Page 13 of Get It In Writing
“I’ll have a strawberry martini,” I say, pointing to the drink advertised in bright pink on the menu.
The waitress lets out a barely-concealed laugh and saunters away, looking over her shoulder quickly to Harper.
“You know her?” I ask. I know what just happened. A girl like me, a man like him - it didn’t make sense to the waitress, and how could it? It doesn’t even make sense to me. My cheeks feel hot with a jealousy, but my body is crying out for his touch.
Harper just laughs and puts the menu back in its holder.
“No, I don’t know her. Wouldn’t remember her face if I saw her on the street.”
“I think she was making fun of my drink,” I say, my voice small. “Is my drink too girly for a place like this?”
“No, baby. My girl gets whatever she wants,” he says, pulling his jacket off and pushing the sleeves of his crisp white dress shirt up to his elbows.
I look around, and suddenly I feel like all eyes are on us. The waitress is standing at the bar, talking to the female bartender, and I swear the two of them are talking about me, why I’m here with someone out of my league, and how they can conspire to get rid of me and take him home instead.
But then, I look back at Harper and I feel calm and excited again, all at once.
“I thought you wanted to ask me questions about my tattoos,” he says, pushing his hair back away from his forehead. “For research purposes.”
“That’s right,” I say, sitting up straight and clearing my throat. “As you know, Mr. Harper, I majored in design. And I have my own small business that I work on outside of work hours.”
A frown tugs at the corners of his delicious mouth as he stretches his arms out on the table.
“What?” I ask. “What’s the matter?”
I can see that there’s something he isn’t pleased with, and I’m desperate to know what it is. Did I do something wrong?
“Oh, it’s nothing,” he says, curling his fists into balls and flexing the muscles in his arms. I imagine what else he can do with those hands, and the air around me gets hot.
“I’m fired, aren’t I?” I assume the worst, of course. My mind goes right there. It’ll be waiting tables back home, and it won’t be long before I move back into my parents’ place. “This date and everything, it was all so I wouldn’t make a scene in the office?”
Harper perks up as quickly as he frowned before. This man and his emotions. Call it passion, but I’ve only been with him for a little while, and I feel like I’m on an emotional roller coaster.
“Fired? No, baby. I’m just a little bit upset because I have you manning the front desk, when you should be using your talents on other things.”
“Other things? You mean you want me to be on my knees underneath your desk on a permanent basis, or something?” I ask. I lick the corners of my lips before he leans over to kiss me, sending electricity through my already-hot body.
“No, not like that,” he says.
The waitress appears with our drinks, placing them down on the table and walking away. She wants him, and her girlfriend over at the bar wants him, but he’s here with me. I’d never consider myself competitive when it comes to men - I save my fierce competitive energy to one-up myself with my designs - but it does give me a little bit a satisfaction to know that he’s here with me and not with them.
I take a sip of my drink, and I don’t care that the waitress mocked me for ordering a sugary sweet drink in a dive bar like this. I don’t like beer, and I don’t like whiskey, and the drink feels nice against my lips.
“Like what?” I ask between little sips.
“You should be doing all of the designing for my brand. Shouldn’t you? I mean, you’re the expert.”
“Me?” I ask, pushing my drink away a little. I guess I never thought I could get a corporate job in a design capacity and combine my passion with my day job.
“Yeah, you. I’ve been trying and failing to re-brand the company as something a little bit more young and hip, and I’ve had you under my nose this whole time. I guess I didn’t realize that you really wanted to pursue it as a career.” He polishes off his drink with one quick flick of his wrist and starts to call the waitress over again.
She appears, and now she has on only a thin white tank-top. I guess her black sweater disappeared under some table. Maybe she used it to clean up a spilled drink or something.
Putting her hands down on the table and pushing her breasts together, she eyes Harper’s arms.
“I didn’t realize you were inked,” she says, her eyes snaking along his forearms and up to his chest and then his eyes. “What do they mean?”
No! I was so looking forward to Harper explaining all of his tattoos to me, and he seemed like he was into the idea, too. I mean, I don’t know if it’s considered the most romantic thing in the world. Maybe it would be more romantic for him to whisper sweet nothings into my ear. But dammit, I really wanted him to tell me all the stories behind the tattoos. It sounded like an amazing date to me: to find out the meaning behind the story he’s chosen to tell on his skin.
