Chapter Three #2
I turn back to the bar to find Cliff clutching his stomach laughing. Once my shock wears off, I start laughing, too. Brady just faked out that meathead, and the only reason he would have done that is…me.
Suddenly, I get a whiff of lightly cologned, hot-but-innocent boy-next-door. I whirl around to see Brady standing directly in front of me. My back is pressed up against the bar, Brady forced into my space by the crowd. I have to crane my neck up to look at him.
“You all right?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I reply, but I’m not sure what I am.
The feeling that rushed through me when I realized what Brady had done scared me even more than the jealousy.
I don’t want to drag him and his sunshine and freckles into my shitshow of a life.
“That was some stunt you pulled there. You have no idea who that guy is, do you?”
“Nope. Not a clue. But it was either that or flatten him where he stood, and I’m not in the mood to get kicked out of a bar tonight.”
Cliff’s voice cuts in as he puts the last of the drinks on my tray. “Here you go, honey.”
“I’ll get out of your way,” says Brady.
“Yeah, you’d better get back over there before you miss out on all the action,” I say with a smirk in the direction of his female-swarmed table.
He makes a show of peering across the bar. He shakes his head. “I don’t see any girls with purple hair over there,” he says. “Do you?”
I roll my eyes. “Have fun tonight,” I say. “Don’t get too wasted.”
“Well, which is it?” he asks. “Have fun or don’t get too wasted?”
I smile and turn around to grab my tray as Brady heads back across the bar.
“Cliff,” I call. He lifts his chin at me as he pours a drink. “The next time Kelsey comes over, would you send a round over to Brady’s table?”
“You got it. And it’s on me. That was the funniest shit I’ve seen in this bar in a long time.”
I signal to Russ before taking the beers to the table with obnoxious Muscle Man. Russ keeps his eye on me, and I head over, full of piss and vinegar. As I place the drinks down, I glance toward Brady’s table. It turns out that Russ isn’t the only one keeping an eye on things.
“Here’s your bill,” I say, dropping their check on the table.
“It’s not last call yet!” protests one of them.
I lean against their table and survey them with a syrupy-sweet smile.
They have the distinct aura of freshly minted grad students: young, just old enough to legally drink, and high on their inflated egos.
“It’s last call when I say it’s last call.
And I’ve already told the owner to stop serving you. So, cash or credit?”
There are grumbles, and I catch one under-the-breath “fucking bitch,” but they pay up without further resistance.
“I don’t think there’s enough tip here,” I say, counting out the bills in front of them.
“If there was a problem with the service, you can tell my friend Russ over there all about it.” I toss my braid behind my shoulder in the direction of Russ and his three hundred pounds of bulky muscle.
His eyes are still trained on us. “Russ has some anger management issues, but his combat training usually gives him the discipline he needs not to completely lose his shit.” I smile again and fan out the bills.
The grumbling stops and a few more bills of various denominations hit the table.
“Thank you, gentlemen. You have a good night.” I wink at Muscles. “Congrats to you and Hortense.”
Another thing in my DNA: extortion.
For the next hour, my eyes constantly drift to Brady’s table. By the time last call comes around, two of his friends are lip-locked with the girls draped across their laps and the other two are doing shots with Brady and the remaining three girls. Again, I have to tamp down a flash of jealousy.
At two thirty, the lights go on, the music stops, and people start to stagger out the door. Brady and his friends leave with the girls. I busy myself clearing and wiping down tables, my ears ringing and my feet throbbing.
“You okay getting home?” Cliff asks when we’re done closing and heading out the back.
“Yeah, I’ve got my bike. Thanks.”
I say good night to him and the other waitresses, and they drive off, leaving me alone in the parking lot. As I unlock my bike, I hear a car door slam. My heart leaps into my throat, and I whirl around, holding my bike lock like a weapon.
“It’s just me, princess.”
“Jesus, Brady.” My voice and knees are weak with relief. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“Sorry. That’s twice I’ve snuck up on you tonight.”
“It’s okay. I just didn’t know…or, um, expect you to be… I thought you had left,” I fumble.
“I did. Now I’m back. Just wanted to make sure that guy wasn’t hanging around. Do you need a ride?”
“No thanks,” I say. “I have my bike.”
He looks at me skeptically. “You’re biking home at three o’clock in the morning?”
“I do it all the time. It’s not far.”
“Can I drop you off? Your bike will fit in my Jeep.”
“No, that’s okay.”
“Aw, come on. I’ll feel like a jerk if I don’t give you a ride home. It’s Saturday night, there are drunk idiots on the road…”
“Aren’t you?”
“An idiot? Occasionally, yeah. Drunk? No. Had a couple of beers and knocked back one shot, but that’s Sunday breakfast for me.”
I stare at him, not sure if he’s joking.
“I’m kidding,” he says with an eye roll. “My ma would kill me if I did shots at breakfast. You wanna breathalyze me?” He winks.
“Um, no, that’s okay,” I say, suppressing a smile. My feet are killing me and my eyes are starting to gloss over from exhaustion. Maybe it would be okay to get a ride home with him.
Brady hits a button on his key fob, and the back of a dark Jeep Grand Cherokee with New York tags opens. He grabs my bike like it weighs nothing, brings it to his car, and puts it in the back.
“Thanks,” I say once I’ve climbed into his car and buckled myself into the passenger seat.
“No problem. It creeps me out to think of you going home alone on your bike at this time of night.”
“Well, unless you’re going to be a middle-of-the-night one-man car service for the foreseeable future, you’ll have to get used to it. I work a lot of night shifts, especially on the weekends.”
“Thanks for the beer, by the way. You didn’t have to do that.”
“You didn’t have to do what you did, either,” I say. I deal with drunk idiots like that all the time. I think about how I got an extra forty dollars of tip out of them and smile smugly to myself.
“I didn’t like how he was touching you,” he says, and the boy-next-door suddenly sounds like the ass-kicker-next-door.
“Well, that makes two of us,” I say. “I can handle it, though. I don’t need anyone looking over my shoulder.” I’m done with big men shadowing my every move. From my father to my security detail, it’s a part of my old life that I was more than happy to leave behind.
“I didn’t do it for you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothin’.”
We arrive at the corner of my street in just under five minutes. “This is me,” I tell him.
“You live on a deserted lot? Wow. You’re a hard-ass and all, but this is taking it a little far, don’t ya think?”
“I’ll walk from here,” I say. “I’m just a little ways down the block.”
“I don’t think so, Pines. I’ll take you to the door.”
I manually unlock my door when he doesn’t put his car in park. “Can you pop the back, please?”
“I could do that, but I’m going to drive down the street next to you and not leave until I see you unlock your door and go inside your place.”
I heave a sigh. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I don’t want anyone to know where I live?”
Brady looks at me with an amused expression that makes me want to smack his cocked eyebrow right off his forehead.
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe you take yourself a little too seriously? I mean, you do look like one of those hot mutant chicks from the X-Men movies, but I don’t see a pack of paparazzi following your ass around. ”
“It’s not about paparazzi.”
“Whatever it’s about, you’re not walking home alone, princess.”
I stare at him, weighing my options. He may be laid-back and everyone’s friend (except men who touch me without my consent), but there’s a determination in his pretty green eyes that hints at stubbornness. Stubborn men are the bane of my existence.
“Fine.” I sit back in the seat and cross my arms over my chest. “Third house on the right. And stop calling me princess.”
“Sorry. I can’t help it. You look like this purple-haired fairy princess doll my sister used to play with.”
I laugh in spite of myself. “I guess it’s okay, then.”
“This is it?” he asks, pulling up in front of Lizette’s house.
“Yeah. I live in the back.” I point to the garage at the end of the weed-lined driveway.
“I’ll get your bike.”
I sigh and get out of the car, too tired to argue with him.
“Thanks,” I say when we’re at my door. I unlock it and take hold of my bike’s handlebars.
“Any time,” he says, looking down at me in the darkness. “I’ll see you around, Angie Pines.”
He smiles that sweet neighborhood-boy smile, and I have to remind myself that this is nothing. He’s just a boy in my class, and I’m a girl with too many secrets.