I slid to a stop halfway down the alley, looking every which way, not wanting to zig when he’d zagged. I closed my eyes, trying to recall the way I felt whenever he was around. That electric, intimate energy that linked me to him.
I felt nothing. There was nothing but the scent of stale trash mildewing in the dumpster beside me and the bitter taste of losing him all over again on the tip of my tongue. Feeling like I was looking for a needle in a haystack, I shot down the alleyway to my left, praying with everything I had that I’d find him, not caring why I’d left him in the first place: to keep him safe and away from me.
I ran like I had nothing to lose, although I had everything to lose again now that he’d jettisoned back into my life. The wind cutting across my face felt like ice-picks stabbing my skin.
The alley came to an abrupt end, nothing but a tall brick wall painted with graffiti waiting for me. “No, no, no,” I whispered, wanting to yell them at someone. “Don’t do this to me,” I said, realizing I was speaking to the world I seemed to be playing some game of war with. To say I was losing was generous.
My desperation turned to anger and I punched the brick wall, feeling it give. A shower of brick and mortar rained down at my feet. I leaned my shoulder against the brutalized wall, refusing to hang my head for fear of missing a glimpse of him weaving through the maze of run-down buildings.
A door painted in flat black paint a hundred feet down swung open and my heart stopped. I sucked in a breath, willing his form to emerge into the twilight.
A female figure swung out instead, the light casting a figure with ample shape on the wall behind her. “You are a pig,” she shouted through the door, before making a spitting sound. “Bon Chance trying to replace all this,” she yelled, giving her figure an all-out shake. The door slammed shut behind her and her heels clanked down the alley away from me, verbalizing as many French curse words as she could fit in her sentences. Like most high-schoolers, the profanities of any language seemed to stick in my mind when nothing else would.
Not about to let the possibility that he’d escaped behind the black door go uninvestigated, I jogged down the alley and ripped the door open, giving it more force than needed since I expected it’d be locked. The area warranted locks, armed guards, and laser fields in my opinion. The door groaned open, welcoming me in, and I wondered if instead of trying to keep trouble out, it preferred to invite it in. Not caring if I was discovered as an intruder or potential prey, I rushed down the dark hall.
I exploded into a room that was only slightly brighter than the hallway I’d just emerged from. It certainly looked like the kind of place someone would go when they were looking for trouble. The walls matched the door—flat, black paint—although the smell of smoke was so overpowering I wondered if the walls were also shellacked with an inch-thick layer of nicotine. There were no tables or chairs, no mirrors or pictures, only a stage of questionable construction to the right of me and to the left stood a waist-high bar behind where bottles filled with clear or gold liquid were staggered on shelves and several untapped kegs were propped up on barstools.
“Boooon-jour, Mmmmm-Mademoiselle,” called out a voice that was as French as it was courteous. A man carrying a keg flashed a smile that was all ego in my direction before heaving the keg on the bar.
“Did you see someone pass through—”
“American,” he said, sounding pleased. He wiped his hands off on his jeans and hooked his leg under a bar-stool and slid it over, taking a seat. “Californian, if my male radar isn’t off.” He scanned me up and down and then winked.
And I’d wager my female radar that he’d never put a foot in California. It seemed men who hadn’t experienced the state except through television and their imaginations thought all Californian women were tall, thin, and edgy. Those that had visited knew the women were also gorgeous, blonde, and rich—none of which I was.
“New Jersey?” I snapped back, looking him head to toe in much the same way he’d just looked at me.
He grinned. “Attitude—definitely Californian. I like that in a woman.”
I glared. “Ego—definitely Jersey. I hate that in a man.”
He laughed, slapping his thigh. “I concede. I hail from Jersey, but I now call this seedy excuse for a bar home.”
I didn’t hold a lot of stock in stereotypes, but the man before me fit each and every one I’d heard of New Jersey boys. The orange tan, the hair styled as if each strand had been carefully placed, the painted on t-shirt, and the ego that stifled the room of air.
“Your turn,” he said, nodding his head at me. “Where you from, sugar?”
I hated I had to affirm his assumption. “Santa Cruz,” I muttered, scanning around the room, knowing if he’d been here, William was long gone. I couldn’t even picture him in this place with its filthy walls and sticky floors.
He clapped his hands together. “Boy, I’m good.”
I shot him one more glare before turning to leave.
“Hey,” he called out, interrupting my retreat. “Did you say you were looking for someone?”
“Nope,” I replied, not about to confess to him that I was looking for the man I loved, but had abandoned after nearly killing him, and, oh yeah, he just so happened to be Immortal. So not going there. “I was looking for something.”
“Oh,” I heard the bar-stool screech against the floor and his voice was nearer when he spoke next. “What were you looking for?”
I exhaled my annoyance. Persistent . . . so New Jersey. I had to give California boys points for walking away when a girl ignored them, whether or not it was a game of hard-to-get. There were other bikini-clad beauties in the sea. “A job.” I spun around to find him only several strides behind me. “But since I don’t see any of those hanging out around here, I’ll be on my merry way, thank you.”
“A job, huh?” he said, sounding every bit as New Jersey as he looked. “This must be your lucky day.”
The word lucky had never been one I’d used to describe my life, at least pre and post William. “Why’s that?”
He leaned against the hall and crossed his arms. “One of my bartenders got herself knocked-up and just started to show,” he said, sounding inconvenienced. “I just let her go, so I’ve got a bartender opening as of . . .”—he consulted his blinged-out watch—“ten minutes ago—give or take.”
“Thanks, but this isn’t really my scene,” I replied, pointing with my eyes around the hall.
“Too good for the Rue St. Jersey, are we?”
“That’s not it.”
“Then what is it?” he asked, knowing he’d called it for what it was. “You need a job, I’m handing you one.” His eyebrows peaked. “No thanks even required.”
I cleared my throat, stalling. “I really don’t think I’m qualified.”
“Please,”—he threw his arms in the air—“you know how to tap a keg?”
“No,” I answered truthfully.
His face lined with surprise. “You know the difference between tequila and vodka?”
“They’re different colors,” I said, hating how straight-laced I sounded.
He laughed as if he couldn’t figure me out. Rubbing his chin, he asked, “You know how to pour a shot?”
I hadn’t, but I was beginning to feel like he was teasing now. “I scored a 2200 on my SAT’s,” I said, crossing my arms and taking a step towards him. “I think I can figure it out.”
“And there’s that attitude again,” he said. “The customers are going to love you.”
Realizing too late I’d somehow conceded to his job offer, I tried to brainstorm some way I could back-track my way out of this one.
“When can you start?” he asked, turning to head back down the hall.
I could think of a few hundred jobs I’d rather do than bartend in this place for this guy—scrubbing toilets at a trucker stop was on that list—but knowing I was fighting for my life, as empty as it was, I answered, “Immediately.”
“Great. We open in
a half hour. There’s a uniform for you in the ladies room. Marie had a little more junk in her trunk than you,” he said, surveying my backside before roaming up and forward. “Actually, she had a little more junk in the front too, but that’s what toilet paper and a push-up bra are for.”
I stifled my urge to reply with an insult of my own—something having to do with what the wonders a little lemon juice and sugar doused on a cotton-ball could do for his adult jaundice—and headed down the hall, wondering the whole way what I’d gotten myself into.
The woman’s restroom at the Rue St. Jersey was the kind of facility you didn’t want to touch a thing in unless you had a scrap of paper towel protecting your skin. It also smelt like what a bathroom should if it didn’t having working toilets, mixed with the heady scent of sex, accompanied by an undertone of cheap perfume. This was one of those instances where I wished my Immortality hadn’t given me heightened senses.
The uniform, or so it’d been called, looked more the garb of a stripper than a bartender, making me wonder just what kind of a joint I was employed at. Finding a bottle of Windex underneath the sink, I sprayed down the black leather pants—inside and out—having no other means to disinfect them from whatever could be growing within.
They stuck to my body like a plaster of paris mold, my lack of junk in the trunk comment aside. Other than the four-inch high clear mules (that I imagined lit-up when walked on) there was only one other item to complete the “uniform.”
For the life of me, I couldn’t comprehend how the swath of black stretchy material in my hands was meant to be a top. Having nothing to fit around the arms, shoulder, or neck, I suppose tube-top is what it could have been classified as, but its fabric—or lack thereof—made it more lingerie than anything else. Thankful for the white cami I had on under my military jacket, I slid the shred of fabric in place over it. Had it not been for the cami, it would have barely covered the area from the top to the bottom of my chest. Classy.
I tossed the stripper shoes in the garbage on my way out, having left on my scuffed-up black leather motorcycle boots. To heck with Rue St. Jersey and its owner; he could fire me as quickly as he’d hired me if he didn’t like it.
The music blasted into every space from its opening note, the bass vibrating my insides. Rounding the hallway off the women’s wash-slash-sex room, I found the bar—which had been empty less than a half hour ago—bursting with bodies, gyrating to the beat of the music that was a mish-mash of metal and rap.
I shook my head, not able to believe I’d travelled halfway around the world to end up in a place I could have found back home a mile away in any direction. I guess I’d hoped European guys would have enough self-control to restrain themselves from having clothed sex on the dance floor with any bleary-eyed girl willing to oblige. Here’s what I forgot; European or not, they were GUYS.
“Hey, California,” I heard a voice call across the room and, despite the ear-splitting music, I heard it with crystal precision. “Anytime your highness is ready,” he motioned to the herd of customers rammed up against the bar, waving their Euros.
I cut through the crowd, using a little more force than warranted, but made good time. I hoisted myself on the bar and slid over it, caught in the middle of thirsty customers and gallons of alcohol I couldn’t recognize by name or sight.
“It’s Bryn,” I said, eyeing him with warning as he was double fisting a couple of pints beneath the rivers of ale flowing from the kegs.
He smiled, shutting off the kegs with his forehead. “Does California Bryn have a last name?”
I didn’t think before answering. “Hayward.”
He dropped a couple of shots into the beers and tossed one back, handing the other to a customer in exchange for a wad of bills. He looked over at me, pointing with his eyes to the customers that were getting wilder in the eyes by the moment. “You’re lovely to look at, darling, but I’m not paying you to stand there and look pretty.” He grabbed a bottle from a shelf above him and tossed it to me. “I’m paying you to pour.”
He nodded to a couple of guys that looked like frat boys, but they had the largest wad of cash in their palms. “Get started.”
“What will it be?” I asked the frat boy closest to me, aware I’d probably just quoted a line from one of the old westerns my grandpa used to watch.
“A tequila, double,” he ordered, eyeing the top shelf.
I reached for the bottle he’d eyed, assuming he knew what he was ordering, and flipped over a glass that was smaller than a pint and larger than a shot glass, assuming it was a double shot glass. I hoped.
I poured the gold liquid into the glass, feeling like a pro by the time I’d finished. If this was all it took—following the orders of customers and pouring liquid into glasses—this whole job thing might work. Sure, the place defined seedy and the uniform was intended to show off every piece of female anatomy meant to be hidden, but the music was loud, the crowd louder, and the rainbow of hedonism muted my senses and made it temporarily difficult to think about a time when my life had been as perfect as it gets.
I handed the glass off to frat boy, the look in his eyes causing mine to look away.
Not knowing how much anything cost, I looked over at my bar-mate, spinning a couple of shot glasses between his fingers. “That one’s on the house,” he yelled over to me, answering my question.
“I guess it’s on the house,” I told frat boy. He leaned over the bar, motioning me closer. Wanting to be done with him, I leaned in, hoping he’d leave me alone so I could get onto the next customer.
He raised the hand filled with cash, grabbing the top of my cami and slamming me against the edge of the bar. “And this is on me,” he said, shoving the bills down the center of the scrap of fabric.
My training from Patrick had been so all-encompassing that I reacted without thinking. Before he released the money he was attempting to bury deeper, I grabbed his hand. It felt like a house-of-cards in my grip. I slid it up and out of my shirt, squeezing it in the process, hearing the same kinds of sounds my Rice Krispies made. Snap, crackle, pop.
The pain on his face was instant, followed by his mouth falling open, although no sound came out—at first.
“Don’t touch me,” I warned him, trying not to think about the last time a man had touched me and how it had been so different—tender . . . timid.
Frat boy’s vocal chords exploded, sending out a sound I imagined a dog would make after being hit by a car. I released his hand and he pulled it towards his chest, cradling it with his other hand.
“Why you holding your hand like it’s a little babydoll, Tony?” Mikey asked, handing off two filled shot glasses to a couple of girls plastered up against the counter, wearing tops similar to the one I was wearing, although their excess spilt out in a way that would have made me blush had I not been quivering from Tony’s hand snaking down my skin.
“My hand!” Tony screamed. “Mikey, she busted my hand up something fierce.”
Mikey laughed and after winking at his customers with the ample assets, he wiped his hands with a dishtowel. “Come on, ya sissy.” He tilted his head my direction. “She’s a girl. Stop acting like she just pounded your hand with a hammer.”
Beads of sweat were bursting from Tony’s skin, a pallid white blanketing his face.
“Oh, boy,” Mikey said, leaping over the counter. “I’ve seen that face before. He’s going down.”
The herd of customers circling Tony scattered just as Mikey got to him, breaking his fall. “Tracy!” Mikey called out to the newcomer who’d just crawled under the bar, wearing the same outfit I was, minus the boots and cami. “You’re late!”
“I’m here, ain’t I?” she called back, tying back her crimson hair into a knot, shouldering past me without making any kind of acknowledgement. “Quit busting my balls.” She grabbed a shot glass at the same time she reached for the bottle closest to her. Liquid overflowed the glass before she tossed it back, slamming down the glass and pouring another one.
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“I gotta run Tony to emergency,” Mikey called back to her, not noticing or caring she was pouring her third shot—perhaps one of the employee perks he’d forgotten to mention, not that it was one I’d benefit from. “You got things here?”
The glass at her lips, she waved her hand dismissively at him, shooing him through the crowd. “Yeah, yeah. You can count on me.”
I watched Mikey hoist the comatose Tony over his shoulders and weave through the crowd packed into the hallway, the regret of my action sinking in. A simple hand smack could have sent the same message—leave me alone—why couldn’t I have settled for that? I tried to drown out the answer, not wanting to be reminded that there was destruction flowing in every molecule of my makeup.
“You taking Marie’s spot?” Tracy asked, crossing her arms in a way that led me to the conclusion her and Marie had been friends and she was not happy I’d slid into her spot.
I nodded, ignoring the hands waving around the counter, their voices charging up in volume. I crossed my arms too, trying to look tough, like I belonged in a pair of painted-on leather pants, serving whiskey to tourists, smack dab in heathen-central.
She smiled, shaking her head. “First night, poor thing.” She looked up, her eyes pointing at the first man she saw.
“Whiskey,” he called out, smacking a bill down on the counter. “One for me and one for you,” he smiled at her, leaving nothing to the imagination as to what was going through his.
Tracy flipped a couple of glasses on the counter, tilted a bottle on its side, pocketing the bill at the same time. She handed him his shot, clinking glasses before tipping them back. She slammed the glass down, grasped the man’s face with her hands, and locked her lips over his like he was headed off to sea for a year long deployment. Pushing him away a few seconds later, she turned to me, licking her lips. Pouring another shot, she tilted it my way. “Here’s to popping your cherry at the Rue St. Jersey.”