7. SEVEN
SEVEN
CORY
You’re in uniform.
Hours later and I still couldn’t believe those were the words that came out of my mouth. After Garrett had left, Glen ribbed me on it until I finally kicked him out, but I couldn’t blame him. I had sounded like a lovesick puppy, which I absolutely was not. I was just a single, twenty-seven-year-old woman with needs. and Garrett in uniform? Yeah, that visual made me want to actively commit crime, just so he’d have to handcuff me. It didn’t help that I knew for a fact he could satisfy me without even trying.
He could do more than satisfy me.
“Damn it, okay,” I groaned, running my hands through my hair. Siren cocked her head to the side, having been chewing on a toy quietly until my outburst disrupted her. “Sorry, girl. I need a distraction.”
I unlocked my phone and called Kinsley.
“Cory! I was just talking about you.” She was shouting over too-loud music and the voices of people talking around her.
“Where are you right now, and why does it sound like you’re in a frat basement?”
“I mean, you’re not far off.” Kinsley laughed, and I could picture my friend with a finger in her other ear, hunching closer to the floor like that would somehow quiet the noise surrounding her. “We’re at the Squeaky Stool.”
Grabbing my purse and leather jacket, I rolled my eyes. “That explains it perfectly.”
I snapped my fingers and gave a whistle. Siren abandoned the toy and ran to the back door.
“Come down here! I want to hear all about your first day! Sorry I couldn’t stop by.”
I gave an obligatory glance around, and then turned off the lights as I stepped outside, locking the door behind me. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be there in thirty. I just have to drop Siren off at home.”
“Okay, yay! See you soon!”
The drive home was slow going, but it was nice. The summer heat still lingered even though the sun had long since dropped behind the city’s buildings, and the air was cool. Siren had her head and the better part of her upper body out the passenger-side window, and I let my hand lazily dip up and down out of mine. I couldn’t stomach country music, at least not the modern junk, but I could see the appeal on a night like this.
By the time I pulled up to the bar, I could already feel all thoughts of Garrett disappearing—replaced by memories of the bar before me.
The Squeaky Stool was a dive bar to put it nicely, and an absolute shit show, to put it honestly. The dark wood floors were permanently coated in a sticky film from drinks long since spilled and dried. And if you were dumb enough to wear any kind of sandal, you’d lose your shoes to said film. The walls were covered in the neon signs of various beer and liquor companies, framed pieces of newspapers with random bits of Boston history, and an abundance of signs with various sayings meant to be funny. None of the bar stools matched, which wasn’t a design choice so much as a repercussion of too many bar fights.
In short, The Squeaky Stool was disgusting, but Kinsley and I had been coming here since college because the drinks were cheap and strong as hell.
Mark had owned the bar since it opened forty-something years ago, and while he may not have kept his bar to most people’s standards, it was only because he was a one man show.
It looked like the last place two young women should hang out, but Mark had three daughters. It was ingrained in him to keep an eye out for the women in his bar, making sure the creeps stayed away, and that they had a safe ride home at the end of the night.
I waved to the silver fox of a man who was talking to one of his regulars, no doubt about the game that was playing on the busted TV. It was fuzzy and had waves of visual static constantly running up the screen. Mark always got crap about it, but he had yet to buy a new one.
“Ah, there’s my Coors Light! I was wondering when you’d show up.” He smiled and started making my drink. “How’s it going, kid?”
I laughed at the dumb nickname he’d given me years ago when I first started coming in. Secretly, I loved it. “I just opened up my shop today. Are you going to come by and let me tattoo you?”
He shook his head and slid the drink over to me. “Nah. This wrinkly hind wouldn’t do your work justice.” He nodded to the back corner of the bar. “Kinsley and company are over at the pool table. That one’s on me. Congratulations on the shop.”
“Thanks, Markie Mark.” I held the drink up in salute before making my way to the back.
“You’re supposed to go easy on me!” Kinsley’s protest floated through the air as I neared the table.
“Why would I do that?”
Kinsley was tall, but Hayes was still taller, so watching her try to stare him down even as she looked up at him, brandishing her pool cue like a javelin was comical. “One, because it’s called chivalry, two because I’m your wife, and three because if you don’t, then when we get home later I won’t—”
I piped up. “I’m here and desperately don’t want to hear the end of that sentence.”
They turned in my direction, both smiling. Hayes wrapped Kinsley in a hug, and dropped a kiss to her temple. They were sickeningly adorable together—Hayes especially. That man worshiped the ground she walked on unabashedly.
“You made it!” Kinsley grabbed my hand and tugged me toward a four seater high-top a few feet from the pool table. “I want to hear about the shop!”
“Hey, what about our game?”
“I quit!” Kinsley blew her husband a kiss and settled in on a stool. “So, how was it?”
The excitement that accompanied talking about the shop, tattooing in general, really, would never get old.
“Well, overall, it was amazing! I did have one asshole pop in, though, so that sucked, but other than that, it was a great first day.” I took a sip of tequila soda, and then added, “Oh, but I’m fairly certain the asshole called in a noise complaint on me.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah. The cops showed up and everything. Well, Garrett showed up.” And suddenly, I was right back to thinking about the guy I had come to the bar to forget. This was pathetic.
Kinsley sat there with her mouth agape for a moment before her eyes honed in on a spot somewhere just over my shoulder. Then she yelled, “What the hell? You didn’t tell me you went to Cory’s shop today!”
It took a minute for the words that left her lips to click, and when they did, my stomach simultaneously bottomed out with dread, and took flight with anticipation.
“You didn’t ask, and I didn’t know I was supposed to tell you.”
I gave Kinsley a glare that I hoped portrayed my feelings on her lack of a heads up before turning around to Garrett .
A white T-shirt stretched tightly over his chest and biceps, and his dark jeans looked faded in the naturally worn, well-loved sense. His dark hair was hidden beneath a ball cap, and of course it was backward. Why wouldn’t it be backward?
That should be illegal.
Suddenly, the tiny devil and angel on my shoulders weren’t arguing over whether or not I should get involved with him, but rather whether he was hotter in plain clothes or his police uniform.
“Um, of course you’re supposed to tell me when you get called to my best friend’s brand new shop because some asshole is, well, an asshole.” Her voice rose several octaves from the beginning of the sentence.
“It wasn’t a big deal, Kins.”
“Well, do we know his name and where he lives?” Kinsley folded her arms over her chest.
This was one of the reasons she was my best friend. Kinsley might look all sweet and innocent, wrapped up in fashionable pink clothing, but she had a secret dark side when pissed off. I hadn’t even told her why the guy had been pissed off, and thinking twice about it, I decided to keep that to myself.
“Technically, yes, but it’s fine, really. Garrett will deal with him if he pops back up, right?”
He picked up Kinsley’s discarded pool cue and re-racked the balls. “Absolutely. If Alex Barnes shows his face around your shop again, just give us a call.”
“Ha!” Kinsley shouted, already pulling her phone out to find the guy, and she would, too. Her talent for finding people with little to no information was well past the creepy zone and into FBI expertise territory.
“Now you’ve done it.” I shared a look with Hayes, who promptly passed me his cue stick and went to make sure his wife didn’t start sending death threats through social media.
“Sorry,” Garrett said, but he didn’t look all that sorry. Actually, the smile he flashed my way screamed that it was intentional. “Care for a game?”
I really shouldn’t. Flirting with him was too easy, too fun, and far too natural for my own comfort. It would only end with him getting the wrong impression.
But I was never good at doing what I was supposed to.
“Sure, but I’ll have you know I’m really good at this,” I chalked the tip of my cue and blew the excess off.
“Are you trying to reverse hustle me right now?”
I laughed. “What would be the point in that?”
“To make me think I don’t stand a chance and throw my game off, obviously.” He finished chalking his own cue, and then lined the cue ball up opposite the perfectly triangular cluster of colorful ones.
“I don’t need to throw your game off. I’m quite capable of kicking your ass with you at your prime.”
There’s two different kinds of trouble. The good kind you usually stumble across unplanned—it finds you more than you find it. But the bad kind? That’s the trouble you have no idea you’ve found until it’s far too late.
Objectively, I knew I was in trouble the second Garrett’s smirk turned his gaze into an icy inferno that lit my skin ablaze, but those dimples and that stupid hat lured me into a false sense of safety.
“Care to make a bet?”
I narrowed my gaze on him over the rim of my glass. “What kind of bet?”
“We play for truths. Sink a ball and you get to ask the other person whatever you want to know. They either answer or do a dare of your choosing.” His smirk morphed into roguish excitement. “If I win the game, you have to go on another date with me. If you win—”
I cut him off, already knowing exactly what my prize would be. “ When I win the game, we never go on another date.”
The words, while absolutely necessary, left something very similar to disappointment settling in my chest. There was part of me that wanted to date him. I could date the shit out of him, but DelINKquent Tattoos only just opened. Things needed to settle down, and I needed to find a rhythm before I could even entertain the idea of dating.
I took another sip of my drink, letting the tequila wash that particular feeling down.
I expected Garrett to fight me on my end of the bargain, but he didn’t. A smile curved his lips and he extended his hand over the green felt that suddenly felt more like a battlefield.
“Deal.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, suddenly skeptical over what I was missing, but shook his hand all the same. “That was easier than I expected.”
He sauntered around to my side of the table and leaned down to whisper into my ear. “That’s because you think you’re setting boundaries for us, but you’re forgetting one simple detail.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“I don’t have to date you to fuck you.” Determination and something else, something far more heated, sparkled in his eyes. “Ladies first.”
***
“What’s your deepest darkest secret?” I asked, wanting him to opt for a dare. Garrett had proved to be an open book. Nothing I asked scared him into silence yet, but there was no way this one wouldn’t.
“From my adult life or childhood?”
I stared at him. “It’s interesting that there’s a distinction for you. Which one’s the juiciest?”
“Probably my childhood. I’ve really turned it around since my youth—grown into myself, you know?” The teasing lilt to his voice had me biting my lip to keep from grinning along with him.
“So, what is it?” I asked.
“When I was fourteen, I snuck out of the house and took my dad’s car for a joyride.”
I scoffed. “That can’t be your darkest secret. Stealing your parents’ car is practically a rite of passage. ”
“Yes, but during said joyride, I hit a mailbox on a neighboring street. Broke the side-view mirror clean off the car.”
My eyes widened at that. “Your dad must’ve been so pissed at you.”
A dark crimson stole up Garrett’s neck, and he looked at me, a sheepish expression on his face. “Oh, he was pissed all right, but not at me. I didn’t tell him what I did. He found it in the morning when he was leaving for work and assumed it was a couple of the neighborhood boys, and I never corrected him.”
My mouth fell open on a gasp. “Garrett Adler, you didn’t!”
He chuckled nervously and nodded. “I did. And now that you know, you’re being sworn to secrecy.” He extended his pinky finger toward me and I accepted it without hesitation. Snitches get stitches and all that. Plus, I wasn’t ever going to be meeting his father anyway, so his secret was safe with me.
The next shot was mine, but I missed when Garrett’s hand “accidentally” brushed against my thigh on his way to get his drink. I knew it was a load of shit, and I should’ve been mad that he was cheating, but the way my thigh was still tingling from his touch had me distracted.
He made his shot, because of course he did. Garrett was turning out to be much better at pool than he originally let on. Not that he had ever said what his skill level was, and I hadn’t asked, which was proving to be a problem.
“What’s your family like?”
“I’m not answering that.”
And this was where hindsight was always twenty-twenty. Garrett’s question probably seemed surface-level enough, but family was a topic I didn’t talk about. Not mine, anyway. The only person I was fully open with was Kinsley, who was still ten feet away, desperately trying to convince Hayes to let her message Alex, because of course she’d found him. Even Glen got trimmed versions of my truths and feelings. Getting deep, getting personal, made me uncomfortable in the same way a too tight, itchy sweater would. It never felt freeing to open up; it felt suffocating.
Whether it was Garrett’s strategy to pull out the big guns or not, he wasn’t asking the questions I thought he would. Questions like, “If you could be any animal, what would you be, and why?”, or “Who do you think the last truly great president was?”, I could’ve handled, but questions about my childhood? I’d rather discuss politics with the whole bar.
He smiled deviously. “So, does that mean you’ll be taking another dare?”
I weighed my options. So far he’d pocketed two balls, and I’d done two dares. The first was to be a waitress for a solid ten minutes. I walked around, grabbing people’s empty glasses, and brought them new ones. Mark had asked me what the hell I was doing, so I explained, promising to give him any tips I got, and he went with it. The second was to go up to the group of guys in the corner, take a sip of one of their drinks and say, “Oh, that’s good,” and walk away.
Safe to say, Garrett wasn’t messing around.
But neither was I.
“Yes. ”
He chuckled and rubbed his hands together, looking around the bar. It was only so big, and there were only so many people I could harass, so I couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind. I certainly didn’t expect the words that came out of his mouth.
“Dance.”
I blanched. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You can pick the song, but you have to put on a dance routine for the bar.” He crossed his arms over his chest, clearly amused, thinking he’d found a dare I wouldn’t do.
I walked over to where he leaned a hip against the pool table, tipped back the rest of my drink, and handed him both my glass and pool cue. “Fine.”
Mark took one look at me as I approached the bar and said, “What do you have to do now?”
I handed him my phone, the song I’d chosen already queued up. “I’m sorry in advance. I’ll stay late and help you clean to make it up to you.”
Mark laughed, shaking his head, but plugged my phone into the speakers, interrupting the music that had been playing. “Answering the man’s questions might be easier.”
“No, can do. Mommy issues, remember?” I joined him behind the bar, and then nodded to the phone. “And I’m going to need you to turn that up so I can’t hear my embarrassment.”
He hit play, and Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” blasted through the tiny bar.