by Gwen Gavin
As I looked at his face, I figured that I didn’t like him either. The scruff on his face was long enough to be a few days but not groomed well enough to be an intentional style choice, more like a guy who just rolled out of bed. His dark curly and shaggy hair was curling around his ears. He was handsome in a rough way, the kind of guy that didn’t really care what people thought about him and how he looked. Effortlessly cool and I scrunched up my nose at him.
He wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows even though the late summer night was still warm outside. He crossed his arms over his chest and widened his stance. First thing, he looked like an asshole. An asshole who owned the bar, but an asshole none the less. I instantly didn’t like him.
He turned his attention toward me. “How is it?” He asked with a clipped tone.
I frowned at the way he was talking to me. Jazz quirked an eyebrow at me, warning me to play nice. If she didn’t have a job, she wasn’t able to pay rent and if she wasn’t able to pay rent; I wasn’t able to either.
“It’s delicious. Fresh without being overly sweet.” I took another sip and smacked my lips together. I smiled at my sister conspiratorially. She nodded back at me.
“What made you order it?” He turned his body to face mine so I could see Jazz just over his shoulder. I glanced at her quickly, but Mike was making intense eye contact as he leaned on the bar.
“Um... well, I—uh. The chalkboard looks nice?” I looked back at Jazz and she sighed. I cleared my throat. “Actually, I didn’t order it. She made it for me.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. This close to me, he smelled like cinnamon and something else that I couldn’t quite place. As I got to see him up close, he also looked oddly familiar which isn’t weird for our small town.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in here before.” He tilted his head to the side. The interrogation intensified.
I drew my eyebrows together and pursed my mouth. The noise in the bar was enough to make us have to raise our voices just to hear each other, so we were both on the verge of yelling. The dim lighting gave Mike this sinister feel to him, like he was towering over me. In a different setting, it might have been sexy and dominant, but today, I was just pissed off.
There is this thing where you can not like someone from the second you meet them. No matter what they do or who they are, they just wiggle under your skin and make you itchy like an annoying mosquito bite. That was Mike. From this moment, I knew that I would never ever like his stupid face and his stupid, annoying gravelly voice or the stupid way that his eyes zeroed in on me like he could read my thoughts.
“No. You haven’t seen me in here before because I don’t come here.” I tilted my chin up, ignoring my sister’s warning look from over Mike’s shoulder.
A whooping sound came up from the crowd. The team must have scored or something but the three of us: Mike, Jazz and I were locked in a staring contest that wasn’t about to end now.
Mike tilted his head to the side, but didn’t break eye contact. “What do you mean by that? Are you too good for a place like this?” His voice was rising louder than was necessary to hear over the noise of the rest of the place. There was a thick vein in his neck and I glanced at it to see it pulsing.
I opened my mouth to say something snarky that I would surely regret after it got my sister fired, only to be interrupted by Jazz cutting into the conversation.
“Don’t worry, boss. She was just leaving. I’ll cover the drink.” Jazz stood right next to Mike and pointedly looked towards the door and then back at me.
I scoffed at first and then a pleased smirk broke out across Mike’s face. My blood was boiling, and I opened my mouth again.
Jazz knocked her knuckles on the bar top and said, “Thank you, Miss. I hope you have a great night,” in her fake customer service voice that she only used on the phone when she was trying to pay a bill late without getting any fees.
I sighed and tightened my ponytail. I grabbed my bag and scooted to the bar door quickly without looking back.
CHAPTER TWO
Mike
“Are you going to tell me what that was about?” I pointed at the door as the angry brunette stomped her way through it. Her long ponytail was swaying as she walked away.
My new employee, Jazz, shook her head and turned towards the till, ringing up the specialty drink and then taking the cash out of her pocket to pay the tab.
“Sorry about that. It’s my sister. She can be... a bit of a spitfire,” Jazz said in her monotone way.
She turned away from the register after wrapping up her business and poured out the drink was in front of her sister, starting to wash the dirty glass in the sink behind the bar.
I crossed my arms over my chest and pretended to watch the game that was projected on the big screen towards the back of the room.
There was something about that woman that got under my skin and made me break out in a sweat on my lower back. It could have been how her dark green eyes didn’t look away from me once even while I was staring her down or how when I was as rough as I was with her, she only had smart ass remarks to say back to me. It had been a long time since a woman had stopped me in my tracks.
Something about how she sat in that barstool like she owned the place drove me bonkers. Her confidence was easy, and it was probably as natural to her as breathing. I hated how her mouth quirked up at the edges right as she was thinking of something snarky to say.
It didn’t matter that she was a beautiful woman with a body that turned every man’s head in here, straight or not or that her easy smile as I walked up the bar was both mysterious and playful.
For a minute, I thought about letting Jazz go, just so I wouldn’t have to see that woman ever again.
I wasn’t sure what it was, but I hated her the minute I laid eyes on her and every second I spent in her presence made my skin feel a little too tight around my bones.
But, fuck. She was a goddamn smoke show and those kinds of women brought in the crowds and crowds meant money.
I turned to Jazz and opened my mouth to say something but snapped it shut again. Jazz looked at me with raised eyebrows but said nothing else. Instead, she was pouring a pitcher of beer for the rowdy crew at table 3 and handing the woman a menu, telling her to put some potato skins in her belly before Jazz would have to cut them all off.
I liked Jazz. She was quiet when she needed to be, worked urgently with the customers and seemed to know what she was doing with very little hand holding.
I pretended to watch another inning of hitters walk up to the plate, vaguely aware that Jazz was behind me, waiting for whatever I would say.
I couldn’t fire Jazz on the first day. I’ve done it before. I could be an asshole when the occasion arose, but Jazz was a hard worker and seemed to be in it for the long haul. In a town this size, a good bartender was hard to find.
I turned on my heel, rubbing the scruff on my chin thoughtfully. “We don’t give out free drinks here, Jazz.” My mouth was in its perpetual frown.
She nodded curtly. “Noted.”
From the other end of the bar, the other bartender Keith was watching the whole thing go down, but he was smart enough and knew me enough to keep his mouth shut and keep far away unless he wanted to catch some grief.
“Tell your sister that if she’s going to be here, she has to pay for her own drinks and food.” I didn’t hide the snarl on my face when I talked about her sister. Maybe it would force her to warn her sister from coming in here altogether.
“Got it, boss.” Jazz rested her hand on her hip as she spoke, but her tone was respectful and genuine.
I nodded silently to her and went back to my office, hoping that I could take a quick nap before the closing duties started and I had to close out the tills. I hoped that was the last I would ever see of Jazz’s sister.
Loni
“What the hell was that last night, Jazz?” I tried waiting up for my sister the night before, but I had fallen asleep curle
d up in the middle of my bed instead. My body was sore and tired from lugging around equipment and bartender hours were way past my normal bedtime.
First thing in the morning, I poked my head into Jazz’s darkened bedroom. She groaned and pulled the quilt over her head. The blackout curtains made her room cool and look like it was dusk, not a bright morning with the sun shining overhead.
I ignored her groaning. Jazz was a night owl by nature and I was decidedly not. Her moaning at me and being pissy in the morning was nothing new in our relationship. In fact, it felt more like home.
“I tried waiting up for you, to make sure that everything was all right, but I couldn’t.” I took a loud slurp of my mug of coffee. It was barely two levels above sludge but the sugar and flavored creamer I poured into it made it a lot better.
Jazz didn’t answer, probably hoping that I would get bored and walk away.
“Was your boss mad at you after I left? You know, this Mike character seems like a real piece of work. I don’t like him. I don’t like that you’re working with him. Is he an asshole to you? He totally strikes me as the type of creep to hit on his employees or pay them late or harass the customers or something. Did you see anything like that? We can report him to the—”
“Will you please shut the fuck up?” Jazz interrupted me.
I stifled a laugh. “Oh, dear sister, you know me better than that. So, what are we going to do about your boss? Are you going to find a new job? I could give your resume to the wineries. I know you said that you don’t like wine but—”
As I spoke, Jazz climbed out of bed with her quilt wrapped around her head and slammed the door in my face, but not before giving me the glare of a thousand daggers.
“All right, then. Good talk.” I said to the closed door.
I went about the rest of my morning routine, working out the various scenarios where Jazz could get a new job so she wouldn’t have to work for that awful man ever again.
This meant that I was spending an incredible amount of time thinking about her asshole boss and his dumb looking scowl on his dumb looking face.
If I was another kind of woman, I could see how he might be attractive. He had this rough around the edges, bad boy thing going but he came off too gruff and cold to have any semblance of a personality. And although my sister was older than me, I felt the urge to protect her from him.
I glanced towards Jazz’s closed bedroom door in our small apartment as I brushed my hair in the tiny bathroom.
She was doing me a favor. She didn’t have to come back to this tiny town with no job prospects so she ended up working for that jerk. She did it because I asked her too. Because her little sister was in trouble and needed her to come home.
Our parents lived in Phelan, a twenty-minute drive inland, where the small town of Oaks Pass turned in wineries and rolling hills of farmland and cow pastures. It was far away enough to not even feel like California, let alone to feel like a town.
I could have moved back in with them. They would never let me or Jazz live out of our cars or be truly homeless, but moving back home at twenty-seven felt like failing to me and I would do everything that I could to avoid that from happening.
I hated that it meant that I was dragging Jazz down in the process. When she called, she heard the panic in my voice and she came right away, no questions asked. She showed up the next morning with her hatchback loaded up with everything that she owned and a terse smile on her face. In true Jazz fashion.
Her love was weird and quiet but it was strong and she always made sure that I knew it.
That only made it harder to see her in this position.
I adjusted my ponytail one last time, grabbed my painting apron off the hook by the door and headed out to start my day.
First it was a short watercolors class at the local library and then a coffee shop daytime special with mostly retirees and stay-at-home moms and then it was two back-to-back brewery paint and sips all over town. I would be run ragged by the end of the night, but the dollar waited for no one.
I glanced one more time and Jazz’s closed door and sighed. I wondered if there would ever be a time where I could show up for her in how she had for me.
CHAPTER THREE
Mike
Bank drop off day wasn’t my favorite day of the week since it meant that I had to wake up “early” and deal with people before I was properly ready. Not only was I going to have to deal with regular people, I would have to deal with cheery and smiling people.
Basically, it was the worst.
I squinted at the sun as I crossed the square in the middle of our downtown area to go to the bank. I kept the banker’s bag tucked tightly under my arm. I didn’t think there would be any muggings in the middle of a park in broad daylight in Oaks Pass, but you could never be too careful. Come to think of it, I don’t think any crime really happened in Oaks Pass so I tried my best to relax my shoulders and gird my loins for dealing with the tellers at the bank.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and strolled down the sidewalk. The sun was shining, and it was peaceful enough that I could hear the birds chirping in the trees. Overall, it was a little annoying.
Until I thought I heard something behind me and turned to look. There wasn’t anything but by the time I was turning back around, I fell face forward after tripping over the behind of someone squatting on the ground.
I got my hands out of my pockets with just enough to catch myself before falling flat on my face. I hit my knee hard on the sidewalk, enough to tear the hole in my jeans.
“Hey, what’s the big idea?” I yelled at the person I tripped over.
The woman gasped and stood upright immediately, reaching down to pull me to my feet. Her long brown hair was tied up tightly in a ponytail, but when she looked down at me, it swung forward to frame her face. Her eyelashes were long and dark against the top of her cheeks and she opened her pert pink mouth in surprise. Her hand was soft and gentle in mine and in that brief second, I wondered if the rest of her felt this soft and warm.
I blinked for a moment, thinking I was dreaming, that I had entered some weird fantasy life where I met a beautiful stranger on the street.
Until the moment where our eyes met and almost at the same time, we both said, “Oh, no. It’s you.”
Her voice was so condescending, and she yanked the hand that was reached out to help me up a second back and wrapped around her middle as she straightened.
“What is that supposed to mean?” She had a fire in her eyes that reminded me of Jazz. A don’t fuck with me kind of attitude. It was the kind of attitude that I usually liked on a woman, but on this woman, it was hella annoying.
“You said it too. What the hell do you mean?” Instead of splaying backwards on my ass, I scrambled to my feet without her help, grabbing the bank drop bag from where it fell on the sidewalk and tucking it back under my arm.
She rolled her eyes and went back to what she was doing when I tripped over her, which was collecting something that had spilled on the floor.
“Nothing. I was just surprised to see it was you.” She gathered a bunch of spilled paint brushes in her hand and dropped them into the canvas bag that was hanging on her shoulder.
I rubbed at my now exposed knee. The blood had already stopped since the wound was mostly superficial, but it still stung.
“Dammit.” I murmured to myself.
She glanced at me from the corner of her eye.
“You ripped my pants.” I pointed at the knee, unnecessarily.
“No, sir. You ripped your pants when you tripped over me. It was an accident, obviously.” She sniffed and picked up the rest of her things and started moving towards the small car parked near the curb.
“No. I only tripped because you were in the middle of the sidewalk. This is a walkway, not a sit around and wait to trip strangers way.” I raised my voice and I could feel the anger spiking in the back of my head, giving me a headache. But it didn’t matter. It was early. I already hated talking to
people but add this broad in and I was already heated.
“Who wears jeans in August?” She wiped away the sweat on her forehead as she carried heavy boxes from the sidewalk to her car.
I sputtered, thrown off kilter. She said those words with such a confident, throw away attitude that it was jarring. I gritted my teeth together. This woman was incredibly maddening and every minute I spent in her presence, just made me more pissed off.
“I’m usually inside, obviously.” I crossed my arms over my chest protectively.
“Yeah, I can tell. That’s where you get your amazing people skills.” She rolled her eyes at me.