I WANT the Bartender Explicit Erotica
Linda took the same stool she always took, third from the end, where the wood had a darker ring from years of condensation and her own glass.
The bar smelled like citrus peel, old whiskey, and the faint metallic bite of the ice machine.
Marc was already there, sleeves rolled, ink crawling from his wrists up under the black fabric like it had somewhere better to be.
She set her bag on the hook under the rail and watched his hands first. She always did. Thick fingers, clean nails, a swallow tattooed on the back of one hand that flexed every time he twisted a bottle.
“Usual?” he asked.
“Usual.”
He poured without looking at the measure.
Two fingers of bourbon, one large cube, no garnish.
He set it in front of her the same way he had on Tuesday and the Thursday before that.
Their fingers did not touch. They never did.
She wrapped both hands around the glass anyway and let the cold bite her palms.
“Long day?” he said.
“The kind that makes a person sit in the same place and pretend the noise is company.” She took a sip. It burned the way she liked. “Yours?”
“Inventory. Then a guy who wanted a martini shaken like he saw it in a movie. I shook it. He still complained.”
Marc wiped the same stretch of bar he had already wiped.
The muscle in his forearm jumped. A line of script ran along the inner side, too small to read from her stool unless she leaned, and she was not going to lean. Not yet.
Linda let her eyes stay on the ink a second too long and then looked at his face instead.
He was 26. She had asked once, months ago, when the question could still pass as small talk.
He had answered like it was nothing. She was 34 and felt every year of it in her lower back after ten hours at a desk, but not here.
Here the ache sat lower and had nothing to do with work.
“You ever get tired of the same questions?” she asked.
“Depends who asks them.” He flicked his gaze up. Dark. Steady. Then he went back to stacking clean glasses like the sentence had not landed anywhere.
She smiled into her drink. The ice clicked.
Behind her a couple argued softly about whose turn it was to pay.
The music was low enough that she could hear Marc’s breathing when he leaned in to grab a bottle from the well.
Citrus and something warmer underneath, soap that had not quite covered the smell of his skin.
“My assistant spent forty minutes today explaining why a client cannot have a meeting on a Friday,” Linda said. “I nodded like I cared. I did not care.”
“Friday’s a real day. People forget that.”
“They do. Then they email at six and act shocked when no one answers.” She turned the glass. Condensation wet her thumb. “You work Fridays.”
“I work most nights.” He said it without complaint. Just fact. The swallow on his hand flexed again as he capped a bottle. “You come in on Fridays too.”
“I do.”
Silence sat between them that was not empty. She liked that about him. He did not fill every gap. Most men her age talked to prove they were still interesting. Marc let the quiet hang until she chose to cut it.
“That one,” she said, tipping her chin at his left forearm. A dense rose, thorns wrapping the muscle, petals gone dark with age. “New?”
“Two years.” He turned his arm a fraction so the light caught the shading. “Hurt less than the ones on my ribs.”
She pictured ribs. She should not have. The picture arrived anyway: ink spreading over bone, skin pulled tight when he reached for a high bottle. She drank instead of asking to see.
“You collect them like other people collect stamps,” she said.
“Stamps don’t bleed.” A corner of his mouth moved. Almost a smile. “You ever get one?”
“No.” Linda looked at her own unmarked wrist. Pale. Expensive watch. Nothing that told a story. “I buy art for walls. Seems cleaner.”
“Walls don’t move when you breathe.”
The line landed lower than it should have. She crossed her legs on the stool and felt the seam of her slacks pull. Heat that had nothing to do with bourbon settled between them. She kept her voice even.
“Poetic for a man who spends his nights pouring other people’s mistakes.”
“I listen more than I pour.” He set a fresh napkin under her glass though the old one was still dry. “You talk more than most regulars. That’s not a complaint.”
“Good. I paid for the privilege of talking to someone who is not trying to sell me a quarterly projection.”
He huffed a short sound that might have been a laugh.
Then a group of three came in and he had to move.
Linda watched him work. The way his shoulders filled the shirt.
The dark ink at the side of his neck that disappeared under the collar.
She had wondered for weeks how far down it went.
She wondered now with more precision than was decent for a woman sitting alone at a bar on a weeknight.
When he came back he topped her drink without being asked. Their eyes held a second longer than the pour required.
“You always take this stool,” he said.
“It has the best view of the well.” She did not look away. “And you don’t make me repeat my order.”
“I remember the ones who come back.”
“Dangerous habit.”
“Only if they stop coming back.”
Linda’s pulse clicked in her throat. She swallowed it down with bourbon. The cube had melted enough to dilute the burn. She liked it better sharp, but she did not say so. She wanted the excuse to stay.
“Tell me something that is not about work,” she said.
Marc considered that while he twisted a lime. Juice ran over a knuckle already mapped with fine black lines. “I sleep with the windows open. Even in winter. Drives my neighbor crazy.”
“I sleep with them shut. City noise. Fourteenth floor and I can still hear the highway.”
“Luxury problems.”
“The worst kind.” She smiled for real that time. “You live close?”
“Close enough that I walk when the weather’s decent.” He glanced at the door like he could see the street through it. “You don’t walk here.”
“I drive. Parking is a tax I pay so I can leave when I want.”
“You never leave early.”
She held his gaze. “Neither do you.”
A man at the other end lifted two fingers.
Marc went. Linda sat with the unfinished thought and the heat that had started in her stomach and spread.
She pressed her thighs together once, private, then made herself stop.
This was still just talk. Same stool. Same man with ink on every visible inch and more she had not been invited to see.
He came back wiping his hands on a towel. A drop of water clung to the swallow tattoo and she watched it until it disappeared into the lines.
“Another?” he asked.
“One more. Then I’ll remember I have a bed that costs more than this whole bar and still feels empty.”
He poured. Set it down. This time the base of the glass kissed the side of her finger. Accidental. Or not. Neither of them moved for a beat.
“Empty’s a choice,” Marc said, quiet enough that the couple behind her would not hear.
Linda looked at the ink on his throat, then at his mouth. “So is sitting here three nights a week talking to the same bartender.”
“I noticed.”
“I know you did.”
She lifted the glass. The bourbon smelled like caramel and smoke. His soap cut through it when he leaned to grab a receipt. She breathed it in and did not hide that she had.
Last call was still an hour away. The stool was hers. His hands kept moving. The tattoos kept suggesting there was more under the shirt, under the waistband, places a regular was not supposed to think about while she paid her tab in small talk and ice.
Linda thought about them anyway.
The second drink sat lower in the glass than Linda meant it to.
She had not planned to stay through the late crowd.
She never planned it and she always did.
Marc moved down the line taking orders with the same economy he used on her, except he did not linger for anyone else.
That detail lived under her ribs like a bruise she pressed on purpose.
A woman in a red dress laughed too loud at the far end. Marc smiled the professional smile, the one that did not reach the corner that had almost moved for Linda an hour ago. She catalogued it and hated that she catalogued it.
When he drifted back he brought a dish of olives she had not asked for. Briny. Dark. He set them between them like an offering that could still be called service.
“You eat when you drink,” he said. “You forget.”
“I forget on purpose.” She took one anyway. Salt burst on her tongue. Oil slicked her fingertip. She sucked it off without thinking and watched his eyes drop to her mouth and lift again like he had not.
“Inventory still haunting you?” she asked.
“Counted twice. Still short a bottle of the rye nobody orders except the guy who tips in coins.”
Marc braced both hands on the inner edge of the bar.
The ink on his right forearm was different from the rose.
A compass, needle frozen northwest, numbers so small she would need to put her face to his skin to read them.
She did not put her face to his skin. She thought about the heat of it anyway.
“You notice who orders what.”
“Part of the job.”
“You notice who sits where.”
He did not deny it. A glass chimed somewhere behind him. He ignored it for one extra second. “You want the truth or the polite version?”
“I come here for neither, usually. Surprise me.”
“You sit where you can see the door and my hands at the same time. You do it every time. I stopped thinking it was an accident around the third week.”
Linda’s throat worked. The olive pit sat sharp against her gum. She set it on the napkin with more care than a pit deserved. “Observant for 26.”
“Age doesn’t make a man blind. Just slower to say what he sees.”
She almost smiled. Almost. The red-dress woman waved.
Marc went. Linda used the gap to press her knees together under the bar, a small private correction.
The seam of her slacks had started to feel like a problem.
She was 34 years old and sitting in a well-lit room thinking about a bartender’s forearms like they were a private show.
The thought should have embarrassed her. It made her stay.