1
The Diving Swallow was Redd “Crimson Fury” Marston’s favorite bar to go to after work. It was right by his house, he knew all the bartenders and liked the regulars. It was just a shitty dive bar, but that was sort of his style. It was just an ordinary Thursday night when Redd was on his way home from work when the thought occurred to him, as it regularly did, that it would be a good idea to stop by to have a drink after a particularly hard day.
He was a boxing coach for teens, and such a line of work sometimes knocked him on his ass, literally— as Redd would say. He was training with a kid who showed a lot of promise and was getting really good with his left hook. Due to that fact, he ended up giving Redd a black eye, although it was nothing he wasn’t used to.
Before he went into being a boxing instructor, Redd was about to become a serious contender for the cruiserweight championship, but there’s a point in many boxers’ careers when they have to shift their focus on more urgent matters. He knew that either you get too old or you get injured one too many times. For Redd, his knee got injured in just the right way where he couldn’t keep boxing the way he had to in real professional title fights. So he, begrudgingly, moved on to teaching so as to not give up his passion. Over the years being a teacher and a coach grew on Redd, nearly helping him forgot the lost opportunities of years past.
Once he pushed the door open at The Diving Swallow, Redd walked right up to the bar and ordered a straight whiskey.
“Sometimes you just need a glass of whiskey after you get socked in the eye,” he mused.
He took a gulp, savored the burn and without cringing, and turned around to survey which regulars he might know were around. A few of the barflies he knew were hanging around, drinking alone or chatting with one another. But there was one person that he had never seen in there before. She was a beautiful woman with red hair, sitting alone in one of the booths. She was a little bit on the chubbier side, reubenesque was the word came to mind, but her curves were absolute perfection. She was wearing a simple grey top with a plunging neckline and a slightly less than knee length tight leather skirt that filled out her thick hips and thighs with opaque dark emerald green stockings underneath. He’d never actually noticed a woman’s clothes in this way before.
Despite the leather in her skirt, she seemed like she didn’t quite belong here. She was sipping on a pink fizzy drink with a cherry floating between the chunks of ice, and absently looking around the bar. He couldn’t quite explain why, but he felt drawn to her the moment he saw her. She was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful and Redd found himself smitten.
The burly boxer gulped down the rest of his drink for courage then ordered another one so that he wouldn’t be empty handed. With a deep breath, Redd stood up straight, black eye and all, and headed over to her booth.
“Hi, are you waiting for someone, Miss?” he asked her, while leaning suavely with his hand against the seat opposite her.
“No,” she said somewhat timidly, “Would you like to take a seat?” She was polite and mild-mannered.
Redd thought it was sweet. A lot of women hadn’t been quite so inviting in his experiences with situations like this. He was a rough and tumble looking guy with broad shoulders and black tattoos up and down his arms; which he found was something that not all women were particularly interested in. But she didn’t seem to be one of those women. She thought his broad tattoo covered muscles and chiseled jaw hidden behind a rough beard were quite sexy. Other than his looks, she wasn’t quite sure why she was attracted to him, but she was.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Redd said as he swung himself into the booth and slid into the seat in one smooth move. “What brings you to a place like this?” he asked, gesturing toward the old nicotine stained wood paneling on the wall.
She smiled and looked down. He focused on her long lashes flutter as she shifted her gaze down.
“I just figured I needed to get a drink,” she said while looking back up at him, unintentionally batting her long black lashes.
“Well, where are you from?”
“Oh, I’m from Georgia,” she said.
Redd smiled, he had noticed a slight Southern accent and thought that it was charming.
“Ah. I thought I heard a southern accent in there. As for me, I grew up right here in Philly, so it’s nice to hear something other than ‘whutter’ and ‘jimmies’ all the time,” he said.
“Ha. Is that right?” she said, giggling a little, tilting her head and smiling sweetly.
“Yeah, that’s right. Hey, can I get you a drink?” he asked.
“Sure, thanks a lot.”
Reed motioned to the pink drink, which she was fishing the cherry out of. “What are you having?”
“A Dirty Shirley.”
The words came with a flirtatious smile and her gaze drifting up to Redd. She flashed her big doe eyes as she put the cherry between her teeth and pulled the stem off.
“Ok,” Redd stammered as he stared at the way she held the bright red cherry between her supple lips.
It had only been a moment, and he hadn’t even asked her what her name was yet, but he was already falling for her. Redd decided right then and there that he was determined to make this curvy southern woman his. He wanted her like he hadn’t ever wanted any other woman. He wasn’t sure what it was about her, but he knew she was the one from the moment he noticed her sitting in that booth.
When he approached the bar, Redd ordered the drink while trying to sound tough saying “Dirty Shirley.” When he turned back around to look at the booth, Redd’s eyes traveled up his love’s full long legs and plump thighs which were covered with dark green tights. Rick, the bartender, saw Redd fawning over her.
“Well! She’s cute, inn’t she?” he said.
“She sure is.” Redd said slowly, dragging out the word ‘sure’ as he admired her from across the bar.
“Jeez, Reddy-boy, you got it bad for her, don’tcha?” Rick said, grinning.
Redd just smiled and nodded, looking a bit dumb with his purple shiner and semi-slack jaw as he took the drink from Rick.
“Yeah,” said Redd, “I think I do. Thanks for the drink, Rick.”
Redd glided back over to the booth, careful not to spill a drop of her precious drink.
“Thank you,” she said graciously.
“No worries. What exactly is a Dirty Shirley anyway?”
“It’s kinda like a Shirley Temple but with vodka,” she said, “I always loved regular Shirley Temples growing up, and I suppose I never grew out of it.” His gaze shifted to her rockabilly red-painted lips as she bit at the bottom one and cheeklily smiled, bringing the matching colored drink to her lips.
“I like that. That sounds nice,” Redd said. “I always liked Shirley Temples too, but don’t tell anybody,” he added with a wink. She grinned widely at the joke about his masculinity.
“So… do you come here often?” she said changing the subject. While laughing, she added, “That’s such a corny thing to say.”
“Nah, it’s alright,” he said, grinning at her frankness, “I do come here often. This is like my home-base bar, if you know what I mean. I’ve never seen you here before, though.”
“I used to come here years ago, actually. I just came back to Philadelphia after moving back to Georgia for a couple years.”
Redd was hung on her every word, eager to hear each syllable and absorb every detail.
“What were you doing in Georgia?”
She looked down, “My mamma was sick. I went back home to help out the family.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that. Is she alright?”
“Naw,” she said, tilting her head up towards the ceiling to prevent a tear from falling down her face, “She passed about a month ago. We had the funeral and got everything taken care of and so I came back here.” She leveled her head out, looking at him again.
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Redd said seriously, “I know hearing ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t always the best thing to hear because everyone always says that, but… I know what you’re going through. My dad was battling cancer before he passed away nearly two years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking at me, “Thanks for telling me that, though.”
“Hey,” Redd said, reflexively reaching his hand towards hers. He brushed his fingers against hers, touching her hand briefly before thinking twice and nervously pulling his hand away. He added, “If you’re making yourself vulnerable, you’d better believe that I’ll return the favor. No one wants to be the only one feeling that way in a room.”
“You’re real sweet, did you know that?” she said, her eyes beginning to light up. He could see the little flecks of gold and mahogany and green in her round hazel eyes, and couldn’t help but admire them and the way they contrasted with her strawberry blonde hair.
“I never asked your name,” she said suddenly.
“Redd,” he said, sticking his hand out for her to shake.
“My name’s Annabelle, but you can call me Anna,” she said, boldly meeting his gaze and taking his rough hand into her soft, delicate palm.
“Annabelle,” he said, the name rolling sweetly off his tongue, “I like that name.”
The pair spent their evening in the booth. Redd found himself absorbed in the conversation as the pair learned more about each other. She told him that she was a high school chemistry teacher. He thought that was great; he had even thought about going down a similar road back when he was in school but his family couldn’t afford the costs of college so he had gotten a minimum wage job as he learned how to box. Once he became good at it, he was put into a position where he was able to do real fights, and it just snowballed from there until he was able to pay for all of his expenses with his earnings from the fights.
He told her about all this and his work as a boxing instructor. Annabelle thought it was interesting, but was taken a bit aback at the prospect of getting slugged in the face for a living. A lot of women, he’d found, were hesitant about dating someone with a career like that. It didn’t pay too well and there was always the risk that he would get hurt, which seemed to scare potential girlfriends away.
“That must be why you have that black eye,” she said, reaching towards his face to brush her soft fingers along his cheekbone, not quite touching the bruised area. Still, he winced almost invisibly, but wanted to lean in to her hand, to have her caress his face.
“Yeah,” he said before going on to talk about the student that hit him so hard, gushing about how proud he was.
Annabelle found it was sweet the way he was so invested in his students, especially since they were the same age as the kids she taught Chemistry to. But, still, she had a little trouble wrapping that sweetness around the violence of boxing. Although, it is important to learn how to defend oneself, she thought imploringly.
After a couple hours of talking about all this and much more, she looked at her watch and said that she had to go.
“It’s getting late… and I do have school in the morning,” she offered as an excuse.
“Oh… right. Of course,” Redd said, trying to hide his disappointment of their pending separation.
He walked her out of the bar. At the threshold, they both stopped. He leaned against the wall. She was close to him, and he brushed his hand on hers.
“I’d like to take you on a date,” he said smoothly before they parted ways.
“Oh yeah?” she said hesitantly, “Well, that would be nice.” She reached for his hand, passing it off like she was accidentally brushing her hand along his, until their hands were gently clasping each other’s.
“Alright,” he said glowing. He couldn’t believe that she didn’t reject him flat out, which was reflected in his wide grin.
“Let me give you my phone number,” she said, smiling.
That night, Redd walked out of that bar happier than he had been in a long time. The colors in the world seemed brighter, every red was the color of her lips. Every green was the color of her legs, even every gray held the promise of that lovely view he’d stealthily sneaked of her cleavage once or twice. He genuinely liked Annabelle and thought that she was something really special- and not to mention incredibly sexy.
He had thought about asking her to come over to his place that night as any man would, but he didn’t want to be overeager or end up having this be a one-night stand. He wanted to do it right, to build an actual relationship with Anaabelle. I didn’t want to have their relationship start out like that for the sake of impatience. He was determined to have a long and deep, loving relationship with the woman he had just met at the bar and Redd promised himself to make sure of it.
By the time he reached his front door, Redd was already making plans in his head to take her out to a nice dinner and maybe a movie. However, he wasn’t too big of a fan of going to a movie on first dates. Even so, he thought he would ask her at least, leave it open as an option. The gears in his head were spinning: thinking about a variety of different date ideas, different restaurants or activities. He pondered over what she might or might not like. It was his basic policy to always treat women well, but he wanted to really step it up for his new love.