Page 9 of Steve's Barmaid

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“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m Steve.” He put out his hand out to take mine.

I extended my hand, eyes wide, “Steve?TheSteve?” I asked, grasping his large hand in some weird orkin-human hybrid handshake. Orkin gripped wrists while humans grasped hands. We ended up shaking wrists. It worked.

Steve looked at me like I was messing with him. “That is the second time today that someone has referred to me this way. What do you mean bytheSteve?”

“Ha, I’m guessing it’s you. Piper and Agnarr told us all about you. Steve, the only half-orc. And if what Magna said about you is true, you’re pretty fucking badass.”

Now that I knew he was Steve, it made sense. His ears were rounded and his tusks were slightly smaller. So this is what a half-orc, half-human would look like. Not bad. Not bad at all.This is what a baby would look like if I had one. Whoa brain, where did that come from?

Steve brought me back to my senses with a question, “Is ‘badass’ good? Like ‘rad’?”

“Oh lord. Why do you know ‘rad’ but not ‘badass’?” I laughed.

“The only human I knew was my mom, maybe she didn’t know ‘badass’?” He shrugged.

I hadn’t thought about that—Steve’s head must be spinning at meeting other humans. That had to be a lot to take in.

“Huh. Maybe. Well, you convinced Magna and his band of merry men that humans are not the scum of the universe so we’re all pro-Steve here.”

“Um… what?” Steve was looking more and more perplexed by the second. I couldn’t help it. Confusing orkin with American slang was a favorite pastime of mine, and I had a brand new victim. I used Steve’s shoulder for leverage to pull myself up, then put a hand out to help him. Now that we both stood, Steve was tall. Very tall. All the orcs were tall, but Steve didn’t have the width of the others, making him seem even taller. That, and I was barely over five feet. Everyone was tall, even on Earth. Well, except Joey. I often wondered— probably too often— about the mechanics of Piper and Agnarr, and she was five-foot-seven.

Seeing Steve standing only cemented the surfer boy vibe. His black hair was loose, hanging to his shoulders, and it had a bit of wave to it. Nothing compared to my curls, but all the orcs I’d met so far had stick-straight, silky hair. The wave must come from his mom.

“So tell me, Steve. What’s someone like you, a member of a rival tribe, doing watching a lone human woman wash windows?”

Steve countered with his own question, “What are you doing in this broken-down building all by yourself?”

“I am working on rebuilding a bar. Not so much rebuilding as refurbishing. This one has been empty for over twenty years. I’m going to bring it back to its old glory, while adding some human touches along the way.”

Steve looked around the space. Even though it was much cleaner, it still needed a lot of work. Half the chairs and tables we sat at needed to be replaced because they were too beaten up. I knew nothing about woodworking, and the bar top itself was rough and uneven. I wanted to talk to Osif about sanding it down and refinishing it. I still had at least a month of work ahead of me, or more than that if I kept up my work in the kitchens and continued to refuse help from my friends. I knew I’d only be able to go so long before they forced me into helping their help—and I was grateful. I’d explained to him what I was doing in the bar, but he had yet to explain to me what he was doing in our tribe.

I took our conversation back to my original question. “Alright, Mr. Steve, your turn. I explained what I’m doing in an empty bar. Your turn to explain why you are at our tribe.”

Steve shifted from one foot to the other, as if weighing how much to tell me. I already knew he was accepting of humans, based on his treatment of Piper and Magna alone, but that didn’t tell me why he had traveled all the way from the snowy mountains to us. He continued to stay silent.

“Are you just really into humans?” I asked, raising a suggestive brow.

“No—no.” He put up his hands. “Well, I mean, yes. But not like that. Well, maybe like that? I don’t actually know. I just?—”

I cut into his spluttering. “Oka-a-ay, buddy, we’re gonna need to take a seat.”

I steered Steve to one of the tables and chairs awkwardly arranged in the corner of the bar. Steve flopped down and dragged a hand over his face. It was only in the sunlight streaming through the half-grimy window that a sprinkling of five o’clock shadow glittered on his face. For some reason, this made him even more attractive.

I loved a man with stubble.

CHAPTER SIX

BILLIE

All I had asked him was what he was doing in our tribe, and he clammed up and got weird. We had been having a good conversation, maybe even leaning toward flirting, and now he looked uncomfortable. Something about why he was here had made him feel uncomfortable. I was puzzled about this while the silence grew.

Unsure of what to do next, I went with what I knew—humor. “Okay, you don’t want to tell me why you’re here. Are you a spy?” I raised my brows at him in question.

“No—no. Definitely not.” He looked horrified.

“Definitely something a spy would say.” I tried to say it with a straight face, but I broke and started laughing. “Okay, if you aren’t a spy, why can’t you tell me why you’re here?”

“It’s just a whole bunch of personal baggage that no one needs to hear,” he mumbled, not looking me in the eye.