****
"I can't believe that I'm actually going to ask this," Nixie said, her eyes flickering to the DJ booth a few feet away. "Do you come here often?"
Damian laughed and pulled her a little closer.
"This is my first time."
"That would explain why neither Patrick or I recognized you."
"I guess you do come here often?"
Nixie sighed, unsure if whether her answer was going to sound impressive because of her devotion and consistency, or really pathetic because she has had nothing better to do for five years of Friday nights.
"Every Friday night."
There was yet another cheer from the back room, this time even louder and more rambunctious, and Nixie cringed.
"So that would be why you are subjecting yourself to being here while that's going on. You don't want to break the streak you have going."
"Something like that."
No matter how hard she tried to hold them back, Nixie felt the beginnings of tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. Dammit all to hell. Back foul beasts! That didn't work either. She had lost all control of her emotions and was officially reduced to a pool of uselessness and sniffling.
The worst part about this whole situation is that she had felt like she was over Bryan. She had even been considering breaking up with him in the weeks leading up to him crushing her soul with his little whirlwind romance with her former best friend. Things had felt a little distant between them for a while. Of course, that was probably because the further he was getting from her, the cozier he was getting with Angela, but that was not something that Nixie really wanted to dwell on at that moment.
Damian tucked a finger under her soft chin and lifted her face to look at him. Eyes like hot chocolate stared back at her. Dear lord she loved a good cup of cocoa on a chilly autumn night.
"Do you want to get out of here? You've officially been here. Your streak is intact. Let's go somewhere where you can actually have fun."
A rousing and decidedly drunken rendition of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" rose up out of the banquet room with a few people throwing in a couple of "she"s for good measure. That pushed Nixie right over the edge.
"Absolutely," she said, "Where are we going?"
Damian's face broke into a wide smile.
"It's a little bar called Caddy's. It's just up the road a bit. You can follow me there."
Nixie nodded and glanced back at Patrick who was leaning so far over the bar she thought he was in distinct danger of toppling over. He noticed she was looking and started frantically polishing the bar again.
"Just one second."
She crossed back to the bar and smacked a hand down on it. Patrick jumped, the bar towel falling from his hand.
"I'll have you know that you are interrupting my sacred bartender-ly duties."
"Uh-huh. Look, Damian invited me to go to a different bar with him. It's called Caddy's and he says it's right up the road. Can you meet me up there?"
"Well, it's pretty dead in here tonight and Sasha is supposed to be coming in in about an hour, so I could probably get off then and come up there. Why do you need me?"
"Because I am going to a strange bar with a man that I just met. Don't you ever watch TV? If he plans on murdering me, I'd at least like to have someone that knows where I'm supposed to be so it doesn't take weeks to find my body."
"That was unnecessarily graphic."
"I'll see you in an hour."
Nixie walked back to Damian and flashed him a smile.
"Alright. Let's go. Patrick is going to meet us up there in a bit. Is that ok?"
She watched Damian look back over at the bar like he was evaluating Patrick, and then back at her, scanning her body up and down. He shrugged.
"He should fit in just about as well as you do."
He turned to walk away and Nixie scurried after him, the words striking her as strange.
"What do you mean by that?" she asked, but he just laughed and kept going out into the parking lot.
Nixie climbed into her car and watched as Damian got into a sleek black truck a few spots away. For the first time, she really noticed how his fitted jeans molded to his ass under the tail of his pale grey and white plaid shirt, and the worn-looking boots tucked beneath the legs.
"Mmmm, cowboy take me away," she muttered to herself and turned the key so that she could follow him out of the parking lot and down the darkened road.
His interpretation of a "little bit down the road" was a little shady and by the time they had driven for fifteen minutes down the progressively emptier road, Nixie was truly starting to think that the potential for impending murder might be higher than she was comfortable with. A moment later, though, she saw the vibrant orange glow of a neon sign in the distance and let out a sigh of relief. There really was a little bar and it seemed to have a nearly full parking lot, reducing the chances in her mind that he was bringing her out into the middle of nowhere to keep her as a pet or turn her into a scarecrow for his fields.
She shuddered. She really needed to stop watching late-night true crime documentaries.
Damian pulled into the parking lot and slid into a spot in a row of remarkably similar trucks that seemed to be in varying degrees of newness and cleanliness. It was like looking at a timeline of the progression of the modern farm use automobile. He hopped out and glanced at her, but she shrugged, not seeing anywhere to park. She rolled down her window and he approached her car, gripping the window so that he could lean in.
"Go around back. There's more parking back there. It's not as well-lit, though, so be careful."
Considering the front parking lot was lit exclusively by the glow from the neon sign and whatever light was trickling from the bar itself, that warning did not bode well for the condition or safety of the lot in the back. Nixie drove cautiously around the building, narrowly missing a group of men dressed very much like Damian, and found a spot in the nearly pitch-black lot.
Peeking in her review mirror, she was relieved to see Damian walking around the building to meet her so that she didn't have to walk through the darkness herself. She took a few seconds to brush through her hair and try to reconstruct her makeup as well as she could before he got to the back of her car and peered in through the back window at her. Climbing out, she gave a smile that she hoped would come across as confident and strode toward him. The gravel of the lot felt loose and unsteady under her spiked heels and she fought to maintain her balance. Her tight black dress and fishnet hose were not designed for tumbles in a dark parking lot.