Coldhearted Boss(3)

Five beers clink on the bar top, and before the suit walks away with four of them, he tells the bartender to add my beer to his tab. Just that. Not a word in my direction. He just assumes I want him paying for my beer.

Arrogant bastard.

If I could afford to do it, I would refuse. Instead, I say nothing.

As he walks back to rejoin his friends, I dissect every possible motive he might have had for buying my drink. Maybe he was just being polite. Maybe he took one look at my thrift-store jeans and white t-shirt and felt a sense of pity. Sure, there’s a little hole in the armpit, but it’s still a decent shirt!

Whatever he was thinking, that beer tastes like piss as I down the first sip.

I want to leave it there on the bar, untouched, but I have nothing better to do than drink it as I sit and wait for Jeremy to come pick me up. He’s late and not answering his phone. I try his number again and the call goes unanswered. I’m half convinced he won’t show up at all.

I stifle a groan at the idea of having to find another way home. There’s a ten-mile stretch of highway between our trailer and this bar, ten miles I’d have to walk in the dead of night. I’ve done it before, a few times, but I’d rather not do it today. I don’t think I have it in me. I’d be better off heading to that booth in the corner and tucking myself in for the night.

When a round of laughter comes from the men behind me, I resist the urge to turn around. Another sip of beer warms my belly, and I realize it’s starting to go to my head. I’m a lightweight. I don’t drink often, and especially not on an empty stomach. The world gets fuzzy and my problems come into sharp focus.

I lied to my mom on the phone. When I told her we could figure out another option, I sounded hopeful, but what hope is there? What options are there in a town as small as Oak Dale? The truth is we’re at rock bottom. We’ve been surviving down here so long, I’m not quite sure what life would feel like otherwise.

When I’m done with my beer, I push it away and polish off my cherries. I can practically hear my stomach groaning in protest: Please, please put some kind of leafy green inside me before you die.

Chairs screech across the floor as the suits stand to leave. One of them comes up to the bar to close out their tab, but it’s not the one I’m interested in, so what do I care?

There’s a sense of loss as I realize he’s going with them, exiting the bar and leaving me behind.

As they walk out, I strain my ears, trying to listen for him, but they’re all chatting at once and I can’t distinguish one voice from another. The bar’s door swings open and road noise from the highway rushes in, cars zooming past our small neck of the woods on their way to someplace better.

I pick at the label on my beer as the door swings shut again, leaving me alone with two regulars down at the end of the bar and the bartender who’s still harboring ill will toward me about the cherries. I know because he keeps grumbling “ungrateful brat” under his breath. Altogether, we’d make a well-rounded cast for an antidepressant commercial, and I know I must be feeling down because even that thought doesn’t make me smile.

“You need anything?” the bartender asks, speaking to the area of the room where the suits were sitting a few minutes ago, and my head whips over my shoulder so fast I nearly fall off my stool.

He’s still there.

Alone.

Sitting at the table and telling the bartender he’s all set. He doesn’t want another drink…so then why is he still here? There’s no game on the TV over the bar—it’s been busted for years. There’s no one around to offer up witty conversation unless you count the belching pair in the far corner. (I don’t.)

Then his gaze finds mine and I get it.

He’s here for me.

My heart lurches to a stop, misses a beat, and then starts to thump wildly.

He’s not the answer to my problems. He’d be nothing more than a distraction, a short reprieve from the weight of life’s boot on my neck.

I meet his eyes head on.

God, he’s so good-looking with that rough edge to him. He’s a man’s man. Broad chest, veined forearms, tall frame. Even now, he’s not smiling. His brows are furrowed and his supple mouth—arguably the only soft thing about him—is marked by a terse frown. It’s like he’s mad at me for putting us in this position, mad at me for making him want to stay.

I could aim the same resentment right back at him. I’ve never had a one-night stand before because I’ve never met a guy who made me want to do it. This man is seductive without even trying, sensual even as he sits half a bar away from me, partially reclined, assessing me coolly. In any setting, he’d turn heads. In this setting, he captures my full attention.

It occurs to me that I could walk out of the bar right now and keep my heart in one piece. Nothing good would come from this encounter.

Tomorrow, this stranger will be gone and my life will resume.

My life.

Four years since graduating from high school and I’m still here, unable to escape this nightmarish merry-go-round. We work and we save only to have some disaster strike—car breaks down, insurance doesn’t cover McKenna’s new asthma medication, A/C busts, roof needs fixing—and here we are again, right back at square one, just as broke as the day we started.

My hands shake and my throat aches from trying to keep these tears unshed.