Page 4 of Love is Blind

I don’t share that with Goldilocks, though, and a moment later her hand slides from the bar, dropping into the pocket of her oversized denim jacket. She pulls out a hand bell and I curiously raise an eyebrow.

Pretty, morbid, and peculiar—quite a combination.

She lifts the bell over her head and starts to shake it wildly. The shrill ringing goes right through me like nails on a chalkboard and I cringe.

Might as well add crazy to the list of attributes.

“What the hell are you doing?” I grind out.

Ignoring me, she continues to shake the bell, shouting over her shoulder for Emmy to refill her glass. Before I can slide off my stool and grab the offensive bell from her fucking hand, or tell her that the bartender isn’t behind her, she appears and snatches the godforsaken thing from the crazy blonde’s hand.

Thank fuck.

“Jesus, Birdie. You promised me you wouldn’t cause a scene,” Emmy hisses.

My gaze cuts back to the blonde.

Birdie.

Somehow the name suits her.

“Yes, and you promised you’d get me drunk, seems to me as though we’re both no good at keeping our word.”

She pushes her glass forward and that blank stare fills her face yet again.

“I’m waiting,” she presses.

Releasing an exasperated sigh, Emmy turns to me and mouths a silent apology. I want to ask her how she knows Birdie, if she’s a regular or just a fucking pain in the ass passing through, but she turns and grabs Birdie’s glass before I get the chance. She fills it with something from the tap and tops it with one of those tacky paper umbrellas, then slides it back to Birdie. The blonde reaches around for the glass and Emmy rolls her eyes, lifting Birdie’s hand and wrapping it around the glass.

“There you go,” Emmy says.

That’s when it clicks for me.

The blank stare.

The comment about living in darkness.

The fucking bell.

I stare at her, more intently this time, working her from head to toe, searching for a clue that might confirm my suspicion, but people don’t walk around with a fucking stamp on their forehead revealing they’re blind, do they?

“I’m sorry, Ghost. My cousin seems to have lost her manners.”

“Can’t lose something you never had, Em,” she says pointedly, tracing the rim of her glass. She plucks the little umbrella from it and flashes a smile. Then she turns her head slightly, giving me a full view of her perfect face and the palest pair of blue-green eyes I’ve ever seen.

A man can forget his pain staring into those eyes.

Believe he’s more than the demons that haunt him.

Fuck him harder than he’s ever been fucked before.

Lucky for me, the trance is broken when Birdie flicks the paper umbrella at me. I slowly divert my gaze following the trail of the umbrella as it bounces off my denim clad thigh and falls to the floor. Lifting my chin, I stare at her wordlessly.

“Disability pays shit therefore I can’t afford a vacation so I’m going to sit here with my new friend, plan my funeral, and drink until I forget where I am. You game?”

Well that explains the tropical umbrella in the glass.

“Birdie,” Emmy hisses.

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