonde performed impromptu karaoke, singing along with Ella Fitzgerald on "Let's Do It" and gesturing boldly at Tyler.

  Birds do it, bees do it,

  Even educated fleas do it,

  Let's do it, let's fall in love.

  "I need a Heineken, two Lites and a diet, please," Grace called from the wait station at the end of the song. .She shoved her ticket in the metal coil that served to hold it for the bartender to ring up. "Educated fleas, my ass."

  "Jealous?" Tyler handed the ticket back to her after ringing up the round. "I thought she did pretty good myself."

  "She was great," Grace said in a voice sweet enough to make a diabetic go into shock, "if you go for the obvious type."

  "Better obvious than oblivious," he shot back just as sweetly.

  She snatched her tray off the bar and walked away before giving in to the temptation to use a rude hand gesture.

  At home that night, in her little room under the eaves, Grace stripped off her clothes, threw them in the corner and climbed into bed. The moon shining through the blinds cast thin stripes of pale light across her ceiling. She told herself that it had been another good night, a steady, happy crowd at the bar and full tables on the floor all night long. She'd made good money waiting on her customers, and things were running much more smoothly these days.

  That she'd been disappointed when Tyler had called a cab to drive her the short distance to Sarah's apartment, saying he had paperwork he wanted to get done, was a weakness she would overcome soon enough. Making a work relationship into something more p
ersonal was inadvisable. And unprofessional.

  You wanted the job, and you got it, she told herself in the cool dark. Don't be foolish and keep wanting something more.

  Something that you can't have.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on relaxing tense muscles, tightening each individual fiber in her body and then releasing it back to a slate of complete relaxation. She would unwind and sleep, and tomorrow she would be able to go through her day without the constant emotional stress of the recent summer. It would be lovely to be on an even keel again.

  One week later she was crawling the walls and seriously considering climbing the Sears Tower with her bare hands and no net. Just to relieve a little of the frustration and bottled-up energy she had.

  Hey, that French guy did it a while ago, blocked traffic in the Loop for hours, she thought. She was wiping down tables in the dining room and watching a trio of office women on a two-martini-or-more lunch practically fling themselves over the bar at Tyler. Climbing one hundred and twenty stories couldn't be any more draining than watching this every day.

  Tyler and his harem of hopefuls.

  To be fair, she reminded herself, Tyler hadn't actually taken any of them up on their increasingly blatant offers, as far as she knew. But did he have to be so goddamn charming?

  The man would flirt with a fence post, I swear.

  Grace dismissed the niggling thought that some of her irritation might arise from the fact that Tyler seemed to be turning that flirtatious charm on every woman who set foot in the bar, except for her.

  She dragged a chair roughly from the middle of an aisle and slammed it into place at the proper table. She couldn't count how many times each night she found little, folded-up napkins behind the bar, all with women's names and telephone numbers scribbled on them. Some had more explicit invitations on them and most had the inevitable lipstick-print kiss.

  And that man, with his smiles and his shrugs and his words about not wanting to hurt the women's feelings by throwing the napkins away while they might see him do it.