Sweet Forty-Two(8)

As the song went on, I looked around the bar. It was an eclectic mix of customers. Hippies, hipsters, and hip-replacements all mingled together, drinking and enjoying the music. I planned to spend some time after the set mingling with the crowd to see if anyone had any leads on apartments or sublets. Anything.

“Smooth Criminal” ended, and as the cheers rose to a roar through the bar, Georgia’s eyes found mine. I watched as her tongue ran across the front of her top teeth with her mouth closed. The look on her face was unreadable, but the guy’s hand riding up her arm as he ordered another drink was loud and clear.

She looked down as if she’d caught two people having sex, turning her attention and smile to the guy with a buzz cut and black-rimmed glasses at the bar.

“Dude.” Bo interrupted the jealousy that had no business brewing in my stomach.

“Sorry. Uh...” I cleared my throat and looked back at CJ who was shaking his head and grinning. He never missed a thing.

“Ha,” Bo continued, “she is intriguing ... but we’ve got a set to finish. You and Ember do “Foolish Games” next, okay?”

“Sure. Ember, you ready?”

Ember’s eyes drifted between the bar and me. Curiosity mixed with concern. “Yep ... are you?”

It made me uncomfortable when they made comments about me and other girls in the same sentence. It had been several months since Rae died, but I couldn’t tell if my moving on would give them permission to, or if it was the other way around.

Either way, I wasn’t ready for anything, and as I heard Georgia giggle purposefully from behind me, I knew I certainly wasn’t ready for anything with a girl who had a boyfriend.

I had to get her out of my system. Fast.

“Just give me a second.” I set my violin on the stool and weaved through a group of girls making out with each other before reaching Georgia at the bar.

She walked toward me, and despite the noise around us, I could hear each dedicated click of her heels on the sticky wood floor.

“Takin’ a break already?” She folded her arms on the bar in front of her and leaned toward me like she’d done earlier in the day. This time, though, I remained fixed on her eyes.

I chuckled. “I figured before I continued I should check in to see if I made you a believer.”

Any look of surprise that showed on her face dissolved into a grin. “Regan ... I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

That’s it. That was her only response before slowly lifting her chest off of her folded arms, turning, and strutting over to a guy with spiked hair and a black t-shirt with “Pink Floyd” across the front vying for her attention.

With my eyebrows pulled in, I returned to the stage in a daze.

“You okay?” Ember settled onto her stool and adjusted the guitar over her shoulder. “What’d she say?”

“I...” I looked back at the bar and watched Georgia thread her fingers through the spikes of the Pink Floyd guy’s hair. “I have no idea.”

“What were the words she said, Regan?” Ember chuckled as she tuned.

“They made no sense.” I tuned with her as she looked over my shoulder, undoubtedly at Georgia.

“Well,” she shrugged, “it’s probably for the best, anyway. Her eyes and hands have been all over everyone in this bar.”

Defensiveness overrode common sense. “Isn’t that just ... her job?”

Ember’s eyebrow hooked incredulously. “That’s not her job.” She nodded, and I followed with my eyes to see Georgia leaning all the way forward as a different guy whispered something into her ear.

He tucked a piece of paper in between her breasts and she set herself back on her heels and kept working.

I wanted to kick his ass, and it made no sense.

I shook my head. “God, whatever. Let’s play. Ready?”

Ember’s look relaxed. “Mmmhmm.”

As we settled into the song, I reminded myself that girls like Georgia were good at making guys want them. Crave them. With skin-baring clothing, wicked eyes, and a bottom lip pinched between their teeth, they owned us. All of us.

Through each piece, Georgia’s hips swayed to the beat, but she never pulled her attention away from her customers. Her tips. Once every other song, or so, her eyes would flash to mine, and I’d look away. She was scrambling my sense of reality with one stone-blue gaze. One smile. One laugh.

It was clear why she and CJ were such good friends as I watched her move with seductive determination through the bar with a tray of drinks in hand. Each time she set down a glass she’d bend a little further forward, inviting eyes to places they had no business being.

Her game bothered me just as much as CJ’s did, maybe even more since I knew how men perceived women who behaved like that. I hadn’t seen her take a drink all night, and I was pretty sure drinking on the job as a bartender was barely tolerated, so she couldn’t even use intoxication as an excuse.

She was intentional, this girl with a rocking horse tattooed on the back of her neck.

She was intentional and made absolutely no sense.

We finished our set and packed up our gear with an hour left before the bar closed. I just wanted to get out of there and go home. It was the first set of that length that I’d played in some time, and I was exhausted. The finger pads on my left hand screamed for a break.