Chapter Three #2
Instead, I lean up against the bar. “If you’re keeping me company, then I should probably know your name.”
“Probably,” she agrees. Her smile is slow but pleased. “My name is Darcy.”
“It’s nice to meet you.” I hold out my hand. “I’m Gabriel.”
She hesitates, and then cold, slender fingers slide against mine.
“Gabriel,” she repeats. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”
I make her another sidecar and then quickly get pulled away by a string of calamities in the post-dinner rush.
Friday nights are always relentless, midshipmen from the nearby Naval Academy colliding with the tourists and bachelorette parties.
I’m at my best when I’m surrounded by people, but this is mayhem.
I’m pulled in seventeen different directions, when I want to look in just one.
The already limited room at the bar becomes nonexistent, bodies crushed up against the counter as people try to flag me down for drinks. Frank is long since departed, his space now occupied by a tipsy twentysomething, slurring her way through an order of shots.
“I said,” she yells at the top of her lungs, her birthday-girl sash tangled around her elbow, “that I want four blow jobs!”
The midshipman next to her turns to her with his eyebrows raised. He grins. “I can help you with that, honey.”
“Yeah. Not likely.” I grip his elbow and turn him toward the corner of the room. “Go stand over there for a sec, bud.”
His eyes widen slightly, but he follows the order without hesitation, glancing at me over his shoulder a couple of times. I twist my neck to the side, trying to ease the damn persistent ache in the middle of my back. I look at the birthday girl.
“How about four waters instead?”
She pouts. “But it’s my birthday.”
We negotiate until she has four nonalcoholic shots full of whipped cream and she hops happily back to her group of friends in the corner, her sash billowing behind her like a white flag of surrender.
My attention snaps back to the far side of the bar. An empty glass with an orange peel on the rim sits in front of an empty seat.
I frown.
When did she slip out? The last time I looked over, she was staring thoughtfully at the crowd of people jostling for room, toying with a thin gold chain around her neck. Disappointment tugs at me. She was supposed to keep me company for the rest of my shift. That was our bargain.
I glance at the clock and flinch. I haven’t been on that side of the bar in almost a half hour.
I guess I don’t blame her for leaving, but I don’t like it either.
“Jessie!” I yell down the bar at the other bartender. She tips her chin up in acknowledgment. “I’m gonna take a minute out back.”
She nods and waves me off, turning back to the flock of naval soldiers she’s currently charming into leaving a higher tip.
I snort and make my way toward the back hallway.
I pass the obnoxious asshole from the bar, still standing in the corner like a house-trained dog.
I clap him on his shoulder as I pass, and he shudders.
“You can go back to your friends now,” I tell him.
His body relents as if someone’s just cut the puppet strings holding him up. His forehead slams into the wall before he corrects himself, shooting me a bewildered look before scurrying off.
“Idiot,” I mutter.
I dig into my pocket as I push through the door, looking for the box of cigarettes I keep swearing are my last. The harsh bite of early autumn barrels down the alleyway, and I hunch my shoulders against it, leaning up against the brick wall farthest from the dumpsters.
The streetlights flicker on and the sun dips a little further beneath the buildings that close in either side of the alley.
Everything burns bronze, muffled laughter and music from the bar spilling out from the crack in the door.
I flick open the cigarette box with my thumb and sigh in relief. Just one left.
“Those will kill you, you know.”
Darcy’s husky voice slips around me, and it’s like someone just lit a road flare in the middle of my chest. Every inch of me is aware of her, hovering at the open mouth of the alley, the melting sun casting a wide net around her, her face draped in shadows.
Her hair doesn’t look black anymore, but a deep chestnut brown.
Still in that neat braid, but with a few strands framed around her round face.
She steps over a discarded tire and moves toward me.
I light my cigarette and tuck it in the corner of my mouth, trying to decide if I’m having a particular lucid dream or if Darcy is exactly where I want her to be.
“Thought you left,” I call.
She shrugs and steps around one of the old crates we use to pull in deliveries. “Not quite yet.”
Now that there isn’t a bar between us, I can see more of her. A neat black skirt to match that neat black sweater. Long legs. Smooth curves. Darcy holds herself like a dancer as she moves around the many obstacles between the two of us. Elegant and poised and relentlessly, meticulously contained.
I want to crack that control. I want to coil it around my fist until she bends.
It’s an impulse I’m not familiar with. A rare bite of selfishness.
I take a pull of my cigarette, doing my best to pack those thoughts away. But then Darcy drifts close enough for me to see every faint freckle across the bridge of her nose, and I figure I’ve shown enough good behavior for one night.
She doesn’t stop until she’s standing right in front of me, the toes of her shiny black boots pressed up against the worn leather of mine. She looks up at me through that thick fringe of lashes.
“I honor my deals, Gabriel.”
There’s something about the way she says my name. A pronunciation, maybe. The way she emphasizes certain sounds over others. She says it in the ancient way. The way it was always meant to be said.
“Then why’d you leave?” I murmur.
She glances at the door wedged open with a pie tin. Some of her solemnity slips. “I’m not used to being around so many people.” Her smile is tight. “There were body shots happening. I didn’t want to get roped in.”