“Chia Head?” Mare echoed.
“He looks just like one,” I informed her. “His hair is ridiculous. I think he’s got about as much brains on the inside, too.”
“That’s why it pays to be your own boss,” Gabe said.
“If you don’t mind feeding dick to people,” Nate said with a snicker.
Gabe smiled and balanced the bar stool on two legs, causing it to creak. He was a big guy with a smile that always made his eyes sparkle like he was about to do something mischievous. He often did, too. He was a pastry chef in his own bakery, and he specialized in one-of-a-kind cakes for various functions. He did your normal birthdays and weddings, but most of his business was titty cakes for bachelor parties and penis cakes for the bachelorettes and divorcees.
Apparently, it was quite a lucrative business.
“I’ve never fed dick to a woman who didn’t appreciate it,” he responded. His eyes twinkled as he winked at me.
I shook my head and rolled my eyes at him. I’d never had a thing with Gabe though we flirted with each other a lot. Many people thought we were going to eventually hook up, but it never happened. We had always kept things in the “just friends” realm.
“Hey, Chloe,” Gabe said as he leaned across the table, “the shop said my car is officially kaput. You still up for helping me find a new one next week?”
“Sure,” I replied. “I did some checking yesterday, and there are all kinds of sales going on starting Monday. Lease returns, mostly.”
“Perfect!” Gabe gave me a big smile and his eyes lit up. “You’re my hero!”
“Heroine,” I corrected.
“Heroin,” Gabe replied. “I’m totally addicted to your company!”
“Ha!”
And so the night progressed with talk of work-overload, lack of comp time, and overzealous bosses who didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. Shots were brought around again, and I seemed unable to stop myself from joining with the rest of them. I even bought a round myself to keep the tabs even. It was the polite thing to do.
“Well, I gotta run,” Gabe said as he ran his hand though his styled blond hair. He got up from his seat and threw some bills on the table. “If any of you guys need a ride that doesn’t cost you an arm and a major organ, now is the time!”
I checked my phone to see the time. It was still pretty early, and the thought of returning to my empty condo did not sound appealing at the moment. If I left, my weekend would have started exactly how it had started last week and the week before. Probably the week before that, too. Drink, chat, back home to my couch and a movie, and grocery shopping in the morning.
No wonder I didn’t bother to wear a watch; I could tell the time just from what I was doing next.
Mare and Nate weren’t any less predictable, but at least they could end up going home together even if it turned out to be a casual hook up. I hadn’t had a hook up in…well…ever. I didn’t do that kind of thing. There had to be at least three dates first, then kissing, then maybe a little more, and after I was sure the relationship seemed to be going somewhere, only then was sex on the table.
While I wallowed, Gabe flicked his eyes from my face to my half empty vodka and row of shot glasses.
“Chloe, you need a ride?” he asked.
I should have gone. If I had just let Gabe drive me home right then and there, everything would have remained the same. I would have been at work on Monday morning. I wouldn’t have found myself in a situation way beyond my control.
“Nah, I’m good,” I said. “I’ll hang a while longer.”
“Suit yourself,” Gabe replied. After a quick goodbye and promises of staying out later next week, he wandered through the crowd toward the door.
I turned back to Mare and Nate who were gazing into each other’s eyes, practically oblivious to my presence.
Fabulous.
I tried to engage them in a little conversation, but the topic maneuvered its way back to a movie I hadn’t seen yet. My mind wandered to other patrons of the bar for a bit, and then I realized I hadn’t heard a word Mare had been saying.
What a lousy friend I am.
I tried to focus again on her words, nodding and agreeing that a second Magic Mike movie would be the bomb. Another screwdriver appeared in front of me, but I didn’t recall ordering it. My head was definitely fuzzy, and I was starting to wonder how in the heck I was going to get home. All the shots were catching up with me, and I was starting to feel a little sick. Blinking made the table spin, and I quickly I excused myself to the restroom.
Walking proved more difficult than I thought it was going to be. As soon as I stood, I realized just how bad off I was. I held on to a couple of the stools as I made my way to the ladies’ room, thankful that there wasn’t a line. Once I got myself into a stall, I found I couldn’t even hover over the seat like I normally would and plopped down on the cracked toilet with a grimace.
As wooziness overcame me, I steeled myself against the feeling, no longer caring about the cleanliness of the toilet seat. I swallowed hard, leaning over my thighs and telling myself I was not going to throw up. I just needed to focus a bit. Slow breaths. I hadn’t had this much to drink in a while, and at five-foot four and a hundred and thirty pounds, I just couldn’t hold my liquor like I could in college. Still, I had been considered a pro back in the day, and I wasn’t about to lose it now.
I hoped.
With determination and some more meditative breathing, I finished up and fiddled with the lock on the stall. It outwitted me for a moment. The little sliding bolt just wouldn’t move the right way to release the lock at first, but I eventually managed to get myself out. I stumbled forward as I approached the sink and tried to wash my hands, but the lack of soap in the dispenser only allowed me to rinse off. The towel dispenser was obviously in cahoots with the latch on the stall door and made it very difficult for me to get the couple of sheets of paper I needed to dry off my hands. Instead, a big pile of them fell out at my feet, which I found remarkably funny for some reason.
Still giggling, I used one of the fallen towels to open the door, balled it up, and tried to hold the door open with my backside while simultaneously tossing the paper into the trashcan near the sink. The force of the throw was apparently too much, and I stumbled out the door and into a brick wall.
It was pretty warm for brick and not nearly as painful on my back as I would have thought it would be. I leaned back against it some more and sighed. The dizziness returned, and I nearly fell forward. That’s when the brick wall grew hands and arms, which wrapped around me and kept me from falling on my ass.
Still dizzy, I turned to find the brick wall was wearing a grey, cut-off muscle shirt, which did nothing to hide the graffiti-like tattoos all over the arms that held me steady as I tried to get my bearings.
Where am I?
Oh yes…Thirsty’s, outside the bathroom.
I looked forward and focused my eyes on the chest in front of me. I had to tilt my head up to discover it was, in fact, not attached to a brick wall but an actual face that was way, way up in the air.
The guy was massive. Just massive. He was well over six feet tall with shoulders that took up nearly the whole width of the hallway.
“Hi there,” the brick wall said in a deep, jocular voice. “You all right?”
Alarm!
It’s not that Thirsty’s was known for a lot of riff-raff or criminal activity of any kind. It wasn’t. I never would have walked into the place if it were like that. It was a typical sports bar in the suburbs of southwestern Ohio, mostly catering to the pro football crowd whenever the Bengals played the Steelers. The usual clientele were locals blowing off steam from work or commiserating about their failed marriages. Occasionally, there were a few singles looking to hook up. Most of the people I saw there I had seen before, even if I didn’t know them.
This guy did not belong here.
Wherever they keep the official entries for men your mother warned you about, this
guy’s picture would be at the top of the list.
His arms and chest bulged with muscles. He really did resemble a brick wall. I could see the outline of his abs through his shirt, stacked like the bricks around a fireplace. Every visible inch of his darkly tanned skin was completely covered by a myriad of tattoos. I couldn’t focus on any one image without all of them blending together like the mosaic of a swiftly moving, graffiti-covered train car. His nearly black hair was the same length as the neatly trimmed beard covering his face, and dark eyebrows framed his greenish-brown eyes.
Maybe I was feeling a little of that southern haughtiness my grandmother was known for displaying whenever we walked through a Walmart when I was a child. Maybe I was going so far as to profile the guy for his height, insane number of tattoos, ripped jeans, muscle shirt, and assumption that he had a Harley parked somewhere outside. Maybe I was just in shock from the abrupt encounter itself.
Aside from all of that, he was absolutely gorgeous.
Maybe I’m just drunk.
“Yes,” I finally said, hoping I sounded more convincing than I felt. “Sorry, I just lost my balance a bit.”
“I see that,” Brick Wall responded. He smiled, and his eyes lit up with amusement. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and his fingers tightened around my hips, causing a ripple up his arms.
Good lord, he had a lot of muscles—great big, bulging muscles that couldn’t be hidden by his clothing.
“You need some help?” he asked.
“No, I’m good,” I replied. I tried to wave my hand dismissively but realized it had a bit of a death-grip on Brick Wall’s forearms. His hard, muscled forearms, which ran all the way up to ridiculously broad shoulders.
I stared into his eyes, which sparkled with amusement. My skin warmed, and I became acutely aware of his closeness despite my intoxicated state.
I cleared my throat.
“My friends are waiting for me.”
I tried to pry my fingers off the muscled arms, but my hands seemed happy to hang onto him and made it difficult to release my grip. I finally talked my hands into releasing him enough for me to take a step back, and his arms dropped from my waist, leaving the voided space a little cooler than it had been when he was touching me.
I took another step back, and even from this new perspective, I still had to crane my neck to look into his eyes. They were deeply shadowed in the dim light, making them seem sinister enough that I shivered a little. His beard was short and looked more like a five o’clock shadow, but it didn’t extend to his neck at all. Instead, it all flowed in a tightly groomed line from his sideburns and into his hair.
“Sorry,” I said again.
“No worries,” he replied.
I walked carefully around him to keep my footing, glancing back only once to see him watching me walk away with his dark eyes and amused grin. It ticked me off a little. The last thing I needed was some lowlife laughing at me, drunk or not. I turned my head away from him and tossed my hair back off my shoulder.
And with that, I marched back to my friends.
TWO
Though I was pretty sure my drink had been nearly empty, a full one was sitting in my spot. My head had cleared a little after the shock of running right into a complete stranger—a really big, brick wall of a stranger—and I sighed and wrapped my fingers around the glass. The bartender had made another strong one, and I could barely detect the tinge of orange from the juice in the glass.
“So what’s the weekend plan?” I asked. I thought if I involve myself in more conversation, it might sober me up a bit.
“Helping my mom with her wedding plans,” Mare said.
Mare’s mother was about to try for husband number four. Mare was giving this one as much as a year, though the last had only survived about eight months. “We have to pick a photographer and a florist. You should totally come with me to pick the florist. I hate flowers.”
“Maybe you could do something other than flowers,” I suggested.
“Flowers are the norm,” Mare replied. “If my mom doesn’t get the norm, she’ll throw a fit.”
I pursed my lips, wondering why they didn’t just go to a justice of the peace and have it done. It would seem she’d be tired of all the wedding planning stuff at this point. I know I would have been.
“I know that look,” Mare said. “What are you trying not to say, Clo?”
I glanced at her, slightly pissed at myself for being so transparent, and shrugged.
“You never say what you’re thinking,” she told me. “Sometimes it drives me nuts. I know you have an opinion in there somewhere.”
“It’s not important,” I said quietly, tensing under the scrutiny. “Just forget it.”
“You’re just too uptight,” Nate said. He held up his glass and pointed at me with the one finger not wrapped around the drink. “Whatever you have to say is not going to hurt my feelings.”
“That’s her dad talking to her,” Mare said as she gave me a playful shove in the shoulder. “Always think twice before you speak.”
“Three times,” I replied with a smile. “He was usually right, too. People are always saying and doing things they regret. I think most of his clients were suffering from regret-syndrome.”
“Yeah, but he was a psychologist,” Nate pointed out, “and his clients were there because they regretted what they said or did. I say what needs to be said, but I don’t regret it.”
“Well, I don’t say or do anything out of line, so I don’t have to worry about regrets.”
Thankfully, that was the end of the topic. Well, at least outside my head. My own words seemed to be floating around in my brain even as the conversation turned back to flower hatred. “I don’t say or do anything out of line.” It was the truth, and a rule by which I’d lived my life. It kept me out of trouble, allowed me to advance fairly quickly in my career, and generally kept me safe.
And predictable.
As I pulled myself from my own thoughts, Mare and Nate had gone back to talking about the movie I hadn’t seen. I tried to focus—I really did—but I had no frame of reference. I looked down at my glass and let my finger slide through the condensation. The patterns were far too interesting to my intoxicated mind, so I looked away and back over my shoulder to find something to distract me from my own thoughts.
I saw Brick Wall again.
He was sitting with two other guys in one of the booths against the wall. The one next to Brick Wall had light brown hair sticking out of a stocking cap and wore a black T-shirt with some band logo on it. The man sitting across from them looked to be wearing a blazer of some kind. He was definitely better dressed than the other two, but I couldn’t see him very well with the back of the booth blocking my view. There was far too much noise for me to hear their conversation, but Brick Wall definitely didn’t look happy about whatever the guy across from him was saying.
Abruptly, Brick Wall stood up and lurched toward the guy in the blazer. The guy in the cap rose to his feet and grabbed Brick Wall’s arm tightly, as if he could have held him back. Brick Wall had to have at least six inches on the guy and probably fifty pounds as well. However, he stilled his movements, curled his upper lip slightly, and then sat back down. His chest rose and fell with a deep breath as he looked away from his companions…
…and right into my eyes.
I jerked my head back around to my drink quickly as I felt my face warm, embarrassed to have been caught eavesdropping. Well, not exactly eavesdropping, but close enough. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I wondered if he was still looking at me. I wasn’t about to turn around and find out. I was still horrified that I had been caught staring at the same guy I had rammed into a few minutes before.
“Clo?”
“Hmm?” I glanced back at Mare’s face as she raised her eyebrows.
“A little lost in thought there?”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“I was asking if you were busy Tuesday after work.” She
leaned an elbow on the table. “We could hit a couple florists then.”
“Sure,” I replied.
The server returned, and I asked for a glass of water.
“I need to get moving if I’m going to make it to Mom’s in the morning,” Mare said as she handed her credit card to the server. She turned to Nate. “I assume you need a ride.”
“I sure as hell ain’t driving,” Nate responded. “I just hope you aren’t planning on taking advantage of my drunken state.”
Mare chuckled.
“You good, Clo?”
“I’m going to drink my water,” I told her. “I’ll be fine in a bit.”
“You sure? I can take you now.”
“No, I’m good.” I waved my hand around dismissively. “I need to hit the grocery store tomorrow, and I don’t want you to have to bring me back to my car. I’ll just hang a bit.”
“You’ve had a lot,” Mare stated. “Be careful and call a cab if you have to.”
“I will.”
Mare and Nate walked out, arm in arm. I finished the water but still wasn’t in great shape, so I asked for another one when the server brought over my bill. I didn’t even look at how many drinks were on it, just handed him my card.
As I sat at the now empty table, I felt life crashing all around me. It was probably just the alcohol talking, but it seemed like everyone around me had things to do and people to be with, while I sat on my own. I missed my dad and our long conversations. When Mom moved so soon after his death, it seemed as if I had lost her, too.
I felt tears in the corner of my eyes.
Oh, hell no. I was not going to be the crying drunk girl at the bar. I needed to get myself outside for some fresh air.
I stood abruptly and pushed back my stool, striking the person walking behind me.
“Damn, girl!”
I spun around to see whom I had hit, got my foot caught on the bottom of the leg of the stool, and fell forward—into Brick Wall’s arms.