23. Chapter 23
Chapter 23
Evan had just finished making what felt like the 500th Cosmo of the evening, when he glanced up and saw a woman wearing some sort of a crown sitting at the bar, off to the right. She hadn’t been there a second before, so it was almost like she’d just magically appeared and when Lars, the other bartender working with him started to beeline for her, Evan almost clotheslined him.
“That’s your end of the bar,” Evan told him, pointing for good measure.
“Asshole,” Lars returned, mostly good-naturedly, but backing off because Evan signed his paychecks.
Evan wiped his hands on a towel before making his way over to the woman, who looked like she might have already had a few drinks and smiled at him as he approached.
As he stopped in front of her, he hoped like hell that she wouldn’t order a Cosmo, because then he might have to kill himself.
“Who’d have thought an angel would appear on the day I had to fork over a small fortune in taxes?” he asked, speaking loud enough to be heard over the live band that had just kicked off their second set and introduced himself. “I’m Evan.”
“I’m Paige,” she semi-shouted back, quickly taking in his warm brown eyes and engaging smile, instinctively knowing that he was a consummate flirt and therefore way outside her possible dating pool; she had to learn to swim in the shallow end before moving into the deep end.
It didn’t mean that she couldn’t enjoy the view, though.
Evan leaned forward and as he did, he noticed the freckles liberally splashed across her nose and cheeks that gave her a ‘nice girl’ vibe, which was reinforced by her large, amber eyes. He immediately relegated her to his discard pile since he didn’t do nice women—and this one looked like she was a sweetheart. “Nice to meet you, Paige. What can I get for you?”
“Nothing yet. My friend has to order for me.”
He looked around, but didn’t see anyone with her. “Is your friend … imaginary?”
“What?” She laughed. “No.”
“It’s okay if she is. I’m not going to judge you ... much.”
“Thanks, but my friend is real. She’s just in the bathroom.” When he just continued to look skeptical, she asked, “You don’t believe me?”
“Not really. See, it’s like this,” Evan began with utter seriousness, as if he was going to tell her a state secret. “In my experience, hot women are usually more than a little crazy.”
“Well, thank you for thinking I’m hot, but trust me, I’m not crazy.”
“That’s what all women who are crazy, say.”
“I swear I’m not,” she said, laughing again.
He glanced pointedly at the bling on her head. “Says the woman wearing a crown.”
“It’s not a crown. It’s a tiara.”
Evan rolled his eyes, letting her know the distinction wasn’t worth pointing out.
Paige lifted a hand up to touch the tiara and accidentally knocked it slightly askew in the process. “Jules made me wear it.”
“Jules?”
“My friend.”
“Right. Your ‘friend’.”
“She’s real,” Paige insisted, raising her voice on the ‘real’.
“I’m sure she is. And she made you wear a tiara … because why? Did you lose a bet?”
“No. It’s my birthday tiara.”
“Oh, well that makes sense, I guess. Actually, no it doesn’t.”
“Jules is responsible for everything I’m wearing tonight,” she explained as she tried to straighten the tiara, but only ended up making it even more crooked.
“Here.” Evan reached over and brushed her hand away so he could situate it properly for her. “And happy birthday, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
“Wait. You said she’s responsible for what you’re wearing? Does she pick out your clothes?”
“Just on my birthday. It’s one of the rules—like ordering my drinks.”
He cleared his throat. “So … besides picking out your clothes and ordering your drinks, what else is your friend in charge of on your birthday?”
“Pretty much everything. Well, maybe not everything. I mean, she can’t sell one of my kidneys, or anything, but she plans out the entire evening—where we go, what we do. It’s all her. I basically hand myself over to her for the night.”
“You must really trust her.”
“With my life,” Paige said, then added, “and my hair.”
“Your hair?”
“She talked me into cutting half of it off tonight.”
He tilted his head. “Well, it’s kind of hard to picture what you looked like before, but you look great now. So, she didn’t steer you wrong there,” he told her, just as a woman appeared at Paige’s side and sat down on the stool next to her.
It took Evan all of one second to see this woman was the opposite of Paige, and not a ‘nice girl’. This woman was the type that would throw a man down on the floor and rough up his dick before riding it to a half dozen orgasms. Only then would she grant him permission to have his own orgasm and make him thank her for her generosity when he was done.
She was a stunner, with hair the color of a burnished, copper penny and the darkest blue eyes Evan had ever seen. She was wearing an eye-catching, strapless jumpsuit in a color of red which should’ve waged war with her hair, but didn’t.
Evan actually felt his throat go dry for a moment.
Paige put an arm around the woman, who responded in kind. “This is my friend, Jules. See? I told you she was real.”
Evan nodded at Jules, feeling slightly self-conscious. “Hi, Jules. I’m Evan.”
“Hello.”
“So, I heard that you’re in charge of pretty much everything tonight, including ordering drinks. So what am I making for you two lovely ladies?”
Jules thought for a moment. “Two glasses of water to start with, because it’s important to stay hydrated, and in keeping with our theme we’ll both have a Full Monty.”
Evan grinned and after setting down two waters, quickly made their drinks.
Once they each had a Full Monty in hand, he watched them raise their glasses and toast to something he couldn’t hear, then laugh like hyenas before impressively knocking back half the contents in one fell swoop. He wished he could’ve stayed with them, but Lars was giving him serious stink eye and looked like he was being overrun with drink orders, so Evan reluctantly went to help him. By the time he made his way back to the two women, fifteen minutes later, it was just in time to see Jules getting asked to dance by a regular patron of the bar, a man named Jack that Evan was casually friendly with.
When Jules looked like she was going to say no, Paige turned to the attractive man in his mid-thirties. “What’s your name?”
“Jack.”
Paige smiled at him. “She’d love to dance with you, Jack.”
Jules was making a face.
“You know you want to,” Paige told her. “So quit pretending and go out there.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m really sure.”
“All right,” Jules relented, kissing Paige’s cheek, then wiping away a smudge of lipstick that stayed behind. “I promise I won’t be gone long.”
Paige waved her off, and after Jules headed out to the dance floor with Jack, Paige twisted around to find Evan watching her.
Placing both hands on the bar, he leaned forward a little bit, for the first time seeing a hint of sadness behind Paige’s eyes and found himself wanting to know more about her. “So what’s your story?” he inquired in his best bartender voice.
“My story?”
“Yep. Everyone has one.”
She pursed her mouth as if really giving it some thought and then slapped a hand on the bar, making the person to her left glance over. “My story! Oh, my God, I actually wrote my story. I wrote a book, actually.”
“A real book? No shit?”
“No shit! A real book! It’s sold eighty-four copies already!”
“Impressive.”
Paige wrinkled her nose a little as she reined in her excitement. “Not really. But it’s probably eighty-four more than—” she pointed at a woman at the end of the bar, “—that person has sold. Maybe. For all I know, she’s a best-selling author who’s sold millions of books, like … shit, I can’t think. Give me the name of a best selling author.”
“Um … Stephen King?”
“Thank you. For all I know, she’s a best-selling author like Stephen King. Only the female version, of course.”
“Of course,” Evan agreed, then steered the conversation back to her. “So, tell me about your book.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.”
“Why not? Is it one of those smutty ones that are all the rage these days?”
“What do you know about smutty books that are all the rage?”
He shrugged. “I have a sister. She reads them.”
“Well, it’s not one of those.” Paige paused before giving him a rueful smile. “It’s about being molested as a child, actually.”
“You were … holy shit,” he murmured, his easygoing expression wiped off his face by what she’d just said. “You were molested?”
She nodded. “By my uncle. My mother’s twin brother.”
“Jesus.” His dark brown eyes roamed over her face. “So, this pedophile … is he spending the rest of his life in prison with a roommate named Big Daddy? Maybe getting his ass ripped open twice a day?”
“Unfortunately, no. He’s dead.”
Evan glanced around before discreetly asking, “Did you kill him?”
At the unexpected question—and the utterly hopeful way he asked it—Paige actually laughed out loud. “No. He killed himself, actually. He blew his brains out.”
“Really? Well, that calls for a celebratory shot,” Evan said, then added with a wink that he totally pulled off, “Pun intended.”
She shook her head in amusement as he began making their shots. “Good one.”
“Thanks. But that was pretty low hanging fruit.”
A minute later, he set two shot glasses down on the bar, filled with four distinct striped layers of colored liquid: dark brown, tan, cream, and clear.
“Because Jules isn’t here to order for you, I’m circumventing one of your rules with a loophole,” he said. “But I think she’ll approve, because this is a Screaming Orgasm, so it falls within the drink ‘theme’ you two have going.”
“Very clever.”
He proceeded to name each layer as he pointed to them, starting at the bottom and moving up. “Coffee liqueur. Amaretto. Irish cream. Vodka.”
“It looks almost too pretty to drink.” Then, as something occurred to her, she gave him a curious look. “Can you drink on the job?”
“I actually own one third of this place, so I can do what I want. Well, within reason. I can’t, you know, embezzle or anything. And apparently I can’t sexually harass any of my employees. That’s frowned upon.”
Evan picked up his shot glass and Paige followed. “To one less pedophile in the world,” he toasted.
“To one less pedophile in the world,” she repeated and carefully clinked her glass to his before they both tossed them back.
When they were done, he gathered up the two dirty glasses and put them in the sink, then grabbed a clean one, rimmed it with sugar, and set it on a small plate. While Paige watched, he prepared another drink in silence, with only two ingredients this time: vodka and Frangelico hazelnut liqueur. As a finishing touch, he laid a sugar crusted lemon slice on the plate, next to the shot glass.
“This is for your birthday,” Evan said, sliding the plate toward her. “And since I don’t have any cake or candles, this will have to do. It’s called ‘Chocolate Cake’, even though there’s no chocolate in it and we’ll have to keep this one a secret. Not only is Jules not ordering it, but it also falls outside of the theme loophole.”
Paige mimed zipping her lip.
“So, first you pick up the lemon,” Evan told her and waited for her to pick it up before continuing. “To your …” he looked at her questioningly. “How old are you?”
“I’m thirty-five.”
“To your 35th birthday!” he called out enthusiastically. “Now make a wish, then suck on the lemon, and throw back the shot like the tiara-wearing boss that you are.”
She did everything as instructed—even down to the wish—and when she was done, her eyes widened with complete delight. She didn’t know how, but it legitimately tasted like a slice of chocolate cake. “That was delicious,” she told him, her eyes watering a little from the alcohol burn.
“Thank you. I do this for a living,” Evan teased, before asking, “So what was your birthday wish? And remember, it’s bad luck to lie to bartenders.”
For a moment, Paige was transported back to the night she’d met David, when she’d asked him that very same question, but she pushed it away before it dragged her down. “I can’t tell you. If I do, my wish won’t come true. And I really want it to come true.”
He shook his head. “Actually, that’s fallacious.”
At the use of the rather unusual word, she gave him an amused smile. “Fallacious?”
“Not to be confused with ‘fellatio’.”
She sputtered out a laugh. “I wasn’t. I just don’t hear that word very often.”
“It’s from my Word-of-the-Day app. And speaking of which …” he trailed off and quickly glanced at his watch, smiling when he saw that it was one minute to midnight. “I got to use it before the day is officially over. Thanks to you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Yesterday’s word was ‘intransigent’. That one was a bit of a struggle to use, but I got it out there. One thing I’m not, is a quitter,” Evan said, as one of the waitresses came over with a drink order for him.
She started to rattle off the drinks, but after the first one, he cut her off. “No more Cosmos, Mandy. I’m serious. I’m not making another goddamn Cosmo tonight.”
“Evan—”
“You can either tell people we’re out of Cosmos, or have Lars make them the rest of the night. And if he bitches about it, tell him he’s fired.”
“All right.” Mandy picked up her tray and headed down the bar toward Lars.
“So, what was your wish?” Evan asked Paige again. “That whole ‘can’t tell because it won’t come true’ is fallacious. It was probably made up by someone who just didn’t want to admit they’d wished for something embarrassing.”
“That’s actually me right now.”
“Really? Did you wish for a pony or something?”
“No.”
“Then it’s not that embarrassing, so spill the beans.”
“I wished …” she trailed off to take a deep breath. “I wished to be normal.”
He looked taken aback by that. “What do you mean? You’re more normal than most of the people that come in here.”
“I mean sexually.”
Evan’s expression softened a little bit. “Oh.”
“And when I say ‘normal’, I don’t really know what that means, but after spending almost two years in therapy dealing with my uncle’s abuse, I’m ready to find out.” She paused for a moment, then revealed in a rush, “I haven’t had sexual contact of any kind in over five years.”
“Holy shit,” he blurted out, eyes wide. “I mean, I understand why, but … holy shit.”
“I know. It’s a long time, and that makes me a little nervous.”
“Well, maybe you should just rip the Band-Aid off and have a one-night stand,” he suggested, half-seriously.
“That thought has crossed my mind, but I don’t think I could do it. I’m afraid I’d feel used and I don’t want to ever feel like that again.”
“I think if you went into it willingly, knowing what you wanted from it and could control it, you wouldn’t feel used.”
“Maybe. But I’m not willing to take that chance. I want sex to mean everything that it never has before and I don’t want to settle for anything less.”
“You want the fairy tale,” Evan surmised.
“I want the fairy tale,” she confirmed, then added, “and the happily-ever-after this time around.”
“This time around?”
Paige nodded. “I was married before.”
“I’m sorry,” he told her gently. “Did your husband bail because of the abuse?”
“Indirectly, yes. But for all intents and purposes, no. He didn’t know I’d been molested.”
“He didn’t?”
“No. But I didn’t know, myself, because it was repressed. It eventually caught up with me and bitch-slapped me in the face, but unfortunately it didn’t happen until I’d been divorced for over a year.”
It took Evan what felt like five minutes to digest what she’d just told him, because it sounded like a bizarre plot of a low-budget movie that only aired at 3 a.m. on an obscure cable channel. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. I know what it sounds like, but it’s real.”
“So, what did your ex-husband say when you told him all that?”
“I still haven’t told him. I tried,” she clarified. “I reached out to him a few times in the last three years, but he wasn’t interested in talking to me.”
“What an asshole.”
“He’s not, though. And I take part of the blame. I didn’t specifically tell him what I wanted to talk about. If I’d been a little less vague, it might have made a difference.”
“How long were you two married?”
His interruption and seemingly random question threw her for a second. “Uh, seven years.”
“Well, I think seven years of marriage should’ve been more than enough to earn you a conversation with the asshole—” Evan held up a hand when she started to protest. “I know, you don’t think he’s an asshole, but I do. He did you wrong. He spent years with you and wouldn’t listen to what you might have to say? Asshole. I listened, after only spending a few minutes with you.”
Paige tilted her head, conceding his point, then said, “There’s also the fact that by the time I contacted him, he’d been with someone for a while. Living happily without me played a big part, I think.”
“Sounds like you’re not thrilled about that.”
“That he’s been with someone for a while?” She looked down at the scarred surface of the bar, covered with a thick coating of clear epoxy. “Yes and no. I always wanted him to be happy, just not with her.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You know her?”
“I know her well enough to know she’s not worthy. At all. And it kills me to know that he’s with her and that they have a child together.” She took a deep breath. “There. I said it. I’m a terrible person.”
“You’re not a terrible person. Just honest.”
There was silence between them for a moment and then Paige leaned forward. “So now that you practically know my whole story,” she said, turning the tables, “what’s your story?”
Evan folded his arms across his chest. “I was in a relationship several years ago. It was complicated. I know, everyone says that, right? But this really was. I got involved with an established couple—a man and woman—and for a while it was great.”
That was a curveball she hadn’t seen coming. “Were you with both of them?”
“The man and I were both with her. I wanted to be with him, too, but he was still in denial when it came to men, and wasn’t willing to go there with me.”
“So, you’re bi-sexual?”
“Yes. I swing both ways. So, when you mentioned not being ‘normal’ sexually, I sort of understood. My father always thought I was a deviant, right up until the moment he died.”
Her expression fell. “Oh, Evan.”
“It’s okay. I was used to it,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’m not going to lie, though. I’m thankful I don’t have to deal with him anymore.”
Paige nodded, wanting to climb over the bar and give him a hug.
He waved a hand, as if to clear the air of the unpleasant conversation. “Anyway, there came a time when things shifted between the three of us and we started to break down. It was mostly my fault, because sometimes I’m not very diplomatic, and it wasn’t long before I was basically given my walking papers.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Like I said, it was mostly my fault.”
“Do you ever see them?”
“No. And honestly, I try not to really think about them, either.”
“Was she your ‘one’?” Paige asked quietly.
“I think he was. Which means I’m fucked,” Evan said. “What about the asshole? Was he your ‘one’?”
“Maybe. Which means I’m fucked.”
They looked at one another for a moment, sharing a smile. He then turned and got two shot glasses and poured them each a shot of straight whiskey. Sliding one over to her, he said with a conspiratorial smile, “It’s after midnight, so technically not your birthday any longer so the rules no longer apply.”
Paige smiled and raised her shot glass to his.
“To being fucked,” he toasted.
With a half-laugh, Paige repeated, “To being fucked.”