Page 6 of Over & Out

Mac sighs, glancing at the poor woman I still haven’t brought menus to over my shoulder in our back corner booth. “Fine,” he says. “But come see me in my office after.”

“I’m not going home,” I say, already walking away.

“That’s up to me.”

I thumb my nose at him, and to his credit, he rolls his eyes like the old days. Mac really is a pain in my ass. But it is nice to be worried over.

I grab a pair of menus and take a deep breath to get back in the game.

The woman, I notice for the first time as I approach the booth, is extremely classy. Her linen suit is a soft ivory that perfectly offsets the deep brown of her skin. Her giant dangly gold earrings are all the more dazzling because there’s no hair to interfere with them—what little she has is buzzed a millimeter from her scalp. She’s also very pregnant, and the glow is real.

“You’re a model, aren’t you?” I say when I get to her table. “Tell me the truth.”

The woman seems surprised by my frankness. Most people are. But it’s true. She looks like she stepped off a runway, which we definitely don’t have here in our tiny Canadian seaside town.

“Not at all.” She smiles. “But thank you. I hope I didn’t startle you when I came in.” She’s talking about the tray I dropped.

“Oh no, I smash a glass for every new customer.”

The woman lets out a chirp of laughter. Then quirks her head. “You’re funny!” She says it like she wasn’t expecting it.

I smile. I already have a friend crush. “I try. Can I get you some water to start?”

The woman opens her mouth to answer, but her phone buzzes on the table. Which is weird, because she’s still holding it in her hand. “Sorry,” she says, picking it up and glancing at the text she just received. I see belatedly that she’s got two phones, both the latest model smartphone. That’s four or five thousand dollars’ worth of phones in her hands. I think of my beat-up old model in my locker that loses battery the minute I pull out the charging cord.

“Shit,” she says. “Okay, this is a strange ask. I thought I’d have more time, but the person I’m waiting for is almost here. Is there any way you could have a couple club sodas with limes on the table when he gets here? Your biggest glasses. Also…I’ll throw an extra fifty on the tip if you can do thatandtell him you don’t serve booze before noon. Or to tall men or something. Whatever it takes to make sure he doesn’t have a drink.”

My mood immediately darkens. “Is there a problem? Because we can bar entry to anyone—even a boyfriend or husband. Especially one of those if they’re a problem.”

“Oh, God no. It’s not like that. And we’re not together.” She makes athank Godface. “He’s just a—well, you’ll see.”

Her phone buzzes again. She scowls. “I swear the man would ask me how to take a piss if he didn’t have the apparatus already attached to him. Actually, I think he did once, at that afterparty…” As if she can see my confused expression from the side of her head, she says, “Is that a yay or nay on the drinks? How about I make it a hundred?”

“On it!” I say, already sprinting to the bar. I could very much use a hundred-dollar tip. Besides needing a new phone, rent is due next week. I had to give up my second job after the accident, and living on the sick leave payments—while an amazing benefit—have made things tighter than leather pants at a glam rock concert.

I grab the drinks myself, using a pair of steins from Octoberfest, which are bigger than my head. After filling them and tossing in a couple of limes, I spinaround to head back to the table in what feels like under thirty seconds.

But it’s not quick enough.

A man fills the doorway to the bar.

And I do meanfills. He’s close to Mac’s size, and Mac is lumberjack large. He’s wearing a leather jacket sprinkled with rain, jeans, and this Italian brand of leather sneakers I know you can’t buy here, size ginormous. I can’t see his face. Only dark, slightly damp hair peeking out from under a black baseball cap, sunglasses, and several days’ beard growth.

His gait is unhurried. Begrudging, even, like he doesn’t want to be here. But his strides are so long that we get to the booth at exactly the same time, even though I was going as fast as I could while holding two filled-to-the-brim glasses. Unfortunately, because I was practically running, it takes me a hair too long to stop, and to my horror, the steins smash him in the chest.

We both watch as twin sloshes of bubbly water darken his faded gray t-shirt.

“Please,” he says in a low, clearly irritated tone. “After you.”

His voice is so deep and rumbly I feel it in my chest. I’m embarrassed, but the sarcasm is unnecessary.

“My apologies,” I say, whipping the glasses away just quickly enough that a touch more water splatters him.

He makes an exasperated sound, which only annoys the shit out of me.

So I set the glasses back down. “Oh gosh!” I say sweetly. I whip a folded-up cloth from my apron, shaking it out so he can see it’s yellow, with little bunnies on it. “Don’t worry, I keep this on me for babies who make spills.” I make a show of mopping up the table and decide to lay it on thick by also mopping up his shirt. Except the moment I touch him, I falter. The man’s chest doesn’t yield at all to my touch. It’s like cleaning up a marble statue. A warm marble statue, with—I see in my periphery—icy blue eyes burning right into me. Between those two things and the heat radiating off him my cheek light up like an inferno.

I clear my throat, telling my back-flipping stomach to get its act together. “There we go!” I should win an Oscar for keeping my voice steady. “All better. I have crayons too. If you’re interested.”

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