Chapter 4 #3
“Don’t you listen to him, you’re charming me just fine.” I giggled.
“Enough for another beer?” the old man croaked. I settled him with a look that said there was no way I was pouring him another drink.
I shook my head, smiling to myself as he stalked back over to where he had been sitting with a few other familiar faces.
I looked back over at the man sitting in the corner, trying to keep my distrust from settling on my face.
But he was sat with his back toward us, simply staring at the back of the bar.
Whilst I could maybe excuse some behaviour as peculiar, this guy really was just fucking weird.
“God, that guy gives me the creeps. He’s really fucking weird,” I said, looking over at Nick, who just shrugged.
“Everyone who comes in here is ‘fucking weird’,” Nick said, settling me with a be-for-real look. “Including you and me for even working here in the first place.”
The difference was that we came here out of necessity; everyone else came here out of choice.
“Yeah, maybe,” I conceded, trying to still my raging thoughts.
Everything in my body screamed danger, get away from him!
Don’t let him near you! But then again, my body couldn’t really be trusted.
It still couldn’t tell the difference between handing in a mid-term paper or speaking to groups of more than four people and being chased by a pack of ravenous lions.
“Oh, you never told me how your date with Andrew went.”
The smile that lit up Nick’s face was like fireworks lighting up the night sky. “It was absolutely amazing. He took me to a fantastic new bistro in Chesterwood called The Cauldron.”
“Ooo, spooky.” I made a mental note to add it to the never-ending list of restaurants and places I wanted to visit when I finally had enough cash to spare. “Well, tell me everything then. What was the food like? What did you wear? What did he order? Did you go back to his place after?”
Nick blushed almost instantly, answering one of my four questions without so much as another word.
“It really was amazing. After spending the last year going out with assholes and men that weren’t quite sure about their sexuality, it’s really nice to date someone both mature and secure in who they are. ”
“I am so happy for you, you totally deserve this. And he’s hot, hot too, so double bonus.
” And I couldn’t have meant that more. If anyone deserved to be in a healthy, stable relationship, it was Nick.
He had moved to Darling a couple of years ago with his fiancée.
The guy had cheated and skipped town, leaving Nick isolated in a new place with nothing more than a couple of bags of clothes and a broken heart.
The story was both shocking and devastating the first time I’d heard it, doing nothing but validating my cynical views on relationships and love.
But it was like I always said, sometimes it’s better that the trash takes itself out.
But Nick and I had become friends quickly, finding camaraderie in this shitty job and in our general disdain for other people.
A string of lousy dates and one-night stands later had left Nick feeling pretty lonely and dejected.
That was until he bumped into Andrew in a coffee shop, and the two hit it off.
I think Nick really appreciated being able to spend time with someone who was on the same page about what they wanted from a relationship.
Very annoyingly, for my cynical beliefs, the two were destined for forever. Over the last six months, the two of them have claimed to be nothing more than friends. But when Andrew started occasionally popping in after work for a drink, I could see them falling in love from a mile off.
Because Andrew lived in Chesterwood and “popping in after work” loosely translated to an hour and fifteen-minute drive.
Because one didn’t simply “pop in” to The Bootmaker. This was the type of place you actively ran away from in case you got a staph infection from touching one of the surfaces.
But three weeks ago, Andrew had finally asked Nick out, much to his surprise and my elation.
I stooped below the bar and began to rifle through the fridge designated for bar staff.
Orson, as a way to placate us and stop us from unionising over our insulting wages and poor working conditions, usually allowed us to have one or two drinks during our shift.
We kept a bottle of very cheap prosecco in there for moments like this one.
“Ugh, where is it?” I muttered to myself as I rifled through cans of lager and cider stacked on top of each other. “I swear to God, if Brent has drunk it, I am going to lose my fucking—”
“Never mind!” I said, pulling it from the back of the fridge and standing up to face Nick. “Here it is.” I felt the skin on the back of my neck prickle before I even turned, following Nick’s eye line to where they were locked on the man stood in front of him.
Danger! Danger! Danger!
The thoughts blared through my mind, a mental siren going off that something about this man was not quite right. I set my face in a weary smile that probably looked far more like I was in unimaginable pain, as I turned to look at him.
I set the prosecco down on the table, trying to ignore the way the bottle scraped quietly against the surface of the wooden bar, a clear signal to everyone around me that my hands were shaking.
I wiped the condensation from my hands before looking up again.
His eyes hadn’t moved from where they were locked on mine, and Nick had closed the gap between us, eyeing us both with a stricken look.
“Hi, there,” I said, trying to keep my tone as steady as fucking possible, even though I could feel the waves of bile lingering at the base of my throat. “Uh, have you been served?”
I looked over at Nick, widening my eyes ever so slightly and motioning for him to fucking do something.
“Yes, I have been served.” His voice was slow and calculated as if he was feeling each word in his mouth. Feeling each letter before he let them pass through his lips. “I have had a wonderful evening.” Ah, yes, nothing screams ‘wonderful’ like staring at a dirty bar wall.
“Well, we are glad to hear it,” Nick cut in, visibly retracting his earlier statement about the guy simply being a little peculiar. “Are you just visiting Darling?”
Maybe I was staring too hard. Maybe I was looking for something, a sign, a signal that would tell me this man was bad news.
To the untrained eye, to a man, the change in his demeanour would have been imperceptible.
But the scowl he levelled Nick with, one on his face for the shortest of moments before regaining his composure and recalibrating with a smile, was enough to have me stumbling back slightly and into some dirty beer glasses.
The sound of shattering glass drew his attention, the intensity of his leer pulling the breath from my throat.
I clutched at the edge of the bar, my knuckles whitening just hidden from his view as he turned to leave.
I was about to let out a withering breath when he stopped just in front of me, grabbing a handful of peanuts and shoving them into his pocket. Loose peanuts. Salted peanuts.
He put a handful of peanuts in his fucking pocket.
HE PUT A HANDFUL OF PEANUTS IN HIS FUCKING POCKET.
I just knew I would be repeating that sentence to anyone and everyone who would listen for weeks to come.
Possibly years, depending on how the whole creepy-guy-at-the-bar story unfolded.
Either way, I’d be sending out an APB on the guy.
It felt like it was my duty as a Darling local to keep the people of my town safe.
“Don’t worry about leaving us a Yelp review,” Nick muttered to himself before snickering once the man had left the bar.
Before the door had even closed, I’d downed most of the bottle of prosecco and proceeded to pour whatever was closest into a shot glass because sometimes needs must. And in this fucking instance, I needed it more than I’d ever needed anything in my life.