99 Percent Mine(5)

My parents would kill me if they knew I had no phone. They would kill me if they knew I don’t wear a bathrobe around the cottage on cold nights. Your heart! Smother, smother! I have a worse feeling that no one will even notice I’m uncontactable. Ever since I fucked things up and Jamie left, my phone had stopped ringing. He’s the bright sparkling one everyone gravitates to.

I hear a smash out front and a few guys echo oooh. Men are electrified by breaking glass. I hear the fortifying inward breath I take. I’ve done this on and off for years, but still, I wouldn’t describe this part as getting any easier.

“What’s up?” I clomp out in my boots and a row of guys are smirking. Holly is trying to stack pieces of broken glass and her face is red. There’s beer everywhere and the front hem of her T-shirt is soaked. I’ve never seen a girl more in need of rescuing.

“Dumb bitch can’t even pour a beer.” The alpha of this group is a mean-lipped construction type. “Lucky she’s hot. Unlike this one.” He means me. I shrug.

“It’s okay,” I tell Holly. She nods without a word and disappears out back. Is this the shift that’s going to break her?

This guy won’t just pay and leave. He’s looking for stimulation. I argue on autopilot and the details are boring. I’d be better-looking if I didn’t have such short hair. I’d be so good-looking if I tried harder. I kinda look like a guy wearing makeup. Okay, that one stung a little. I’m a real tough bitch, aren’t I? Every comment or insult is something I can easily bat away, and I’m counting out five double whiskeys when he goes too far.

“Who do you think you are, anyway? Someone special?” His voice cuts through the fog and I jerk my eyes back to his face. There’s a sensation inside me: a big split, like I’ve just been axed in half like a dry log. I cannot come up with any response to this. He sees he’s hit the mark and smiles.

I’ve been abused so much worse than that, in so many languages, but tonight it feels like the worst thing anyone’s ever said to me.

Actually, it is. It’s the same thing my brother said to me before he left.

“This one,” I tell Keith, like I’m choosing a goldfish, and he muscles him out by the scruff. The rest of the group mutter and curse. Anger is a blowtorch-bright inside me. “All you have to do is order, pay, and tip. Don’t talk. Just do those three things and get out of my face.”

Holly returns and gets down on her knees beside me, scraping glass into a dustpan. “Ouch!” Now she has a thin line of blood running down her shin, into her white sock and shoe.

“Show it to me,” I manage to say without sighing. As I dig through the first-aid kit, I think of where I can rehome her. “Can you do any basic sewing? My friend Truly might need an assistant soon. You could probably do it from home.”

“I made the quilt on my bed. It’s just straight lines though, it wasn’t hard. I could do it if it was simple.” She wipes away her melted mascara and looks around herself like she’s realizing what I’ve known all along: This place is a mistake for her.

I patch her up, split our tips, and send her home early. “If you don’t want to come back, just text Anthony.” She tearfully nods.

She is the nicest girl, but for her sake I hope she quits. She might end up like me.

It’s almost ten P.M. The bar doesn’t close until four A.M., so the real bad bitches who do the graveyard shift arrive. They’re what I’ll become. I put my tips in my purse and we spend a few minutes talking over which douchebags in here to keep an eye on.

“Bye,” I tell Keith as I walk past his stool near the door, but he’s already hauling himself to his feet.

“You know the rules.”

“The rules here are bullshit.”

“That’s life,” he replies with a shrug.

“Who walks you to your car?” I watch him mull that over.

“You probably would.” He smiles at that realization. “If you ever want extra cash, I could probably hook you up with some security work. You’d be a natural.”

“I probably would be, but no.” I push through the front door, resigned to the fact that he’ll be behind me. I step out into a haze of cigarettes and exhaust fumes. “Seriously, you don’t know how much I hate you babying me.”

“I’ve got a fair idea,” Keith responds dryly. When I look back, he’s scanning the parking lot with practiced eyes. Something happened a long time back to a girl who worked here, long before my time, and the side alley feels tainted with an awful, shivery wrongness.

I give up and start walking. “Come on, guard dog, time for your walkies.”

Keith’s insanely long legs easily keep up with my irritated marching through the little groups of guys standing around near their bikes. Someone says, “Wait around a minute, babe.”

“I can’t tonight,” Keith replies in a girly voice, causing them all to crack up. “Are you okay, Darcy? You seem a little fragile.”

I shouldn’t underestimate how perceptive he can be. He watches people for a living.

“Ha, me? I’m fine. Thanks for before. Must be the best part of your job, watching them bounce across the concrete.” I dig in my bag. I don’t need a key clenched in my fist with a shadow this big.

“Not quite.” Keith leans an elbow on the roof of my car. He’s Sasquatch in size, on the handsome side of plain, and he has a gold ring. “By the way, I still owe you that twenty bucks from the other night. I wanted to say that I appreciated it … and thanks for listening.”