“Yeah, probably,” I said, though I didn’t think I did. I was already wearing underwear, and saw no need to put on anything fancier underneath my blouse for said douche canoe. “Whatever, it’s fine. Have a good sleep.”
“You too, homie,” she said, and was gone.
On way to bed, I left a trail of clothing. Blouse, jeans, socks, bra.
Then I made sure to shut my drawer before turning off the light.
“I’ll take a draft Bud Light, babe, and feel free to put a bit of head on it.”
I slammed the register closed and spun around to bang this dude’s head on the bar, but relaxed once I saw who it was.
“Cute,” I said to Becca, and went to the tap to pour her beer.
She smirked and propped up on her arms. “After all this time, you still fall for my low, raspy pretend man-voice. Should I take that as a compliment or an insult?”
“Your dream of becoming a catfish is still there, honey,” I said and pushed the Bud Light tap to a stop. “I’m less shamed by falling for your prepubescent voice than I am to put this pretend beer in front of you.”
“Please,” she said, and took a swig before I had time to set it in front of her. “This city is so snobby when it comes to yeast and barley. I say, if I want this golden, carbonated beverage, I’m gonna drink it, fuck the hipsters.”
Becca pointed at me specifically. But with her casually draped off-the-shoulder canary yellow shirt, skinny jeans and wide-rimmed glasses she chose to sport instead of contacts today, she might as well have pointed to a hipster mirror.
I laughed. “I’m as much Middle America as you are.”
“You're a New York City bartender who just poo-pooed our national beverage.” She gestured down my body. “Did I miss something? Was there a funeral here today?”
I chose to wear a plain black tank and black skinny jeans to work today, and as Becca well knew, it disguised stains such as stale beer and dried vomit quite well.
“Yes, I’m mourning your taste in yeast and barley.” I flipped the front of my hair out of the way so I could grab a waiting bucket and pour ice into the well underneath the bar. “But as a memorial, I’ll make the next one on me.”
Becca held up her drink, her blonde, frizzy ringlets a halo of innocence around her face. “Not the first?”
We were both laughing when we were joined by Jade, her golden skin offset by a lime green cable-knit sweatshirt and jeans. “What’s so funny?” she asked as she helped herself to Becca’s beer.
“Ugh, not you, too,” I said, then turned to listen to an order that was lobbed by a voice to the left. “Should’ve known, considering you’re both dressed like rainbow sherbets.”
“Ha!” Becca called behind me as I reached for the vodka. “Way to treat some of your only patrons! We’re not tipping,” she said to Jade.
Becca was correct. At three in the afternoon, the bar was pretty sparse but would definitely pick up by happy hour at four. And while it didn’t pay, I enjoyed the lulls between the rushes because it actually felt like a head was on my shoulders and not spinning full circle, filling requests and dodging leers.
“Unlike our adopted rescue pet here, I’ll take a jack and ginger,” Jade said, and took the stool next to Becca.
“Starting early?” I asked.
“Worst surprise exam in history,” Jade supplied. “This chemistry prof loves slamming his pupils with bi-weekly tests, of which I learned he loves to do today.”
I gave her the drink and she ditched the straw and took a long gulp.
“Yowza,” Becca said.
“I feel your pain,” I said to Jade. “My medieval culture prof enjoys sucking out our souls any chance he gets.”
“Oh, but tell her!” Becca bounced on her stool.
Inwardly, I slumped. Leave it to Becca to parse out the potential for a romantic link within a conversation about evil professors.
“Tell me what?” Jade asked, her dark eyes sparking with intrigue.
“I have a tutor for the class,” I said, and left it at that.
“Good Lord,” Becca said. “Allow me to fill in this lady’s pathetic attempt at explaining she has the hottest, sexiest tutor of all time.”
Jade raised her brows over the rim of her drink. “Spencer Rolfe?”
With more glee than any one person could possibly muster, Becca pointed at Jade. “Even she freaking knows about him! And she’s a science geek!”
“I’m a red-blooded science geek, thank you very much. And I can notice good looking specimens on our campus like anyone else.”
“Bullshit,” Becca said. “You’re too busy being Frankenstein.”
“He’s hard to miss,” Jade said as she took another sip, then caved under Becca’s study. “Fine. He’s tutoring my lab partner in her English elective and he’s all she talks about.”
“Aha, so he’s well known around these parts,” Becca mused. “You’d better act quick, Emme.”
“Yeah, I think Chloe’s readying to ask him out,” Jade added.
“I hate you both,” I said.
“Emme’s interested,” Becca supplied to Jade as I spun away. “It’s just taking her some time to peel off the dried snakeskin that was Trev.”
The name had my spine practically calcifying, but I chipped it off by concentrating on the increasing orders coming in, both from the servers and people populating the bar. I hadn’t checked my phone the entire time Becca and Jade showed up, but I didn’t need to in order to know that my messages would be populated by Trev. I should block him, but the six years we had together prevented me from doing it each time. Were those years together that much of a waste? Had everything I given him become obsolete now that he’d proven love wasn’t enough? I could act strong and saucy with my friends, but my heart wasn’t the same anymore. Falling for another, dating, none of that had the potential it once promised. Flirting with my tutor wouldn’t lead to nice things.
A commotion brought my attention up as Laurie strode into the bar surrounded by hoots and hollers of her regulars and not-so-regulars. She accepted it with ease, blowing kisses and fluttering waves as she slipped behind the bar in tight red shorts and a black top that exposed both shoulders.
Jade added to the atmosphere with a loud boo and Becca actually peeled back her lips in a hiss.
“Busy afternoon?” Laurie asked, ignoring my friends. She inspected the communal tip jar as she passed. “Hmm. Guess not.”
“I’m sure you won’t have a problem collecting dollar bills,” I said.
“Wait and see,” she sang, then went to the other end of the bar to serve that section.
Good. I hope she stayed there.
“What a hussy,” Becca said when I went back to them. I made a throat sound of agreement, but the fact was, I was more determined to forget her than talk about her. Jade seemed to pick up on my vibe because she said, “Do you have your phone on you?”
I cocked a brow. “Sure.”
When I returned from the register with the phone, I asked, “Did you forget yours or something?”
“Yep.” Jade proffered her hand and I dropped my cell into it.
I kept one eye on her as I served others. It was when Becca’s attention was drawn and the corner of Jade’s lips ticked up that I figured it out.
“No. No.” I almost leapt onto the bar and used the spilled beer and liquor as a luge to get to them quicker. By the time I swiped my phone out of their devious hands, the damage was done.
Spence, can’t wait to see you again. When should we set up our next tutorial? Xx
“Guys!” I said and pulled the phone closer to my face, as if boring into the screen could delete the message.
“What?” Jade asked. “It’s totally innocuous. And don’t get me wrong, but one session isn’t going to fix your grade, and something tells me that’s exactly what you were going to do.”
“Damn it, Jade,” I said. Forget that I was planning on emailing my work to Spence instead of seeing him tonight like we’
d discussed.
Anyone who thought Becca was the more nefarious one was ridiculously mistaken.
“This is what friends are for,” Becca said simply. “Accept it and move on.”
“Kisses? You sent him kisses?” I asked.
“Better than a heart emoji which is what I suggested,” Becca said.
I attempted to breathe normally. “I swear, the first one of you two that falls asleep tonight—”
“Em—Emme?”
The sound of my name saved these best friends of mine from certain death. I pasted on a smile, and it only faltered slightly when I turned to the owner of the voice.
“Hello,” I said, and hoped it sounded warm. “What can I get you?”
The guy from the other night stood at the bar, the tall one with the unmoving stare, eerily still among the growing crowd behind and around him.
“Whiskey, neat,” he said.
“Sure, but…” I motioned to the liquor bottles behind me. “What kind?”
“Right,” he said, then chuckled uncomfortably. “Um. What’s your favorite?”
Becca angled her chin at this, and Jade frowned, but I took it in stride. “As a shot? I enjoy Maker’s. But as a drink, I actually go for bourbon. Specifically Bullet, but it’s a little pricey.”
“I thought you said whiskey was your top choice?” he asked, and appeared genuinely perplexed.
I tried a grin. “I change my mind a lot.”
When he didn’t reply, I said, “Tell you what, how about I choose for you.”
He exhaled in relief. “Yes. That would be good.”
I poured him a mid-level, smooth whiskey to start him off with. He slid forty over before accepting the drink. “Keep it.”
“Oh—that’s too much,” I said, but he talked over me in his reply. “No, no, you’ve gone to some trouble to find me a good flavor, it’s the least I can do.”
I continued to protest, but he was already retreating into the throng. His height didn’t help his scuttle, but he moved through the multiple bodies nonetheless, his bony shoulders acting as appropriate barricades. Helplessly, I lifted the two bills, shook my head and deposited twenty into the tip jar.
“Weird dude,” Becca said. She slapped a ten on the bar and made to leave. “Class in twenty, I gotta go.”
Jade kept staring after him, her frown permanently in place.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said to her as I wiped down their area with a damp cloth. “I get guys like that all the time.”
“You’ve seen him before?” Jade asked.
“Once.”
She turned to me, her black depths probing. “Did you introduce yourself to him then?”
“No, don’t think so. That time he wanted vodka-sodas.”
She laid a hand on mine to stop my circular movements. “How did he know your name?”
Her observation had me pausing, but I shrugged it off. “It’s not so hard. For all I know he asked Laurie. She’d be more than happy to give it to him.”
But Jade didn’t look convinced.
“Come on, Jade, you have class, too, don’t you?” Becca asked, hovering behind her.
Jade shook herself out of it and rose from her stool. “You’re right. It’s stupid. I just got a really creepy vibe from him.”
“Welcome to my day job,” I joked.
“I don’t think he’s a creep,” Becca said. “Sure, he has difficulty hitting on hot chicks and maybe doesn’t know how to get drunk in a bar. The only juju I got off him was awkward and sad.”
I said to Becca, “I’ve only seen him twice, anyway.” Then, for Jade’s benefit I said, “No stalker vibes as yet.”
“Count the science geek as paranoid,” Jade said and laughed it off. “I’m sure you’ve dealt with worse.”
My phone, still laying in front of them, flashed with a message. I didn’t need to see who it was from before I groaned.
“More importantly,” I said sweetly to them as they collected their bags and started to head off. I showed them my phone. “I get to deal with this.”
On the screen, in all its blue clarity, was a text from Spence.
Sure. You never got back to me on time today so the only opening is tomorrow after 8. And yes, I charge overtime for late night tutorials :)
The next morning, I sat through my (very early) eight a.m. business economics course, eyelids drooping, wondering why I decided that getting such a complicated class over with first thing in the week was a good idea. I straightened in my seat, gulped one-third of my cooling coffee in its cardboard container, and rubbed my eyes awake. My fingers went on autopilot and typed everything on Professor Byrd’s powerpoint and his lecture, thinking if not now, I could go back through my notes later.
Last night had gone particularly long. Laurie had gotten sick—from food poisoning or too many shots, who knew—and I offered to take the rest of her shift even though I was supposed to knock off. I ended up serving a rowdy football crowd well into three a.m. but managed to fall into bed for an hour and a half before waking up again and making my first class.
It was tough to do, maintaining both a job and a college career, but I was young, my body could handle it. I was hungry, eager for success, and the piece de resistance: I. Needed. Money.
I repeated this mantra as I wiped a string of drool from my chin.
Class ended with a farewell and good luck from Professor Byrd after he’d happily reminded of the mid-term in one week. Closing my laptop, I thought maybe I should employ Jade to try and make two of me for the next month.
My phone blipped as I was rising, and I sat back down to read it as students shuffled around me.
Trev: I come by your apartment, you’re not there. Try to meet you after class, you walk by. I’m finally getting the hint. I love you, Em. Always will. But I can’t keep chasing you to prove it. I give up.
I muttered an expletive and blacked out my phone. Leave it to Trev to make this all about his heartbreak.
As mighty as I tried to be, the first time he told me he loved me broke through the bitterness. We were at the movies, watching a horror flick, and just before the doomed actress wandered into the wrong room alone, the theater thick with tense silence as all eyes were on the screen, Trev leaned over and said at full volume, “I love you,” so abruptly that I jumped through my skin and screeched and had all the theater-goers screeching with me.
That was Trev. Impulsive and spontaneous. Whatever he felt at the moment, he expressed, and I supposed a slasher movie got his heart-strings twanging.
Six years, I thought. It was so hard to keep acting like he was only in my life for a minute. Cheating was supposed to be the end game. No amount of cajoling would get me back into his arms.
And no one had to know just how much it hurt to keep him away.
The ache in my throat stuck with me through my travels to my next class, the second in a double-header that I also thought would be great to get out of the way on a Tuesday. It was also the class that melted all my dreams into nightmares.
Medieval Culture.
I found my seat, bypassing the rest of the minglers who were chatting and downloading their weekend to their friends. Aside from Jade and Becca, there was no one I really talked to in school, no study buddies to commiserate to, no seatside neighbor to swap notes with. My personality wasn’t repellent. I could be funny, witty, heartfelt. Trev took up a lot of my time and dedication in high school and I was pretty much consumed by him and our relationship. We were that lasting couple, the two people that got together in freshman year and never strayed apart all the way up to senior year and beyond. A rare but fascinating breed, a source of jealousy but also a dream to others. How did two young kids who were supposed to have a fickle sense of life become so dedicated to each other for so long?
Hah. Loyalty. I knew better now.
The lecture hall quieted as Professor Harper strode into the room and toward the lecturn. Bodies made for their seats. One scruffy head popped up from the others, my g
aze straying to it before my brain could bark some sense at me.
Sensing my attention, Spence’s profile turned into a full-on face and I ducked my head a millisecond after our eyes clashed.
I glared at my phone lying quiet and dark on my desk. There was something I was looking forward to dealing with. That stupid text with the kisses.
Professor Harper went straight into the third circle of Hell and I dutifully typed notes, the dull thwacking of keyboards creating a repetitive, relaxing noise. When my focus diverted from my monitor to the right, I yanked it back to where it belonged, but my inner miscreant had better ideas.
Eventually, Spence caught on to my drifting, and every so often he’d shift to the left, his fingers never pausing in their strokes on his laptop, and offered me a side-swipe of a grin.
His profile was one of the sexiest I’d ever seen. Sharp, with a perfect arc of a nose and jut of his chin, softened by full lips. Even his stubble was in a perfect line on his cheek, as if he sat with a razor every morning and carved at the hairline until it reached the perfect division of soft skin versus scruff.
He had no freckles or moles that I could see. No imperfections that would make him human at all. There had to be something there to make him flawed. What was he hiding? Why did every female coming within an inch of him instantly produce more saliva?
Ugh. Including me?
When a flash of green swept into my view, an irk sound came out of my throat and I focused back on my screen. He’d caught me. Again.
That was it. I shut my laptop and fished out a notebook instead. Handwriting would require a hell of a lot more concentration than typing. That way, I could remember that my tunnel vision, when it came to Spence, was solely due to my broken heart over Trev and not because I was actually interested. It was much too soon to be drawn into another guy, even if it was purely sexually motivated. Wasn’t it?
Forty more minutes and potential carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist later, class was dismissed. I packed up my stuff—not once stealing a look over to the right—swung my bag over my shoulder, and trotted down the steps to the door.
From This Day Forward Page 4