Five
Evan let out a long, low breath. There wasn't a lot to go on with this. But a month was a month, and he was ready to try to stretch his abilities. It was the first time he'd tried to find someone without knowing a single thing about them, except what they looked like. It was going to be interesting, that much he knew.
The first step, he figured, was to go back to the bar. They were closed, but he knew the owner, and it wasn't that hard to get him on the phone. Once he was on the phone, it wasn't that hard to talk him into giving what he knew. It wasn't much.
First, he'd seen the girl that Evan meant before, which was something. After all, the guy only owned the bar. He wasn't guaranteed by any means to be there every night. But the girl came in every few days, and while she wasn't the creme de la creme as far as women who went there, she was a good looking girl.
More than that, her habits made it easy to recall her. She always got a Jack and Mountain Dew, which struck every single bartender as strange, but they didn't question it. It was enough to make her stand out the minute that he described the girl, and then described the drink, though.
He figured that she'd probably be back in on Thursday. No, she didn't seem to have a boyfriend. She'd never really shown any interest in the guys there, though some had shown an interest in her. Hey, when are you going to get that twenty bucks back?
Evan hung up the phone and frowned. He'd be able to find her, then. It was just a question of whether or not it was a worry that it might take him a matter of days to find her. He decided it wasn't, but only because the alternative was deciding that he was completely fucked.
Five days later, and five fruitless trips to the club, he ran into her again. He still didn't know her name. But he knew that the bet had her filling his head, all the time. He was having trouble eating. Trouble sleeping. Hell, he hadn't brought anyone home in the entire time. The stakes were high, and he was down to barely more than three weeks to make it all happen. If she went out of town that week, then he was fucked.
But he wasn't fucked. If anything, he was lucky. She came in wearing dancing shoes and a dress that said she intended to use them. It was not, however, a dress that said that she intended to be dancing with the intention of coming home with company. Evan clicked his teeth together and swallowed the rest of his drink. He hadn't started in on the alcohol yet, but that was just a matter of time.
He'd never needed liquid courage to talk to women. This time, the stakes were high enough that he felt the adrenaline starting to pump through his body before he knew what was going on. The only thing he knew was that he had to bring her home, and if it wasn't tonight, he needed a way to reach her. Somehow.
Evan gave the reader time to get settled in. She took it, whether she needed it or not. He watched. Same as last time, the girl behind the bar poured her two fingers of amber from the well, and then bright-green-yellow soda. He waited until she'd made a little headway on the drink before pushing himself up from the counter and sauntering over.
"Hey again," he said. She looked over at him like she was surprised to hear that someone might have recognized her. "I think we met the other day."
"Do I know you?"
"I don't think so. But we talked for a minute, some time last week. I never got your name."
"Then I wasn't drunk enough to fall for a pretty face," she said.
"Who says that's all there is to me?"
"No," she said, sourly. "There's the tight ass, too, right?"
Evan turned halfway. "You think? I don't know. I've always thought it was a little flat."
She wasn't drunk, and he could tell, but that didn't mean that she was willful enough to resist glancing down.
"You're not that flat," she said. "For a guy."
"Well, then, sure. I'm more than just a pretty face and a tight ass, you know."
"What's that?"
"I'm Evan," he said. "And the other thing to me is my rippling abs. But I don't show them off in public. It can cause problems."
"What, every bimbo in eye shot passes out?"
"You think you can resist?" Evan winked. He wanted her to think that he knew she could resist. There wasn't much point in trying to pretend that she was more than passing interested.
"I can even resist trying it out," she said.
"Can I at least get a name? I can't get you out of my head since last week."
Her eyes slid off him, and onto her drink. She took another sip of amber and chased it. Then she looked at the alcohol like she was still tasting it, and still debating whether or not she liked it. If she was, then as far as Evan could tell, she should have had the debate sooner.
"Another Coke?" Evan looked up. The bartender gave him a half-hearted smile. He gave her a half-hearted smile back.
"Not right now, thanks. I'll let you know."
The bartender nodded. He turned back to the girl who was still sitting, still looking at her drink.
"Dana," she said. "My name's Dana."
"What do you do, Dana?"
"I blow off guys," she said. Her lips twisted up at the corners, like she'd said something very funny.
"Sure, but I mean, you know. Some people have to have a job to support their art, you know? Like, I had to flip burgers to sustain my ability to suffocate a room with my ego before I went pro, you know? I figure it's probably the same way for you, am I right?"
Dana looked at Evan for a moment. Her smile didn't widen, but it distinctly didn't fade. She didn't look like a woman who held smiles very often, and not very long.
"I work at a library," she said.
"The one downtown?"
She looked him up and down. Her body language was guarded, and she didn't express much. So the way that her jaw moved, even as subtle as it was, was like screaming that she'd decided that he would do.
"No," she said.
"Which one then?"
"That's for me to know," she said, winking. "And for you to find out."