by Ciara Knight
“Realized what?” Drake sounded hoarse with emotion. “You thought it would fail from the time I began this. That’s why you asked your father for the loan.” The sound of heavy steps echoed in the room. “News flash, I already tried that. I went to that Ivy League school for my parents, and I took that high-paying job right out of college with your father for you. Now they’re dead and you no longer have a say. In case you forgot, we aren’t dating anymore. We agreed to be friends.” His shoes tapped toward the front door.
Heeled shoes clicked after him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’ve known you for so long, invested so much time in you. It’s just that you told me some day we’d be together again. If I waited—”
“That was before I truly knew you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“It means it’s time for you to leave. I’ll have your father’s payment by the end of the month. If I don’t, it won’t matter.”
“We’ll talk about this later,” she snapped. “You always have your little moods. Don’t worry about Daddy. I’ll get you an extension.” Then her tone turned sweet. “I’ll pick you up after the club closes and we can figure it out together. As you said, I’m still your friend.” The front door squealed, echoing through the hall. Did she really change her tune that quick, or was she avoiding the truth?
“Hey, Margo,” Drake called after her.
I gritted my teeth, willing him to let her go from his life, for good.
“I won’t be able to hang out with you tonight as friends, or any other misguided way you’re thinking. I’ve got work to do.” Drake cleared his throat. “I’ll be busy all month. Actually, all my life.”
Chapter Nine
I fist-bumped the speaker at Society Bitch’s exit. Drake stomped up the stairs. “Oh, I forgot you were here.”
“Gee, thanks.” I planted my hands on my hips. “Girl trouble?”
Drake rubbed the back of his neck again, but only shook his head and passed. “Let’s go upstairs. I want to show you the press releases I wrote before I send them out. We also need to set a date for the event.”
I trotted after him. “Why do you put up with her? And I didn’t know you have a brother.”
“None of your business.” Drake grabbed the railing and marched up the stairs. At the top, he halted. “It’s complicated.” He rubbed his forehead as if ridding it of a Margo Migraine. “What was up with you earlier? You never told me.”
What did I say? I couldn’t sound like a freak, not now. “Um, nothing. Just some punk skaters bothered me, but I handled it. No biggie.”
He dropped his hands to his sides and tilted his head. “Didn’t look like it was no big deal. I’ll give you a ride home tonight. You shouldn’t be walking alone through town at that hour.”
“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”
He entered his office and collapsed into his leather chair. “Can’t help it.” Papers stacked in three piles covered his desk. One stack of bookkeeping, the next press releases, and the final pile was flyers. He handed me a press release from the top of the stack. “He’s dead. Same car crash as my parents.” His voice cracked.
I thought the right thing to do was to reach out and take his hand, but I couldn’t push through my thirty-foot-tall, ten-foot-wide touch protector. “I’m sorry.”
“As I said, we’ve both lost people. Maybe we can work together and prove something to some people. What do you say? You in on this crazy plan?”
“Crazy? I came up with it.”
Drake leaned back and bridged his fingers in front of him. “I like that.”
I glanced around. “What?”
“When you smile and don’t look so serious. You’ve looked like you were standing on the edge of a cliff since the first moment I met you. Right now, you look like you’re searching into the vast darkness for something shiny.”
I sighed. “You sound like my mother.”
“I do? She must have been a wise woman.”
I laughed. Laughed like a normal person, not one who was constantly on high alert with a hollow heart. “Yep, she used to tell me to search beyond the darkness to an edge. An edge where light, hope, and happiness live—the silver edge.”
Drake leaned forward. “I think I would’ve liked your mother.”
His words penetrated the well-built wall of sarcasm I’d perfected and left me with nothing to say. I lifted the page closer to my face as if I needed readers. “Looks good.”
Drake opened his desk drawer. “Great. Then let’s look at dates. I need to make a balloon payment at the end of November. What if we do it the weekend prior to that?”
“That’d work. Perhaps a harvest festival theme. We could decorate the place with pumpkins, scarecrows, cobwebs, add to the dungeon-esque atmosphere. It’ll work. Just one question.”
“What’s that?”
“Why the hell did you name the club Bands?”
He let out a hissing breath as if I’d pricked a hole in his skin. “I didn’t. Margo did. It was part of the contract when I took the loan from her father to save it a few months back. It’s kind of cheesy, huh?”
“Like processed spread.” I nodded. “Can we rename it?”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t dare, not until I can make the loan payment. Even then, I’ll have to wait until I can come up with the money to repay the loan in full. I don’t think she’d allow it otherwise. I feel like she’s got me by the balls. I guess you had my drink right last night.”
“Hey, Boss. Time for grub.” Hawaiian’s voice echoed up from below.
My stomach lion-roared.
“Come on. Let’s feed that monster in your belly. Walter brought Chinese takeout tonight. This time, don’t throw it on the floor, okay?”
“I didn’t throw it. I’m a klutz.”
His hand slid to the small of my back. Wisps of energy fluttered up my spine. I straightened and tried not to pull away, but that was a vulnerable spot. The only spot more vulnerable was the back of my neck. I shivered just thinking about it. No one ever touched me there, not even my mother.
“By the way, you were right.”
I looked up at him, realizing after a moment that I’d made eye contact without even fidgeting. “About what?”
“The numbers. They were off. How’d you do that so quick?” He lifted a hand to direct me to go first down the stairs. I wasn’t used to such gentlemanly actions. I thought they were a myth.
“Don’t know. I was born with crazy math skills. I can pretty much compute anything in my head. I’m like a walking calculator.”
“I guess Walter’s nickname for you is appropriate, then.”
“Ah, you’ve witnessed her ninja math skills.” Hawaiian stood at the foot of the stairs. He held out a white Styrofoam box to me. I took it with trepidation and walked across the sticky floor to the torn vinyl stool and placed the box on the mahogany bar. Carefully, I slid the lip open so it didn’t make that noise, the one that always made me cringe. Drake watched my every move then copied me. Hawaiian lifted his with a loud squeal.
Two breaths later, I settled into focusing on the aroma of fried rice and chicken. “This looks so good. Where’s the fork?”
Hawaiian pointed at the narrow white package that fluttered under the vent blowing down. “No, darling. You use chopsticks for Chinese.”
“Why? I’m not from China.” I stared with disbelief as Drake peeled back the white paper, snapped the sticks apart, and handed them to me.
“Just hold them like this.” Drake maneuvered some fried rice from his container to his mouth. Amazingly, every grain found its way onto his tongue.
I gripped the chopsticks, but they just slipped past each other instead of pinching the mouthful of food between them.
“No, like this.”
He took my hand in his. A rush of energy blasted through me. My brain shut down, only focusing on his stimuli. Finally, with his help, I managed to get a few grains of rice onto the sticks and sh
oved it in.
“Great. At this rate, I might get a few bites down by the time we open.”
Drake pulled plastic forks from the brown bag on the stool beside him. “I guess you’ll have to take Chopstick 101 another time.”
I huffed and grabbed the fork. “How long were you gonna let him torture me?”
Drake held up both hands. “It was his idea.”
I scowled at my Polynesian pal at my side. “I thought we were tight.”
“I only tease the ones I love.” He winked. Not a flirtatious wink, more like a little-sister wink.
“You don’t want to kick the hornet’s nest, you know.” I waved the chopsticks at him.
“Should I be scared?”
I ripped open the plastic wrapper on the fork and pierced a piece of chicken. “I don’t know. How fast can you count when that register fails on you again?”
Hawaiian lowered his container to the counter and groaned. “I take it back. I take it back.”
I shoveled fried brown rice—minus the bits of egg—and snap peas into my mouth as if I hadn’t eaten in months instead of days.
“What’s wrong with the baby corns?” Hawaiian asked.
“I don’t know. It’s just wrong. Corn on the cob should be big. Not that I’d eat that, either. It’s yellow.”
“Yellow? You don’t eat yellow foods?” Drake asked, holding a bite of beef to his lips with his chopsticks.
“No, I mean… Whatever.” My belly had obviously shrunk since I was already full after only eating half the container.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
Drake trotted to the back door. “First band’s here for load-in.”
Screech.
I closed my container and dashed to the hallway. My nerves wouldn’t handle the band warm-ups.
Drake followed me out to the front and handed me a money bag. “Here. Tim should be here tonight to man the front door, so you shouldn’t have any trouble. I’ll introduce you to him and other staff as they arrive. Door opens in an hour for the first show, but it won’t get crazy until around ten. By midnight, we’ll close the ticket booth. You can hang and listen to the bands until the show ends at about one a.m. Then cleanup and inventory and we’re out by two a.m.”
“Got it, Boss.” I saluted.
“Don’t call me that.” Drake tossed the bag at me.
“Why not? Hawaiian does.”
Drake shoved his hands in his pocket. “Yeah, well, I don’t stand a chance in a fight with him. You, I can turn over my knee and spank.”
“I think that’s sexual harassment, Boss.”
Drake sauntered to the doorway. “Guess I should fire you now, huh?”
“I think you should get to work.” I shoved him toward the stage.
It wasn’t long until people started trickling in to hear the first band. From my vantage point at the indoor ticket booth, I could catch a glimpse every so often of the lead singer jumping around the stage. The more the girls screeched their delight, the more he jumped, kicked, and straddled the microphone stand. They weren’t bad.
Drake maneuvered through the mass of churning bodies in the mosh pit to the front doors with a goofy grin on his face. It was still sexy-as-hell, but adorable at the same time. “Not bad?” he asked.
“Not bad.”
He eyed the chain of people lined up beyond the end of the building. “The register broke again. I’ll man the door, so you can go help Walter. He’s freaking out. There’s a stool at the end of the bar. Don’t go into the bar area, and whatever you do, don’t touch an ounce of alcohol.”
“Yes, sir.” I saluted, and he smacked me on the backside. “Hey, I thought we already spoke about sexual harassment.”
He rolled his eyes and perched one butt cheek up on the stool at the entrance like he had the night before in his office.
The song ended and patrons skittered to the bar as if a floodlight were illuminating cockroaches, ones that had sniffed too much exterminator spray.
I found the stool and started taking orders, exchanging money and shouting out drinks to Hawaiian. Sweat poured down his forehead. He obviously wasn’t having a good night.
After about twenty minutes, we found our rhythm and he high-fived me over the bar. The next band stepped up to the microphone and music pumped through me from the speaker a few feet away. From my location, I couldn’t tell if they were Battle of the Bands material or more appropriate for Battle of the Dumpster. Finally, the song ended, but my head continued to pound.
For weeks, we followed the same routine. Dinner together, club opening, Hawaiian and I working together. Every night Drake stood closer to me, talked to me, leaned into me, touched me. He’d order me to stay so that he could walk me home at the end of each shift, but I’d always sneak out before he knew I was leaving. Twice I spotted Hawaiian following me home; it’s hard for a man like him to be inconspicuous with his loud shirt and large frame. On the seventh night, I thought Drake was going to throw me over his shoulder like some caveman and carry me home. The man was obsessed with me being alone on the streets at night. On the sixteenth night, he managed to follow me to the street of the warehouse before I managed to lose him. Tonight, I knew I had to be extra strategic if I was going to make it out of the club and to my home without an escort.
I sat at my normal seat on the outside of the bar and planned my escape while making change.
“I’ll take a tall drink of you.”
That voice. It echoed through my memory and before I even looked up and confirmed my fear, I knew it was him. The skater from a few weeks ago.
My skin crawled, making the attitude that slipped from my lips all the more potent. “You’re wearing a non-alcohol wristband, so you can have cherry Kool-Aid and run home to Mommy.” I waved him away and looked to the next person, but his friend slid around me and gripped my hips, keeping me from escaping.
My back cat-arched. My skin, my hair, and my attitude, everything electrified. His touch halted the air from entering my lungs, halted the thoughts in my head, halted my ability to speak.
His blotchy red face lowered to my line of vision. “We didn’t get to finish our conversation. So, you think you’re better than us?”
The words slashed through the constrictor around my throat. “I don’t think I’m better than anyone, but I know your friend better get his hands off me.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“My friend back there is gonna take you both down.” I tilted my head at Hawaiian behind the bar.
The skater placed a hand with scabbed over knuckles on each of my thighs. “What’s that fat bastard going to do?” His fingers slid over my jeans. My insides twisted like a half-pike gone wrong.
Falcon talons locked on to my hips and squeezed. Tremors made my legs and arms shake. I was sandwiched between them. Knit Cap hovered in front, while his sidekick continued to dig his nails into my skin, nails that I wanted to peel from their beds.
I resisted the urge to tell him exactly that, opting for reason instead. “Listen, you’re wasted. I can smell tequila and punk ass on your breath. Do us both a favor and walk away before this gets messy.”
His hands moved from my thighs to my shoulders and I feared I’d scream at the invasion. His touch felt like a volcano, erupting my blood until it poured out into my system. My body shook faster than a headbanger on speed.
“Aw, I think she wants me. I’ll wait for you outside after your shift and show you what you’ve been missing.” He slid his hand to the back of my neck and tried to tug me closer.
I rocked away. “No. No. No.”
His touch invaded me. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. The entire venue spun. I balled up my fist and slammed it into his face then grabbed the hand that still held my neck and twisted it backward until he sat on his knees on the ground.
“Stop. Let me go!” Knit Cap screamed.
His friend’s hands connected with my chest and launched me back. I stumbled but recovered and thrust my foot into his groin. He cup
ped himself then fell to the floor, moaning.
I extinguished the immediate threat, but my synapses continued to fire in rapid succession. My hands found Knit Cap’s throat. I fought the scream rising from a dark place inside me, one where I’d hidden all my secrets. Secrets that threatened to land me in a psych ward for the rest of my life. My body shook to the point my movements blended. Thump after thump drowned out all other noise around me.
Drake’s face appeared in front of mine. His lips moved, but I heard nothing. With a strong grip, he pried my hand from my victim’s throat and I stumbled away.
The vibration in my ears tempered and I realized I didn’t hear any music.
Drake lifted the one skater by his shirt off the floor. Hawaiian lifted the other guy. “Let me. It’s my job to take out the trash.”
I wrung my hands, trying to still the shaking. Spinning in all directions, I saw face after face staring back at me. The band remained onstage, holding their instruments, glaring down at me as if I were the devil rising up from the shadows. Then I spotted Drake. His eyes narrowed, brows knit together. I’d seen that look countless times before. Always right before someone called me Scary Scarlet or tossed me from a foster home. I skittered backward, knocking into people.
Eyes, hundreds of them, bored into me with vicious power, searching, accusing. I twisted and turned, shoving through the crowd. I willed the terror from my body. A wave of electricity still spiked from my big toenail to the top of my head with each step. Fire erupted on my skin and my lungs squished the air into tight pockets that I thought would rupture inside me.
Chapter Ten
The darkness of the warehouse storage room provided some shelter from the world, but not enough. I curled into myself and swayed from side to side. Not again. Not again. Not again.
I hummed a song, a song from my childhood, one my mother used to sing. After several minutes, I was able to sing a single line. “Girls just want to have fun.”
The bolts of nervous energy subsided to slivers, and air gushed into my lungs. Each breath provided a little more comfort until I managed to rest my forehead on my knees. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, and I blinked them into submission.