Oliver’s was bedlam, brimming with noisy, gyrating patrons and harried, cranky bartenders. Me, along with three others, manned the bar, passing each other with frantic half-jogs in the cramped space, dodging spills on the bar mats and elbows and answering to every call of “more, more, more!” with as much speed as possible. There was zero relaxation time and every second was punctuated by the crunch of ice being shoved into glasses, the clink of liquor bottles or the fizz of fresh soda.
By my fiftieth rum and coke, I was still floating on Cloud Nine.
I shot cola into rum-filled glasses as if in a dream, a stupid smile on my face for every person that ordered the signature drink on $5 R&C night, a deal the owner loved advertising every Saturday, and every college student loved, too.
Shouts of “nice ass!” and “when do you get off tonight?” were met with a serene wave on my part as I went about my duties. Remembering THE KISS with Spence was an excellent buffer to every jackass that happened to be able to shout above the music. Not even Laurie could put a damper on my high.
“The hell’s wrong with you?” she asked as she reached behind me to grab the bottle of rum, her boob deliberately squishing into my arm and throwing me off balance.
“Absolutely nothing,” I said sweetly. There wasn’t even an urge to use the soda gun on her face.
“Whatever,” she mumbled after considerable study of me. A part of her enjoyed my upset over her and Trev, and I was pretty sure she was disappointed she wasn’t getting the rise out of me she used to.
“Hey, Ems!” Another bartender, Joey, called over to me. He was elbow deep in the ice well below the bar.
I finished pouring a row of four rum and cokes and looked over.
“Can you deliver five specials to the table in the corner?”
“What?” I shouted over the music. “I’m not a delivery service, Joe!”
“Please?” he begged, still hunched over the ice well. “I gotta refill this ice before the whole place riots, and that table needs to stay happy!”
I threw the rum bottle over to Carlo, the fourth bartender, who yelled for it. “Why are you keeping them happy?” I asked.
“Why do you think?” he called back. Laurie stepped between us, cutting off any further explanation, but I didn’t need any.
Chances were, the table was brimming with hot girls and Joey wanted to make an impression. He was one of the most sought after employees at Oliver’s, with his Italian good looks and the biceps of an Olympian. Normally he never worked hard, instead waiting for women to come to him. Which they did, almost every shift he worked.
Which meant this crowd must be special.
“Dare I believe you’re falling in love?” I teased while lining up five glasses on the bar.
Laurie rolled her eyes and departed, her hands full of drinks.
“Wait’ll you see her!” he said, grinning. He lifted a large bucket of ice, passed to him by one of the bus boys.
“Uh-huh,” I said, but didn’t need him to hear me. I lifted and then spun a rum bottle upside down, enjoying my brief Cocktail moment (as it was one of—okay, the only—maneuver I could do), and dragged it across the glasses, splashing healthy doses of liquor on the way. I went the other direction with the soda gun, and soon had five fresh R&Cs, which I spread across a carry tray—dusty, because we never carried drinks over to anyone unless specifically motivated.
“I’m splitting your tip!” I said to Joey as I walked behind him, tray balanced delicately with one hand. I had enough of a grip to give him a light tap with my boot on his butt as I passed.
“Deal!” came his muffled reply under the bar.
With the ease of a figure skater, I glided through the masses, drink tray held high. In order to do so, I harkened back to my days in Wyoming where I part-timed as a waitress at a diner near my dad’s work.
Yes, I wore roller skates.
The table of ladies wasn’t hard to miss. People parted like rolling waves as I made my way through to the back, to the high-top that housed five women, all in varying degrees of stunning. Ebony, blonde, brunette, and auburn were all properly represented, with flushed faces of a night of drinking, yet not so much that they held glazed-over blankness than sparkly silliness.
“Excuse me, ladies,” I said as I set each drink on the stained, graffitied wooden table. “Courtesy of Joey behind the bar, these are for—”
Daya.
The shot glass of limes nearly tipped onto her lap as soon as I noticed her, perched with perfect posture on her stool, her half-grin spreading miles across my spine.
“Am I the drunk one, or are you?” she asked, and plucked a lime wedge from the glass and squeezed it into the drink I’d placed in front of her. If it was a playful tone, I didn’t catch it above the pounding music.
“Sorry, long shift,” I said lamely, then added, super brightly, “Enjoy!”
“Wait.” Her hand caught my arm, ice cold and wet from gripping her drink. “I know you.”
“Uh, sure,” I said vaguely, refusing to turn all the way back around. “Probably from class. But I have to get back to—”
“Emily, is it?”
“Right,” I said. Who cared what she knew me as.
“Guys, I want you all to meet Emily!”
The way my non-name pealed out of her mouth had me turning back to the group.
“Emily, this is Krista, Amberly, Cara and Steph.” She pointed at each one, and I nodded politely. “Spence introduced me to her.”
“Did you guys want me to get Joey over here?” I asked. “I’m sure he’d love to—”
“Wait, this is the girl?” the one across from Daya asked. Krista, I thought. She was of Asian descent and had the flawless expression of someone who’d never experienced anything bad in her life, ever.
“The girl?” I asked.
“Right, the one who’s big time crushing on your boyfriend,” another one—Cara, with flat-ironed blonde hair—said.
Spence’s mouth, his tongue clashing with mine, floated into my head. Slowly, with a painful spread, I felt my cloud dispersing.
“Spence is your boyfriend?” I asked Daya.
Daya squinted at me like she was about to say yes, bitch, but her gaze took a dive to the left, and she played with the straw in her drink when she said, “He certainly is. So I suggest you keep your study sessions platonic.”
“Somehow,” I said, “I’ve failed to be convinced.”
Another of Daya’s friends, the one closest to me, hissed in a breath. I’d forgotten which one she was.
“You don’t have to worry, anyway,” I said. “His tutoring is over.”
“Oh?” Daya perked up, playing idly with her straw. “How wonderful. I hope he gave you that A.”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. Most of me was urging an escape, but a teensy, jabbing, Spence-fugued part of me wanted to see how much information I could get from her. “I handed my paper in yesterday, so hopefully we’ll see next week. But he definitely made a difference.”
“I’m sure he did,” another sidekick said.
I see. Better to nip and scratch. “Look, Spence told me you two weren’t dating, so if you have a problem, how about you blurt it out instead of having me try to decipher your minions’ snide comments.”
“Ghetto chicks are always so goddamned rude.”
I reared back, but I couldn’t have possibly heard what I thought I did. I said to Krista, “Excuse me?”
“Seriously, you come with no filter. We’re not the ones in the wrong here and sleeping with someone’s boyfriend. What happened to girl code, huh? You think you get a pass because you come from hard times and don’t have to follow the rules?”
“What the—” Anger boiled up into my throat, but I wouldn’t let the burn take away my voice. “Who do you think you are? Spence was tutoring me, and even if he wasn’t, how dare you talk about me like that? You know nothing about my life, or where I come from, or what even happened between he and I—”
“Oh no?” The one beside Krista piped up, a redhead with porcelain skin. “I can pin you in ten seconds. You come from a small town and you try to hide that with heavy makeup and tight black clothing, but the real you shines through your long, untended hair and freckled, sun-damaged arms. Farm girl, I’d say. Grew up in Daddy’s business with big dreams, thinking you could escape because the bright lights of New York called your name.”
“Ponder all you want—”
“So you work hard for that academic scholarship,” she continued, “making valedictorian at your fifty-person high school school, and good for you! So smart. You get on a bus after kissing your momma and poppa good-bye, polka-dot suitcase in hand. But then you come here and realize how dirty it is, how polluted with smoke and assholes. Rent is higher than you thought, so you take the job a valedictorian from Podunk, Kansas is qualified for. Barkeep. College is tougher than you thought, too. Your grades slip. There are so many people, so much competitiveness, and your parents aren’t there anymore to tell you you’re their smartest darling, how proud they are that their child can get the college education they never got. You panic because that dream career starts slipping through your fingers.”
“And then you see him,” Krista joined in. “That tall, good-looking, quenching man, who’s smart, grew up in New York and knows exactly how to work her mysteries. And you beg, and plead, and finally he takes you on—out of pity—and sits you down and seduces the cute, innocent rosebud until all your petals are bruised.” The girl smiled with the scales of a snake glittering across her cheeks. “And you even try kissing him, don’t you? Thinking this Prince Charming in the fairy tale of your big city life is yours.” She took a long sip of her drink. The bar had ceased in its noise, taken over by a tunneling rush in my ears, bringing a heat with it that curdled through the holes. “And yet here you are, still bartending.”
“That’s…” I breathed in, refusing to allow the poison of their words to sink in, even if they were mostly right, save for Kansas. “You think poor chicks are rude? How about rich, entitled bitches who think slumming in dive bars for five dollar drinks equals a fantastic Thursday night.”
“He’ll use you up until you’re nothing but a snot-filled tissue,” another—Steph—said. “Daya’s the only one he treats as pristine.”
“We’re done here.” Daya finally spoke, although she didn’t look as content as the others. “Just turn around, Emily. Get back to your employment.”
“For the record,” I said to her, my voice shaking with rage, “It isn’t me you should be throwing insults at and slut-shaming, but Spencer, your alleged boyfriend, who did you wrong. What happened to girl code?” I retorted. I scanned each face, and one by one the gazes avoided me like dominos falling. “Huh?”
“You knew he was dating me!” Daya said, rising out of her seat. “Quit acting like a dumb, innocent twat when you went after him knowing full well he was taken!”
A sticky, sick feeling—shame—entered my gut. “I did not—”
“Hey!”
A red-jacketed arm came between us, separating Daya and I, which was probably a good thing because we were dangerously close and I’d actually raised the plastic drink tray as a shield. Or weapon?
“Why are you messing with her? All she’s trying to do is give you your f-f-frickin’ drinks and keep you drunk and happy. Why be jerks?”
The strange guy. He stood in the middle of us, a full head taller, his eyes and voice ablaze with fury despite his stutter, and he directed it all at Daya, whose clear eyes went wide at his reaction.
“Hey…” I said, and rested a hand on his arm, trying to pull him closer to me and away from her.
“You’re a bad, n-nasty person!” he yelled at Daya, spittle flying into her face. “Be ashamed of yourself.”
“Cool it, freak,” the redhead said, and stepped in front of Daya. “Emily was just leaving, anyway.”
“And maybe so should you!” Krista called from her safe distance in a corner.
“It’s fine. Really,” I assured, and pulled him away, through the crowds and closer to the bar.
“They’re terrible,” he said, still shouting as he twisted to face me. “They shouldn’t treat you that way.”
“I kind of asked for it,” I admitted, but tried to placate him by rubbing his arm. “It’s just words, right? Sticks and stones and all that. I’ll be okay.”
“But you didn’t deserve it. You never do, Emme. You’re too kind to have those things said to you.” He took a minute to catch his breath. “I grew up in tough times, too. I know what it’s like to be teased.”
“And we become stronger for it,” I said, though my chest protested. It felt heavy. Clogged with cloying phlegm. “Thank you, though. Very much. For doing what you did.”
His shoulders, tight with anger, finally lowered. “Of course, Emme. I’d do anything.”
I smiled. “Rest of the night, you’ll get drinks on the house on me. All right? Hey, what’s your name?”
He brightened, his teeth growing huge as his lips stretched across them. The excitement in his answering smile was almost blinding. “Ed. Ed Carver. B-b-but…” He frowned, as if frustrated he couldn’t get his sentence out.
“It’s okay. Take your time.”
“I-I want to do something…better.” He reached for my hand and clasped on. I didn’t resist, shocked at the sudden, gripping contact. “Can I take you out? On-on a date?”
“Oh…Ed…”
My crestfallen expression gave him the answer he needed. He dropped my hand like a rock. “So it’s true then. You do like him.”
“It’s not that,” I defended lamely. “I mean, it’s not…it’s complicated. And I really appreciate what you did for me, but I can’t…”
Oh god, Krista and the Blonde were coming up right behind Ed, to the bar, and were well within hearing range. Their Cheshire smiles said it all. Damn our $5 drinks filled with mostly ice.
“I can’t go out with you, Ed. I’m sorry,” I finished.
The crushing blow was further emphasized by a cawing behind Ed, a raucous laughter that came from the two women who would be entertained by a tall, gentle, vulnerable man asking a pretty girl on a date.
Ed’s devastation twisted, his brows morphing into total hurt and anger and his mouth following suit. He reared around and roared, “FUCK. OFF,” at them, and it was so startling and loud that not only me, but many others around him, skipped back a few steps.
Like the startled hamsters they were, those two scampered back to their table.
“Ed—” I tried, but he threw off my hold and stormed out of the bar.
#
Ed departed, but my adrenaline didn’t.
Throughout the rest of my shift I had the shakes, my fingers trembling every time I balanced a glass on the bar or tipped a bottle. It could’ve been because of Daya and her crew, or Ed, or both, but in either scenario, only one person was to blame.
Spence.
It became easier to accept shots from patrons, both those flirting or deciding to tip in tequila rather than cash. And when Daya left, along with Joey, Krista draped in his arms, it was better. My trembles stopped at the third tequila shot, and by the fifth, I was near to Coyote Ugly’ing across the bartop.
“Okay missy, I think you’re set.”
Laurie pulled my arm down after I lifted it—and a bottle of tequila—and roared along with the crowd as I tipped it into my mouth.
“Go away,” I said, putting on the best air of bitchiness I could. And ignored the trail of tequila down my chin.
“I don’t like this any more than you do,” she said while extricating the bottle from my hands. I made baby-grabbing motions toward it. “But even I can’t ignore the extreme drunken state you’re in.”
“I had a day.”
“I’m aware,” she said breezily, and cupped my elbow. “Let the boys run last call.” She bent down to the lockers and grabbed our purses with one hand as she pulled me along.
“Where’re we going?”
“To a house party.”
“Really?”
“No, you twit. I’m taking you home.” She pushed the front door open into frigid air.
I barely had time to register the crisp outside compared to the hot beer-heat of the bar before she was yanking me into the back of a strange black car.
“Hey!” I cried as she heaved me in, using my hands and elbows as barriers against the doorframe. “You don’t have permission! Kidnapping! I need to report a kidnapping!”
The driver gave a three-quarter turn, raised a brow, then stared forward again.
Damn these New Yorkers.
“No one thinks I’m abducting you. You’re about five times my height and have enough alcohol in your system to get me drunk on contact,” Laurie said, and folded herself around me to get in the car.
“You slept with my boyfriend,” I spat.
I got the driver’s attention again.
Laurie sighed before she sat on the far side, arms crossed over her chest. “That doesn’t make me some evil queen out to sabotage the fair princess. You want to stay out there and freeze, be my guest. But I’m going home. I can either drop you off on the way or you can go inside and beg Connor or Enrique for a ride.”
The thought of wobbling back inside and attempting to communicate with my co-workers without looking like a fool had me pausing. After kicking the last of the stragglers out, they would be rinsing the mats out back, wiping down the bar and stacking the stools on the high-tops. I’d have to wait over an hour for that to be finished because I’d be in no condition to stack or handle a hose, and they probably wouldn’t even get me pizza while I waited. My other option would be calling a car myself, but despite car apps being all the rage and for the most part, perfectly safe, an irrational part of me still shied away from being drunk and alone in a car with a male stranger.
“All right,” I said, weaving a little. “Fine.”
“Then get your ass in here. You’re bringing in a ton of cold, and not just through your death glare.”
I complied, and after a few attempts with the seat belt, buckled in. The driver pulled away from the curb without a word.
We spent the initial minutes of our trip in silence, without even a radio to buffer the air. I focused on the outside, at the shadowed pedestrians backlit by the everlasting beam of storefronts and street lights fusing together in fluorescent streaks as we sped by.
“Where am I dropping you off? I’ll put it in,” Laurie finally said while holding out her phone. Its white light spread a ghostly cast along the ridges of her face.
“Oh. Norfolk and Stanton. On the corner is fine.”
She tapped it in, and we were doused in silence again.
We were stopped at an intersection, with a cluster of people crossing in front of us with warbling “whoops!” and laughter, when I said, “Why?”
Laurie was enraptured by the group, especially when one fell on the hood of our car, gave a muffled “sorry, man!” and kept going.
I tried again. “Why’d you do it?”
There was no need to elaborate. I expected Laurie to go on immediate defense, say something snarky to shut me up, and have that be the end of it. Instead, she pulled her phone back out, twisting it in her hands. “You’re drunk, Emme.”
“Not sauced enough that I can’t ask you why you fucked my boyfriend.”
Right when she opened her mouth, I added, “Actually—it’s not even that. ‘Cause I can’t sit here and yell at you for stealing him. I knew I was losing Trev, or more like I was slowly walking away from him. We were torn—cracking apart, but you didn’t know that. I thought we were friendly, you and I. Not friends, exactly, because friends wouldn’t screw other friends’ partners, but guess what came to my attention today? Girl Code.”
“Is that what was going on in the back corner with you and that group of women?”
“Don’t divert.” I pointed at her. “I’m tipsy, not stupid.”
“I’m sorry.”
The driver took a sharp left turn, and my body went as slack as my mouth as I banged into the car door. “What?”
“I said I’m sorry.” Head lowered, she stared at me through her blonde waves. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you by hooking up with him. He came up to the bar one day looking for you, but you’d already left for class. The place was pretty empty, so he sat down and we struck up a conversation. It was nothing, really. Just small talk and jokes, but then a…a happiness came over me. I don’t know. Next thing I realized, an hour had gone by and we were still talking. Without one break in conversation. That never happened to me before.”
Trev had an amazing ability to engage. I couldn’t fault Laurie for that part. He was like that hypnotizing snake in Jungle Book, the one where you’re so deep in dreams and pleasure that there was no realizing the slow suffocation. It took breaking up and looking back to figure that out, but as someone who didn’t know him, a fresh girl subject to his wiles wouldn’t understand that this was a game Trev enjoyed winning. It wasn’t about feelings for him, but conquest. He liked knowing he had an irresistible lure, one he enjoyed employing when my back was turned.
“He was still someone’s,” I said. “You knew that.”
“I did. Which is why I backed off. Told him my shift was over and booked it out of there. But he pursued, Emme. He got my number from one of my friends who didn’t know anything about his history—just assumed he was a cute guy trying to get me on a date—and it was relentless. I’m not gonna say I didn’t enjoy it. It’s only…the next thing I knew, we were in bed together.”
Despite the separation, the knowledge that he was an ass, that revelation still stung. “Okay.”
“I like him, Emme. I mean, I really like him. I didn’t do this just to have a great fuck and a good story. I wouldn’t’ve—I would never have done this if I didn’t have true feelings for him. I wasn’t strong enough to say no, despite being fully aware of you in the background, and for that I apologize. And also for…being such a bitch to you when you confronted me on it. I’m the one at fault. Not you.”
I wasn’t clear on how honest she was being, or how suspicious I should be, because this was not how I envisioned this conversation going. Laurie wasn’t saying anything I could sink my teeth into and tear away at, no lashing words or biting comments that could have me rearing forward and knifing into everything she said. She was admitting everything. Worse, she felt guilty about her secret relationship with Trev, and sorry, and these weren’t things I could happily decapitate her for.
“He’s ignoring me now, anyway.” Laurie’s phone fell to her lap and she stared out the window. “You found out and all he wants is to get you back. I told him I loved—” She stopped, swallowed, then continued. “I asked him to stay because it was clear you were done with him, but he has other ideas. Without me. He doesn’t want to be with me anymore.”
“He told you that?”
She whipped toward me, and the black-and-white nightscape behind her highlighted her eyes with a sinister gleam. “You won, Emme. I was no match for you, even despite your confession that you were falling out of love with him. Happy now? You won a guy you don’t even like anymore, while the girl that does love him, the one that actually wants to be with him every night, is left with nothing but a reputation of a home wrecker.”
The evil glitter I thought I’d seen before was actually the beginnings of tears, pooling within the shadows of the darkened interior. “Laurie, I—”
“You think the whole bar isn’t talking? The people that know me, my friends? They’re all on your side. I’m the asshole, the one that shouldn’t have crossed the line. And now I have to live with that. All my life I’ve been nothing but trustworthy, and now my best friend can’t even look at me the same way.”
The beginnings of I’m sorry reached my lips, but I caught them in time.
“You signed up for this,” I said, and barreled forward despite the startled jerk of her chin. “Trev didn’t hide the fact he had a girlfriend, didn’t bamboozle you into thinking you were the only one in his life. You jumped under his sheets with the intention of breaking up a relationship, and whether or not it was on solid ground shouldn’t matter. We were still together.”
Laurie started to say something, but I cut in. “So you are going to suck it up, first by admitting what you did—which you have—and then by getting over a guy who had you tossing away your morals like they were dirty laundry. A guy who had your friends looking at you like you couldn’t be trusted. One who cast you aside the instant his girlfriend wised up. That is not a man you should love. That isn’t a guy you should even like. I made the mistake of committing to him for six years and you better not be stupid enough to do the same. So go to your friends, admit you’re an idiot, then cry on their shoulder. ‘Cause if they’re friends like mine, they’ll forgive you for whatever sins you’ve committed. And any other fuck-ups in the future.” I thought for a moment as the car slowed to a stop at the corner of Norfolk. “Save for sleeping with one of their boyfriends.”
Laurie remained silent as I thanked the driver and propped the door open.
I had one foot out of the car when Laurie asked, “Are you sure you’re drunk?”
“Well,” I said as I heaved out of the vehicle, then bent down so I could see her. “This was one hell of a sobering ride.”
I shut the door on her bewildered expression and hobbled off the curb and onto the sidewalk. Leaning against a brownstone, I took a few long, shaky breaths. It had taken all of my superpowers to say those sentences to her with the level calm of a sober nun.
Now, with the car motoring away behind me and Laurie a blind distance away, I pulled my hair out of my face, purse dangling at my back, and threw up.