by Tori Fox
I clench the rings around my neck and take a deep breath. I grab my cop hat off the kitchen counter and head to work.
As I walk into the bar, I immediately hear a catcall whistle. Too bad I know that whistle.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I ask Seraphina.
“I wanted to see if you showed up in that costume.”
“And what if I didn’t?” I say, crossing my arms over my chest before realizing that makes my boobs nearly fall out.
“I bought a second one and it’s sitting in the car.”
I shake my head at her. “You are the worst.”
She jumps off her stool and wraps her arms around me. “You love me.”
“I don’t know why. I am starting to question my sanity.” I look down at her outfit and see she is wearing a sexy Elsa costume. “What the fuck, Sera! That was what I was going to wear.”
“Well we couldn’t both be wearing the same thing. That’s why I needed you to wear the cop one. And it looks damn good on you, girl.”
“You don’t work here. Who cares if we have the same costume.”
“They know we are besties. And if we were to match, you couldn’t be Elsa. You would have to be Ana. Duh.”
I roll my eyes at that.
“So do you think sexy cop neighbor might show up tonight?”
“Why the hell would he come here? He’s like thirty-something. Not his scene.”
She smiles at that. “Mmm. And how would you know that?”
“I just do.”
“You know you work here and you are going to be thirty in a few months.”
“Not the point. And you aren’t that far behind me.”
“I am still much younger than you.”
“By three months,” I mutter.
She sits back on her stool. “I bet I can find a way to get sexy cop here.”
“He doesn’t work tonight.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about a man you don’t seem to know.”
I start to walk away. “You are ridiculous.”
“I just think he should see you in that outfit.”
I turn back to her. “He did.”
Her eyes light up at that but I don’t give her the joy of knowing everything that happened between us in the last twenty-four hours. I head into the back and put my purse away before stepping behind the bar.
It’s still early enough that it is slow. So I am taking in the calm before the storm as best I can. This place has a costume contest every year and it gets rowdy. The managers told me they start turning people away at ten because it gets too crowded. Some will wait outside for people to leave but most people stay until close.
Two hours pass and it’s slowly starting to fill up. It’s just after eight, so I know it will be wild soon. I bring another margarita over to Seraphina, her eyes locked on my co-worker, Liam.
“How long are you going to be here?” I ask her.
She blinks a few times then looks at me. “As long as he is here, I am here,” she says pointing at Liam.
“He’s still gay. That hasn’t changed since the first time you met him.”
She shrugs. “Doesn’t mean I can’t look.”
“Let me get you a napkin. You’re drooling.”
I walk away from my crazy friend to serve others. Liam is easy on the eyes and tonight I don’t mind looking at him either. Last night I told him I was going to be a cop so he decided he wanted to be a fireman. And he looks fucking fine.
He has on fireman turnouts with suspenders. That’s it. No shirt. And he is pure muscle. An eight pack of abs, biceps the size of my head, pecs that are hard as rocks. His tan skin plays well off the yellow reflective material. And when he throws that pearly white grin to the ladies, dollars just float from the sky.
He works as a personal trainer when he isn’t bartending. And I am pretty sure he models for romance book covers. He’s sworn off love just like me. We like to make fun of the lovebirds in the bar. Mostly just the sad people trying too hard for a hookup. I know he is a total slut though, just like them, but he is happy living his life that way. He is one of my best friends besides Seraphina and he is always there for me when I need someone. He is a truly genuine nice guy and I hope one day he finds Mr. Right.
“I think you should dress like that every night,” Liam says to me as I squeeze past him to grab a bottle of tequila.
“Yeah, not going to happen.”
“Girl, you are bringing in more tips than I am.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I don’t know about that,” he says as he mixes a cocktail. “There are a shit ton of guys around this bar staring at you. Lots of cash in hand.”
I look around and notice there are a lot of guys around. “How do you know they aren’t staring at you?”
“I wish they were. But those boys.” He nods where about ten young guys stand at the end of the bar. “They aren’t gay. You should pull your boobs out a bit more. I bet they will give us a huge tip.”
“Not happening.”
“Please, I want to see this happen.”
“Are you batting your eyelashes at me?”
He grins. “Only for you, baby girl.”
“Hey, can we get some service down here? You two can stop flirting and work,” a customer shouts at the end of the bar.
“Oh brother. Do you want to serve that asshole or me?”
“Boobs, girl. He’ll forget being an asshole any second.”
I huff as I walk away from Liam toward the asshole at the end of the bar. Turns out Liam was right. I bent over and let my boobs fall out of my dress a bit more and when I went back to set down his drink, his eyes were glued to my chest. He tipped me twelve dollars for his eight dollar drink.
Joey, the third bartender, started just as the bar got slammed. But thanks to Liam’s advice and my luck of being the only girl behind the bar, I was rolling in the tips. Liam and Joey, who was also dressed like Liam, decided to only serve the ladies and I took on all the guys. We had to empty our tip jar out four times by midnight.
The costume contest was wild and obnoxiously loud. Too bad no one told me there was also a staff contest. I am glad it’s dark in here or else everyone would see my face looking like a tomato.
“Umm, why did no one tell me this?”
Liam laughs. “Because we know you wouldn’t do it.”
I stare at him, slack-jawed and speechless.
He grabs my arm and hauls me up on stage after the servers all walk downstage. “Now you should really play up the part. Swing those handcuffs, smack that baton around.”
He pulls my shades off my hat and puts them on my face. “The staff winner gets a thousand dollar bonus and New Year’s Eve off.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it’s why we always dress up. Now go,” he says, pushing me toward the front of the stage. “Act sexy. The customers choose.”
I could kill him right now for not telling me earlier in the week. Hell, any single one of my co-workers could have told me this. I am the only new person here in the last year, they all knew about this. And I bet a hundred bucks, Seraphina knew too.
I suck it up as a bunch of hootin’ and hollerin’ goes on. I glance down and see my cleavage is looking on point. I take a deep breath. I try to let go of all the things that usually hold me back. My fear of just about everything, loneliness, love, loss, acceptance, but when I look down at myself, I see all the flaws that I’ve let bury me. But since I am on stage, I put on the façade I work hard at every day. I grab my handcuffs from my belt and swing them around as I walk. When I reach the front, I take the baton and smack it a few times in my palm before turning around and heading back. I didn’t give it everything I got. The Anna ten years ago would still be out their wild and crazy, but at least I didn’t chicken out. I did something.
Liam smiles at me as I strut back to jump off the stage but it’s his turn and he decides to make me part of his act. He throws me over his shoulder. I smack him against h
is back numerous times before he finally puts me down. But my embarrassment isn’t over. He uses me as a pole to grind on me just as Joey walks on stage and joins him. I have no idea what to do. I’m frozen in place. Their act is soon over and Joey swoops me up and carries me with one arm around my back and the other under my knees off the stage.
Once we walk back down, I smack both in the arm. “What the fuck was that?”
Liam smirks. “Just needed to get you to loosen up a bit.”
“I don’t need loosening up,” I huff as I make my way back for the bar knowing a lot of people are waiting for drinks after the ten-minute staff contest.
Seraphina strolls up to me drunk. Which means she is about to speak her mind. “You do need to loosen up.”
“No, I don’t. I am a perfectly content human being.”
She glances down at the two rings around my neck then back up to my face. “If that’s the case, why do you still wear those rings?”
“I am not talking about this right now.”
She steps in front of me before I can make it around the bar. “Fine. This really isn’t the time or place. But you need to think about what I asked you soon enough. It’s been almost seven years, Anna. I think it’s time you moved on. Time you started living your life again. Stop sheltering yourself from the world. Because the Anna I knew before everything happened would have embraced her wildness on stage. Let loose. Laughed. And if you keep wearing the mask you’ve had on for the last seven years, you are never going to be that woman again.”
I can’t even say a word back to her because she heads straight out the door. She has been pestering me the entire time I’ve been in Asheville about letting go and not letting the past rule my life. But she didn’t experience the loss I did. She didn’t lose everything she had. She didn’t let someone shred her heart apart so terribly there is no hope of stitching the pieces together.
My pleasant mood I was in before she confronted me completely disappears. I spend the rest of the night battling demons in my head and being short with customers. Liam, unsurprisingly, won the costume contest.
After we close and clean up, the majority of the staff stays behind and drinks. I never drink that much, mostly because I know how bad the calories in alcohol are, but after the words Seraphina said, I can’t help but drink.
So I do.
Gin and tonic after gin and tonic. Hoping it helps erase the memories that float to the surface of my brain. I grip the rings around my neck tightly, willing my mind to forget, to build the wall back up I keep around the past, but no matter how much I will it to happen, it doesn’t.
By the time everyone starts to leave, the sun is beginning to rise.
I step off my stool and nearly fall over but Liam catches me. “You okay, baby girl?”
I nod. I kept quiet most of the time we were all drinking. Adding to the conversation at times so I didn’t look as despondent as I was feeling.
“I’m going to drive you home.”
“I’ll get a cab.”
“You live a few blocks from me. It’s fine.”
I pull out my phone and try to open the taxi app but my vision is not working.
Liam grabs my phone from my hand and loops an arm around my shoulder. “I’m going to get you home so you can sleep this off. Hopefully sleep will help.”
“Help what?” I slur.
“The mood that Seraphina put you in. No one else noticed, but I did.”
I look up at him, trying to find words. When he directs me to the exit and opens his car door for me, I know there is nothing I can really say.
I fall asleep on the ride home, the alcohol hitting me hard. When we pull in front of my house, I can already feel a headache coming on.
Liam parks and gets out, walking over to my side of the car. He lifts me out of the seat even when I protest but I can tell from the spinning of my head that walking would prove to be difficult.
He opens the door and carries me into my room. I fall back on the bed, half my body hanging off. I think Liam has left but then he walks back in with water and Advil.
“Take these. It might help a bit.”
“Thank you.”
“You going to be okay?”
I nod as I try to take off the stupid costume I have on. I struggle as I get my boots off and then can’t figure out how to unhook the garter from my stockings.
Liam chuckles and soon enough his hands are on my thighs, unbuckling the garters. “Stand up, baby girl.”
He pulls me into a standing position and I grip his arms to keep from falling over. He helps me undress and finds a t-shirt in a drawer for me to put on.
He pulls back my covers and helps me to bed, tucking me in.
I grasp at the necklace around my neck, Seraphina’s words making their way back to my head, and I burst into tears.
“Shhh, baby girl. Don’t cry. It’s going to be okay. Maybe not now, but it will be.”
I try to find comfort in Liam’s words but today it’s just too hard.
“Can you stay?” I ask him.
“Anything for you, Anna May.”
I hear him take his costume off and feel the shift in the bed as he lays down next to me. He gathers me in his arms and holds me.
This isn’t the first time he’s done this. But he knows when I need it. He might not know my whole story, very few do, but he knows enough to understand that my pain runs deep enough to tear me apart.
He whispers words of comfort as the tears start to dry and I finally drift off to sleep.
8
Noah
I’m in my front yard cleaning up some housework from the past two days. My attempt at redoing the front porch of my house only somewhat successful. Turns out it takes a lot of work to redo a porch and I needed more than two days or another set of hands.
I wave at Anna as she gets out of her car and heads into her house. It brings back the memory of Sunday afternoon when I was cutting wood with a table saw and saw a man leave Anna’s house in a pair of fireman turnouts and no shirt.
I’ve never been a jealous man. I’ve never had a reason to be jealous of anyone or anything.
But seeing a man walk out of Anna’s house at one in the afternoon irks me in a way I’ve never felt before. And I am not sure why. I barely know the girl. Hardly ever talk to her. But after seeing her naked, I cannot get her out of my mind.
Two days later and I still can’t shake the feeling. I need to get laid. That’s all it comes down to. It’s been far too long.
My phone rings, a needed distraction. “What’s up, Mase?”
“I closed.”
“What?”
“I closed on the studio. Last night. It’s mine.”
“No fucking way. Awesome, man. I knew it would happen.”
I can hear him smiling through the phone. “The guys and I are working on setting it up this week if you want to stop by when you aren’t working.”
“I’ll see what I can do. How much needs to be done?”
“Not a lot. It was in pretty good shape. And we can’t afford newer equipment yet, so just loading in instruments, a few monitors, and decorating.”
“Wow, man. I am happy for you. I might be able to stop by before work in the next couple days.”
“Sweet. We are trying to get it ready for a party on Saturday night. Inviting a bunch of local musicians, bands, and the like. Think you can make it?”
Considering I don’t have much of a social life besides time spent with Brutus or visiting my parents, I know I am free. “Of course, man.”
“Well if any of your cop friends know of musicians, pass the info out.”
“What if I know of a musician?” I ask as I look toward Anna’s walk-up.
Mason chuckles into the phone. “You have friends besides Brutus?”
“Fuck off. I do.”
“Who?” he asks and I can hear him laughing in the background with his friends.
“Uhh, my neighbor. I actually told her about your studio the ot
her day.”
“Dude, I don’t want your eighty-year-old neighbor coming to our party.”
“I wasn’t talking about Mrs. Wilson, dick. My other neighbor.”
“Is she hot?”
I shake my head. Mason might be twenty-six but he acts sixteen when it comes to anything besides music and business. “You’ve seen Mrs. Wilson. She does look your type,” I joke.
“I’ve always been into floral tapestries. Maybe she could help decorate this place.”
“And after she can take her dentures out and blow you. You can finally feel what a blow job is like.”
“Gross, dude.”
“I know you are scared of them.”
When Mason was in high school, his girlfriend gave him head and accidentally bit his dick. My brothers and I swear to this day he hasn’t let a girl give him head since.
“I’ve had my dick sucked enough to know what it feels like,” he says before changing the subject. “Saturday. Seven p.m. Maybe I’ll see you before then.”
“I’ll try to stop by this week. Talk later.”
We hang up and I can’t help but laugh thinking about my old neighbor, Mrs. Wilson, getting on her knees for my brother. His dick would probably give her a heart attack.
I shake the thought of Mason’s dick from my head and finish moving my tools into my detached garage. I have just enough time to take Brutus on a quick walk before heading into work.
I lean over and set Brutus down. I try to catch my breath as I rest my elbows on my knees. I’m exhausted. It was a long night. But I needed to get my run in. Brutus was all for it too. Until he wasn’t. We went two miles and I turned around to head back, but Brutus tried to keep going forward through the rest of the park. So like an idiot, I kept running. Until he decided at the farthest end of the park, he was done. I tried to get him off the ground. Tried to get him to budge an inch. But he just laid down and rolled over.
Dick.
I sat and waited for ten minutes to see if he needed a rest and we would walk back but that didn’t work either. So I found myself carrying his fat ass back home. Damn bulldog in him. It was all going fine until it started raining which quickly turned into a thunderstorm. And even though this dog looks like he is a tough guy, he is a baby when it comes to thunder. So not only was I carrying an eighty-pound dog, three and a half miles home, I now had a dog shaking with anxiety over the thunder. I had no choice but to start running.