10. Rock
10
ROCK
A delivery guy is holding out a tablet for me to sign, but I’m still not convinced he’s at the right address.
“What’s the name on the label?” I ask, keeping my weight against the front door of the bar.
The delivery guy tilts his head to check. “Emily Coleman. Care of Blackbear Bar.”
What the hell did Emily order? I sigh and grab the tablet from the delivery guy. I scrawl my signature and thrust it back to him.
I’m annoyed as I haul the large box into the bar. Emily’s not here yet, so I carry it into the back office to keep it out of the way. While I’m in there, I hear the front door of the bar open and Emily’s footsteps come in.
My chest tightens as I hear her walking in my direction. Things have been really weird since she kissed me. She’s been avoiding me like the plague. I thought it was bad enough when she jerked back from our kiss, but to be so blatantly avoided like this ever since has been hell. Every time I try to talk to her she has somewhere to run off to.
“Oh, hi,” she says, looking a little startled when she comes into the office and sees me. Then her eyes flick to the box and she inhales an excited breath. “Oh! It arrived!”
“What is this?”
“Our new sign,” she says, as if that should be more than obvious.
What? Our new sign? I think back to the conversation we had when she showed me images on her phone of the neon signs she liked. I never agreed to getting one. Did I? Am I going mad?
I watch Emily as she grabs a box cutter and slices into the packing tape on the top of the box. As she works, my eyes catch on her lips.
Her perfect lips.
“I didn’t agree to this,” I say.
She glances at me strangely as she opens the top of the box and starts removing styrofoam padding. “Yes, you did. You said ‘sure, whatever.’”
“That’s not agreeing.”
“How is saying ‘sure’ not agreeing?”
I exhale through my nose. “Jesus, Em. I don’t want a neon sign.”
Now there’s a mix of confusion and irritation and guilt on her face. Tightly, she says, “Well, I’m sorry I messed up. But I ordered it, and it’s here now.”
“Yeah. I can see that.”
I look down into the box. The sign isn’t even fully uncovered yet and I can already tell I’m going to hate it. “Is it returnable?”
“It’s custom. No.”
I curse under my breath. “How much did you spend on it?”
She tells me. It’s not an outrageous amount, but it still bothers me. Shaking my head, I help her get the damn sign out of the box.
I carry it over and set it against the wall. Emily plugs it in and the words DRINK UP BUTTERCUP blare at us in bright pink neon.
“Oh, wow ,” she says.
It’s even worse than I thought. I turn my head and stare at her. I can’t believe she actually likes this. No, of course she likes it. This is completely her. Bright and pink and cheery all the time. The polar opposite of me.
“We’re not hanging that up,” I snarl.
She looks hurt. “Rock. We run this bar together. You don’t get to bulldoze every decision.”
“It doesn’t go with anything.”
“I think the contrast is nice, personally.” She gives me puppy dog eyes. “How about a trial run? We can put it up and see if we get any feedback—good or bad—from customers. If you still hate it at the end of the trial run, we’ll take it down. Please?”
As much as I don’t want to agree to it, I also hate the idea of wasting money. “Fine. Three days.”
“That’s nowhere near long enough, Rock! Let’s give it two weeks.”
“ One week.”
“Fourteen days.”
“That’s the same as two weeks,” I grumble.
She smiles.
Fuck. When she smiles at me like that, my resolve is pointless.
That night, as I work, the neon sign keeps buzzing in my peripheral vision. Bafflingly, it doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone else.
I don’t know what the hell is wrong with people.
Emily and I still haven’t talked about what happened the other night. There hasn’t exactly been a good opportunity to talk about it, but still. It’s this giant fucking elephant sitting at the bar, staring and waiting for us to talk.
Damn it, I just want to know what’s going on in her head.
I’m running a customer’s credit card when I notice a guy at one of our tables trying to flirt with Emily. He’s leaning back in his chair with this stupid fucking smile on his face, saying something that makes Emily laugh. Wild jealousy churns in my chest at the sight. I wordlessly hand the credit card back to the other customer, my breath going hot as I watch the guy over at that table nudge Emily’s foot with his own. Motherfucker. Stay away from her. I want to jump over the bar and do something about it, but I stay in place.
Emily walks away from the table and comes back behind the bar.
“That guy bothering you?” I growl.
“He was just being a little flirty. It’s nothing.”
“Want me to tell him to fuck off?”
“What? No. It’s fine, Rock. I can handle that kind of thing myself.” She frowns as she reaches for a straw and finds the container empty.
She turns to go into the back room, and I follow her.
“Did you like that guy flirting with you?” I ask.
“Um…no?” She gives me a strange look. “Why are you being like this?”
Is she serious? How can she act like this after what happened between us?
“I’m acting like this because you kissed me, Em. And we need to talk about it.”
She looks flustered for a moment. Jittery. “I told you. It was a mistake.”
“Friends don’t accidentally kiss friends.”
“I got caught up in the moment,” she says. “I don’t know what else to tell you. Why can’t we just pretend it didn’t happen?”
“I can’t do that.”
She sighs. “Why not?”
Now would be the time to confess my feelings. Tell her everything. Admit that I’ve had feelings for her since the day I met her, and that it’s been a low-lying form of torture to be nothing more than friends for all these years. That my heart is obsessed with her and that being kissed by her is making it impossible to keep my feelings in check.
But a grand admission of love isn’t gonna happen. That’s a secret that’s buried way too damn deep. I’ve spent too much time making sure it’s locked up in a safe place and I’m not ready to let those terrifying words come out of my mouth.
I can’t let her even get a whiff of it. It could ruin our friendship. It could be the end of everything.
And so I say, “I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Emily stares at me, a strange expression in her eyes. Then her lips press tight, and she grabs the box of straws off the shelf. “Don’t worry. It won’t.” She pushes past me as she walks out of the storage room, her footsteps hard on the floor.
I scrub a hand down my face. Fuck. Why did I have to say it like that? I didn’t mean to hurt her. She completely misunderstood what I meant.
But how can I explain it without giving myself away?
Goddamn it. This sucks.
And now it’s on me to figure out how to make us okay again.