Chapter 2 #2
“Next year,” Eileen says as she joins me a few minutes later, “we’ll have streamers, cake.
The whole shebang.” I shake my head, smothering a smile.
Once Eileen gets going it’s best to let the train of thought come to a rolling stop.
“Carlos insisted on baking a cake and Maddie already volunteered to jump out of it. He thinks he can submit it for some reality show so if you say ‘no’ now, you’ll be breaking all three of our hearts. ”
I throw my hands up in exasperation. “Jesus fuck, fine! It’s not like you’d listen if I said ‘no’ anyways.”
“Now you’re gettin’ it. Take another shot,” she says, dangling my glass in front of me.
“This isn’t legal, you know that right?”
“Nyxie, I don’t give a single, solitary, flying fuck if it’s not ‘legal’,” she emphasizes with air quotes. “This is my bar. What’s the use of owning the damn thing if I can’t do what I want?!”
“Hey, Eileen!” we hear Bert shout from across the room. How this man can hear anything over the din of the bar still surprises me. “Eileen—do you think Maddie would do that for my next birthday?” he asks hopefully.
“Fuck you for making it weird, Bert!” she hollers back.
“I thought we were friends!”
“Bert. Honey. You pay me to bring you drinks with my tits half out. It’s not the same thing.” I have to hide a smirk when he grumbles into his glass.
“I don’t know Eileen, you pay me to pass out drinks with my tits half out, doesn’t seem that far off,” I tease, filling a customer’s drink across the bar.
“Ornery little shit,” she mutters. “The fact I haven’t fired you yet means we’re practically friends. And people who are almost friends don’t snitch about things like ‘underage drinking’ or ‘income taxes’,” she emphasizes again.
“Pretty sure that’s not legal either.” She merely waves me off as we get back to work.
A pleasant buzz spreads through my limbs from the two earlier shots and piece of pot brownie.
After promising to give me a lift home, Eileen sends Chloe and Maddie home early since there are so few customers this late at night.
Chloe’s boyfriend pulls up a few minutes later and Maddie hitches a ride with them.
“Make bad choices, sweetie!” Eileen yells, and Chloe flips her off while her boyfriend visibly blushes from his parked car.
Tanner’s not her usual type but he seems to be treating her and Cora well, so I hope he sticks around.
I hear the door open and Eileen tell whoever just walked in to take a seat wherever when I’m putting the last of the bar rags into the washing machine in the back room and groan.
I was so close to getting out of here without having to put on another painfully brittle customer service smile.
I stop in my tracks when I see the two impossibly beautiful women sitting in my section. What the fuck? I can’t even blame the alcohol or pot for my confusion.
Pretty people don’t come here.
They certainly don’t come here at one in the morning.
And they definitely don’t look like they’re happy to see me.
“What the fuck are they doing here?” Eileen whispers, coming up next to me under the pretext of wiping the counter.
I snort before I can stop myself. “That's not nice to say about your bar.”
“It’s my bar, I’ll say whatever the fuck I want. Go see what they want. Ask if we’re being audited,” she whispers harshly, “I’m too pretty to go back to prison.”
“Coward,” I whisper back. “Wait, prison—” I start, but she snaps my ass with the towel and shoves me towards the two newcomers. I’ve walked this path so many times I could do it with my eyes closed, but right now it feels like a gauntlet.
They have the same noses and golden eyes.
Same deep, brown skin, and full lips. Despite their similarities, they’re a study in contrasts: the woman with straight, white-blonde hair is wearing an expertly tailored white pantsuit, her pointed-toe heels peeking from beneath wide-leg slacks.
Her companion, by comparison, has a black leather motorcycle jacket covered with silver buckles that molds to her body, and thick-soled boots that I would bet money on having kicked more than a few asses.
Her tight curls sway to cover her mouth as she leans in to whisper something to Blondie, and I have an unsettling feeling that whatever she’s saying is about me. Which is clearly ridiculous.
“Welcome to Daly’s,” I say, setting down two coasters. “Just a heads up—the kitchen’s closed and we’re just about to announce last call.” Maybe if I’m bitchy enough, they’ll leave sooner. Blondie gives me a beaming smile.
Shit.
“That’s quite all right,” she responds in an airy, melodic voice.
“What can I get you two?” They look at each other and I wait awkwardly for someone to say something. Am I getting paranoid? What the hell did Misty give Carlos for those brownies? They turn towards me, mirror images of one another.
“Vodka tonic, please,” they say in perfect unison, and Blondie laughs as the hairs on my neck rise.
“Oh goodness! Usually, we try to downplay the twin thing, but it seems we’re out of practice,” she titters. Titters. I don’t think anyone in the history of Lynden has ever tittered. I don’t think anyone here even knows how.
“Right,” I stretch out the word. “Two vodka tonics, coming right up.” Eileen quirks her eyebrow at me expectantly as I join her behind the bar to start mixing their drinks.
“Well?”
“Hell if I know, I’m not sober enough for this shit,” I mutter, finishing their drinks. With their unnervingly synchronized gazes, they track my every step until back at their table. Blondie takes a sip of her drink and hums in appreciation.
“This is lovely, thank you so much—I didn’t catch your name?” I think her smile has literally stunned me stupid for a moment because I give her my name before I can stop myself.
“Oh, uh, Nyx,” I reveal, holding back a wince when I immediately regret sharing even that harmless bit of personal information.
My gut instinct is usually pretty well-honed—like when it warns me that a trucker looks like he’s one bad day away from turning me into a skin suit.
These two don’t scream “it puts the lotion on its skin”, but there’s something about their Devil Wears Prada energy that makes me anxious to put some distance between us.
Maybe that’s how murderers—murderesses?—secretly work.
They disarm you with pantsuits and Louboutins.
“Nyx, now that’s a name you don’t hear every day,” the dark-haired siren muses between sips of her drink, and I look for my exit from this conversation, Eileen be damned. “Goddess of Night.”
“Uh, yeah. Real badass too.” Blondie gasps and puts her hand on her siren sister's arm.
“Oh! Augustine, I think we’ve found a fellow philhellene,” she says.
Her enthusiasm is so surreal I almost want to ask her what medication she’s taking, because no unmedicated person could be this upbeat right now.
Maybe then this situation would make more sense.
“Isn’t it just fascinating how the Greeks used divine allegories to derive meaning from their universe?
” She looks at me expectantly, eyes practically sparkling.
I look at the dark siren—Augustine—for help.
While I do happen to think Greek mythology is fascinating thanks to years of self-study, I’m nowhere near sober enough to have this conversation.
My normal tactics of deflecting and distracting aren’t working on these two.
“Dial it back, Cece,” she chides, with a smirk at my expense. I hear Eileen give a very pointed cough from behind me with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and remember my mission.
“Yeah-huh. Sure. Anyway. What brings you two to Lynden?”
“Celestine and I are recruiters,” Augustine interjects with a pointed look at her sister before she can answer.
“Like, for the military?” I ask with an obvious touch of skepticism, giving their outfits another once over. Augustine snorts at my confusion.
“And perpetuate the cogs of the military-industrial complex? Not in this lifetime. No, we’re headhunters for the private sector.
We interview candidates to see if they’re a good fit.
Glorified human resources, practically.” Despite the haze of cheap whiskey and Misty’s mystery blend, it’s clear she’s trying too hard to convince me.
“So, not auditors then,” I confirm, and give Eileen a thumbs up. When I turn back around, Augustine is looking at me intently again and Celestine maintains her exuberant smile—neither of which reassure me in the slightest.
“We’re going to be in town for a few days in between meetings,” Celestine begins, “do you have any recommendations for things to do here?”
“You mean besides leaving as quickly as possible?” That earns a chuckle from Augustine. At least someone thinks this is funny. Celestine looks at me expectantly, undeterred by my attempt to deflect.
“There’s honestly not much in this part of town. You’d be better off driving up the main strip. It’s a bit… cleaner.” I glance at her pristine ensemble.
“I think we passed a diner on the way in. Is their breakfast any good?” Augustine chimes in.
“Yeah, Misty’s place. Best diner in town.” Also the only diner in town.
“Nothing like a strong pot of coffee and some grease to make a woman feel human again,” Augustine declares before standing up and throwing down some cash—leaving a generous tip, I notice.
“Let’s go, Cece. Let these people get home for the night.” Celestine gives me a warm, enigmatic smile before rising gracefully from her seat.
“It was lovely to meet you, Nyx. Hopefully, we’ll see each other soon.” The way she says it, like we’ve already made plans to do so, makes my stomach twist. The moment the door closes behind them, Eileen is at my side.
“What the hell was that about? You turning state’s witness or something?” she teases, but I can’t shake off the unease settling in my gut.
“Fuck if I know.” I’ve seen more than my fair share of strange and absurd pass through our town, but this brief interaction beats them all.
“Let’s lock up before anyone else gets thirsty,” she mutters, passing me the cash tip and helping me bus their table. Half an hour later, we say goodbye to Carlos as the sheriff follows Eileen to my apartment so he can escort her to the bank after she drops me off.
“Go get high and read that weird-ass alien porn you love so much,” she says with a measure of affection that takes me by surprise.
I give her a mock salute. “Aye aye, captain,” I mock salute. She knows it’s smut, not porn. With a wave of her cigarette, she leaves, and I watch her taillights recede into the distant darkness.
Barely equipped to meet the basic needs of a human being, my studio apartment is just large enough for a kitchen, couch and TV, and a minuscule bathroom attached to a minuscule bedroom.
It was the first thing I spent money on after I’d saved enough from my first few weeks working at Daly’s.
The rest of my money goes towards not starving, and setting aside as much as I can every month to get the fuck out of Lynden.
Someday. As much as the locals joke about living and dying here, there’s an unfortunate element of truth that most people stay here their entire lives, trapped by either lack of means, opportunity, or motivation.
I’m holding out hope that I can escape the “curse”. With no record of my birth in Lynden, I might just have a chance—at least that’s what I tell myself whenever I get disillusioned by my inertia.
I used to wonder about my birth family when I was younger.
I’d create these little lives for us, where I was loved and wanted.
Where I had a fluffy cat that shed everywhere, who would only snuggle with me but would still sit on my dad’s lap despite his protests.
He’d grumble and gripe but would put up with it for my sake, even though he was more of a dog person.
Where my mom would let me try on her lipstick and dress up in her jewelry while parading around in her high heels.
Over and over I dreamed of these dead futures, until one day I made the mistake of mentioning it to a foster mother who ripped apart the last shred of my childhood naiveté.
In truth, her blunt cruelty prepared me for the realities of surviving Lynden.
Despite the unexpected camaraderie tonight, the reminder of what I never had makes the loneliness all the worse.
A family who celebrated the milestones in my life.
The certainty that someone would catch me if I fell.
Maybe when I finally make it out of here, I’ll find somewhere to belong. Some way to fill that hollow, empty space in the middle of my aching chest.
By the time the rest of the pot brownie kicks in, I decide I’m done wallowing for the night, and dig out a well-worn paperback with a statuesque blue alien on the cover from my dresser-slash-bookcase.
Honestly, I can’t even blame the petite redhead gazing up at him in worship, knowing how anatomically blessed these particular aliens are.
I’d put up with a primitive frozen planet, too.
Clearly, I’ve hit my peak high if I’m empathizing with a fictional woman in desperate need of a good dicking. I’m just so happy for her.
You get it, girl.