I WANT the Bartender Explicit Erotica #2
He came back with a clean towel over his shoulder. A bead of sweat had gathered at his temple and tracked toward the dark ink that climbed his neck. She wanted to know if the line continued over his collarbone or stopped. She wanted it in a way that had nothing to do with conversation.
“Ask the thing you’re circling,” he said.
Linda turned her glass. Condensation had made a new ring on the wood, overlapping the old one. “Do you ever clock out and mean it? Walk out and not come back until the next posted shift?”
“Sometimes.” He folded the towel. “Not often. The walk home is short. The apartment is quieter than this and I don’t always like quiet.”
“I like quiet. I pay a lot of money for it. Then I drive here and pay for noise.”
“Maybe the noise isn’t what you’re buying.”
She held his look. The bar lights picked up gold in the brown of his eyes she had not noticed on busier nights. Or she had noticed and filed it away with the rest of the things she was not supposed to keep.
“What am I buying, Marc?”
He did not flinch at his name in her mouth. He had never given her permission and she had never asked. It sat between them now, heavier than the olives.
“Time,” he said. “Someone who already knows the order. Someone who doesn’t need the recap of your title.”
“That sounds lonely when you say it out loud.”
“You said it first. You just used more words.”
A laugh escaped her, short and surprised. She covered it with another sip. The bourbon had gone warmer. Or she had.
Last call was a concept that lived on a sign by the register. Twenty minutes, maybe thirty. The couple behind her had paid and left. The red dress was collecting her purse with the slowness of a woman who hoped someone would stop her. No one did. Marc’s attention stayed on Linda’s side of the wood.
“You ever take anyone home from here?” she asked, and the question came out thinner than she intended.
“Not from this side of the bar.” He said it level. No swagger. “Customers get complicated. I like my complications chosen.”
“And yet.”
“And yet you keep sitting there.”
Linda’s pulse had moved into her wrists. She could feel it against the cool glass. “I’m a regular. Regulars sit.”
“Regulars leave at a decent hour. You wait until the bottles go back on the top shelf.”
She should have been offended. She was not.
She was wet and annoyed at herself for it, a dull heat that had been building since he set the olives down and watched her mouth.
The slacks were going to be a problem when she stood.
She crossed her legs the other way and the pressure made her breath catch once, small enough that only someone watching her chest would see it. He was watching.
“What would you do,” she said, “if I stayed until you locked the door?”
Marc’s hands went still on the towel. For a moment the whole bar narrowed to the stretch of wood between them and the sound of the ice machine cycling off.
“I’d ask if you wanted another drink or a ride.”
“Which answer gets you in trouble?”
“Both. One’s just quieter.”
Linda’s laugh this time had an edge. She finished the drink. The last swallow was all melt and smoke. She set the glass down dead center on the napkin.
“I drove,” she said. “My car’s in the garage two blocks over. The one with the cameras that don’t point at the corners.”
He looked at her like he was measuring the sentence for weight. Then he nodded once, not a yes to the car, just an acknowledgment that she had put it on the table.
“Last call in ten,” he said. “I have to cash out the drawer.”
“I’ll wait.”
“I know.”
He moved away to close tabs. Linda stayed on the stool and watched the ink on the back of his neck when he bent to the register.
A curl of black disappeared under the collar.
She imagined following it with a fingernail.
She imagined the sound he would make if she did.
The thought was vivid enough that she had to look at her own hands to remember where she was.
The bar emptied in pieces. Chairs went up on tables with a hollow knock. Marc killed the music. The sudden quiet made her ears ring. He counted cash with the same focus he used on her drinks. She watched his mouth move on silent numbers.
When he finally came back he had his jacket over one arm and the keys in the other hand. The jacket would cover most of the ink. She found she did not want it covered.
“Still here,” he said.
“Still here.”
He glanced at the door, then at her mouth again, quicker this time. “You asked if I ever leave with someone.”
“I did.”
“Tonight’s the first time the answer might change.”
Linda stood. Her legs felt unreliable. The heat between them had gone from idea to fact, a slick secret in her slacks that she would have to walk with. She slung her bag over her shoulder and did not bother pretending her night was over.
“Then lock up, Marc.”
He did. The bolt slid home with a sound that felt louder than it was. They were the only two people left in the room that had held fifty an hour ago. The air smelled like lemon oil and the ghost of other people’s perfume.
He came around the bar. Up close he was taller than the wood had let her believe. The heat off his chest reached her before his hands did. He did not touch her yet.
“Garage,” he said.
“Two blocks. Gray sedan. Back row.”
They walked out together into the cooler night. His shoulder almost brushed hers. Almost. The almost was worse than contact. Linda kept her eyes on the sidewalk and her mind on the question she had not asked yet: how far the ink went once the shirt came off.
She was going to find out. She already knew she was not turning toward her own building.
The night air hit different after hours of recycled bar cold.
Linda’s blouse clung at the small of her back.
Marc locked the front deadbolt and tested it with a palm, a habit that looked older than 26.
She stood half a step off the curb and watched the ink on his knuckles catch the streetlight when he pocketed the keys.
“You always check twice?” she asked.
“Once a drunk kicked it back open and pissed in the ice well. I check twice.”
She made a face. “That’s going to live in my head.”
“Good. Keeps the romance honest.”
They started walking. Two blocks. Not far enough to cool anything down.
His jacket stayed slung over his shoulder instead of on, like he knew she had been looking at his arms all night and had decided not to hide them.
The compass on his forearm flashed when a cab went by.
Northwest. She still did not know what it pointed at.
“You walk this every night?” Linda said.
“Most. Bus when it rains hard. I don’t own a car that I trust for more than grocery runs.”
“And tonight you’re walking me to mine.”
“Tonight you said the cameras miss the corners.” He glanced sideways. “That was not small talk.”
“Neither was you saying the answer might change.”
Their shoulders almost lined up. She could smell him without the bar’s lemon oil in the way: clean cotton, a little sweat, the faint chemical ghost of whatever he used to keep the tattoos bright.
She wanted to put her mouth on the dark curl at his neck and find out if it tasted like ink or skin.
She kept her hands in her coat pockets instead.
A group spilled out of a late kitchen across the street, loud, laughing.
Marc shifted closer without touching her, a shield that could still be called coincidence.
Linda felt the heat of his arm through two layers of fabric and hated how fast her body answered.
She was 34 years old, drove a car that cost more than some people’s rent, and she was wet from a conversation about ice wells and cameras.
“Tell me something true that is not about the bar,” she said.
Marc thought while they waited for the light. “I hate the sound of my own apartment when I first walk in. Takes ten minutes before it feels like mine again.”
“I leave the kitchen light on for the same reason. Looks lived in from the hallway.”
“Fourteenth floor. You said.”
“You remember the floor.”
“I remember the parts you drop like they don’t matter.”
The light changed. They crossed. Her heels clicked too loud on the empty crosswalk. She had worn them because they made her legs look like a decision, not because she had planned to walk two blocks beside a man whose shirt was doing a poor job of containing him.
“You always this direct after last call?” she asked.
“Only when the person on the stool stops pretending she’s just thirsty.”
Linda’s laugh came out low. “I have been thirsty for three months of Tuesdays and Fridays. I just have better manners in daylight.”
“Manners are for people who intend to leave.”
They reached the garage entrance. Fluorescent lights, oil-stained concrete, the kind of echo that made private sounds feel public. She led. He followed half a pace behind, close enough that if she stopped short he would walk into her. She thought about stopping short.
Her sedan sat in the back row like she had promised, nose in, shadows pooled on both sides. A security camera stared at the lane, not the space between bumpers. Linda fished her fob out and did not unlock yet. The lights blinked once when she tested the button and she swore under her breath.
Marc stopped at the rear quarter panel. He looked at the car the way he looked at a complicated order: taking inventory.
“Nice,” he said.
“It starts. It has seats that go back.” She heard herself and did not take it back. “That came out less smooth than it lived in my head.”
“I like it better unsmooth.”
She turned to face him. Up close in the hard light the tattoos were sharper. A date in small roman numerals sat under the compass. She wanted to ask what it marked and knew she would ask later with her mouth on him instead of words.
“We can still call this a ride home,” she said. “I can drop you. You can be decent. I can be the woman who talks too much and drives away.”
Marc’s voice dropped to the register he had used when the bar went quiet. “Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“Then open the door, Linda.”
Her name in his mouth did something unfair. She hit the fob for real. Locks thunked. She reached for the rear handle instead of the front and saw him notice. Good. Let him notice.