Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dane
“Another?” the bartender asks me, almost sounding impressed at this point.
I get it. I’m also surprised I’m still upright on the barstool. I’ve been here for hours, drowning every emotion in whiskey before it has a chance to surface.
Feelings bad. Whiskey good. That mantra has gotten me through the past four years, so why mess with it now?
“Did I mention she has great legs?”
Marti, the bartender, nods as she refills my shot glass. “A couple of times.”
I’ve been talking to Marti since the bar cleared out around eleven p.m. She’s a married mom of two adult kids, so I don’t have to worry she’ll think I’m trying to pick her up.
“Last one, Fred. And I’m not letting you walk out of here and get into a car, just so you know.”
I give her a foolish grin, wondering what the hell I was so wound about when I got here. “My name’s not really Fred. Shh.”
“You don’t say.”
I tip back the shot glass and set it on the wood bar top. “You know your shit, Marti. Ain’t nobody gettin’ a lie by you, is they?”
“Not a chance.” She uses a white towel to dry a tall glass. “So you like this woman, but you also don’t like her, right?”
I cringe as I consider the question. “She drives me crazy like...eighty-seven point forty-two percent of the time. But the other fifty percent...” I put my hands out in front of me, trying to demonstrate...something. “I just want to push her onto the bed and...you know what I’m sayin’?”
“Yep.”
She puts the glass back on a shelf and takes another one from the sink of soapy water.
“Is my ass still on the barstool?” I ask.
“For the moment.”
Marti pours a glass of water from a pitcher and sets it in front of me. “Drink it, Fred.”
I look at the glass. “I’m not ready.”
“Not ready for what? That awful feeling when you don’t pass out and hit your head on something?”
“She’s gonna be so mad at me.”
Marti laughs. “Who, Legs? Judging by the amount of whiskey you just put away, I’m guessing she already knows drinking is an issue for you.”
Reluctantly, I pick up the glass and take a drink of the icy water.
I made Josie think we were going out together and then ditched her. She’s going to be furious at me, and I understand why. She started to trust me and got burned.
“Tell me you didn’t just break a sobriety streak,” Marti says. “I would’ve tried to talk you out of that if I’d known.”
I laugh and say, “No. I ditched Nosy.”
“You ditched her? Why? It sounds like you really like her.”
I drink more of the water, reality starting to seep back in.
“That’s just it, Marti. It’s it . I’m no good.”
She puts another glass away. “Why do you think that?”
“Let’s see...” I put a finger out. “One, I’m cold. And two...I’m an asshole.” I look at my fingers, getting confused. Might as well just put all ten fingers up. “Too possessive. But that’s number three, not two.”
Marti nods. “So a past girlfriend told you these things and now you think you’re no good.”
“She was right, though.” I rest my elbow on the bar, putting my forehead in my palm. “I get jealous. I even got jealous when I heard Lucas likes Nosy.”
“And Nosy is Legs, right?”
“Yep.”
“Here’s my advice. Stop calling her Nosy, for Christ’s sake. Man up and tell her how you feel.”
Marti refills my water glass and I meet her gaze across the bar.
“You’re a nice one, Marti.”
She laughs. “I’m just blunt, Fred. And trust me, no one fucks up the way you feel about yourself like an ex. I have a horrible ex in my past. He made me question everything about myself. You seem like a good guy who’s afraid to get hurt again. But no risk, no reward.”
“Word. I think I better get to my bathroom.”
“You feelin’ the urge to purge?”
“Yeah, where’s my bathroom?”
She comes around the bar and helps me off the barstool. “I’ll show you where you’re going. And the good news is, it probably smells like piss and vomit, so it’ll make you puke real quick like. Makes me want to puke and I don’t even drink.”
“You’re a riot,” I say, trying not to lean on her because I’m huge and she’s wiry. “We should hang out.”
“I’m here from seven p.m. to two a.m. five nights a week.”
Marti leaves me at the bathroom door and I go inside. She’s right. The smell sends my stomach over the edge and I barely make it to the toilet to throw up.
Twenty minutes later, my stomach is empty and Marti is using my phone to call an Uber.
“You can have my car,” I say. “It’s really nice.”
She chuckles. “If I took all the things customers offer me when they’re drunk, I could retire.”
When my ride arrives, she walks outside with me to make sure I get in. I turn to her and open my arms.
“I feel like we should hug. Some breakthroughs happened here tonight.”
“Just get in the car, Fred. This will all be a blur tomorrow.”
“I love you.”
She laughs. “You made this night a lot more fun; I’ll tell you that much.”
I crawl into the back seat of the Uber and lie down.
“Don’t puke in my car,” the driver cautions from the front seat.
“I won’t.”
Judging by the swirling sensation in my stomach, I may be overpromising on that.
I sneak through my front door, gently closing it and tiptoeing across the darkened room.
“Where the hell have you been?”
A furious Josie jumps off the couch and I sigh heavily.
“You scared the shit out of me.”
“Oh, did I? You can wait the rest of your life for me to apologize. I spent hours looking for you. Calling hospitals. Praying whatever mess you got into won’t get out and cost both of us our jobs.”
It sounds like she’s speaking to me from the inside of my ear. I take a few steps away.
“Look, can we talk tomorrow?”
Even in the dark, I see her eyes flash with fury.
“You’re drunk. Why am I even surprised? You smell like a distillery. Please tell me you didn’t get naked in public tonight.”
I take a few more steps toward my bedroom door. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“You really disappointed me tonight, Dane.”
The catch in her voice makes me stop walking and hang my head. I’d take her fury over this any day. I want to tell her it’s not what she thinks, that I didn’t do any of this to hurt her.
I can’t, though.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” I say, changing course to walk into the kitchen. “I just want to get some water and go to bed.”
She follows me. “If anything happened tonight that could bite us in the ass tomorrow, I need to know about it now. Please.”
“Nothing happened.”
I down a glass of water from the fridge dispenser and fill it again.
“No fights? No sleeping with anyone’s wife? No encounters with law enforcement?”
I glare at her. “I said no. I had a few drinks alone at a bar.”
“You are so lucky I didn’t call Tim,” she says, her voice thick with emotion. “That’s what I’m supposed to do. This is supposed to be your last chance.”
Her silhouette is beautiful, her hair hanging loose and her hourglass shape outlined in the dim light. I can’t break down and tell her the truth—that my attraction to her is why I had to get away for a few hours.
“Go to bed, Josie. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I hope you have nightmares about rats eating your ball sac,” she says bitterly.
I’m close to laughing when a wave of nausea hits and I have to race to the bathroom. I can’t puke in front of Josie. That would make a shitty situation even worse.
I can’t get to my toilet, but I make it to my shower. Since no one but me and my housekeeper come in here, I can deal with the mess tomorrow morning.
For now, all I manage is to wipe off my face with a wet washcloth and fall face-first into bed.