Page 3 of Surface Scratch
Was that what Ophelia was doing on her phone, texting information to her boss?
He had no idea what was going on. Questions raced through his mind as they reached the stairs. Marcus’s arm fell from his shoulders as he took a step up, glancing back as if to make sure Caleb didn’t get lost. He could feel Marcus’s amber eyes move over him slowly, just as Ophelia’s had, appearing to size him up, or check him out… or both.
Caleb swallowed hard and adjusted the strap of his messenger bag, following Marcus up the stairs. He had no idea what to expect if tonight was truly supposed to be his first night on the job, but he did know one thing for sure.
His new boss was hot.
Chapter Two
The volume of the music had been deafening at first, the deep bass of the electronic dance music that all sounded the same to him making his ears buzz for the first few hours of his shift. He didn’t even have cable at home and was used to silence, so the cacophony of sounds from the speakers and the loud shouts of people having a good time seemed to bounce around the inside of his head and make his temples vibrate. Caleb had never imagined so many people wanted to spend their time in a nightclub on a Thursday night, but here they were, still dancing and drinking at midnight.
He moved along the outer wall of the danced floor, clutching a tray full of beer bottles and glasses with varying levels of liquid left in them, careful not to step into the roped off VIP table areas where men in expensive clothes sat with chilled bottle of Champagne and liquor, surrounded by women in dresses that were either way too tight or way too loose. He’d already forgotten what it cost to reserve one of those tables, but the guys who sat them looked like the douchebags he’d had to deal with before he dropped out of school, and the ones that didn’t look like that looked like they would deck him for any reason. His biceps burned as he reached the neon-lit bar on the left side of the club, pushing his way past the waist-level swing door and setting the tray down next to the three-compartment sink beneath the counter.
Caleb knew he was small, hardly resembling the muscled and toned superheroes that were on every poster he had seen when he put in his application at the local theater, but after hours of walking the floor in random patterns and carrying stacks of glasses and buckets of ice for the bar, his entire body ached. He’d never had aspirations of looking like the men in those posters, but he did find himself wishing he had their strength now.
Ophelia handed him a glass of ice water with a straw in it and a small wedge of lime on the rim. He nodded in thanks, his throat already scratchy and sore from the dry recycled air and from shouting questions to her and Andrew, the other barback who was training him. At some point in the night, she had removed her oversized hoodie and was dashing around the bar in a skintight long-sleeved shirt with a frill that ran up her neck and shorts barely long enough to cover her ass. She was undeniably pretty, but the thought that she was only sixteen made him feel oddly protective every time he noticed one of the men at her bar ogling her.
He wanted to ask her how she was allowed to even work in the club, let alone be a bartender, but he had a feeling she would bristle at the question. She didn’t exactly seem like the type to want to answer a lot of personal questions, so he kept the thought to himself.
He went to take a drink from the glass, but her firm hand wrapped around his wrist and pulled him closer to her, splashing the ice and water up against his face. She got on her tiptoes and yelled, “Need more ice!”
He pulled his wrist away and rubbed it, trying not to show the discomfort on his face. She seemed to have no qualms about manhandling him, or anyone else at the bar, and she wasreallystrong. He set the glass down and watched her turn around and lean over the bar toward one of the men waving at her with a twenty-dollar bill. She looked irritated as she yelled something to him before snatching the bill from the man’s hand.
He slipped past her to get to the large double doors behind her bar that led to the large ice machine. He had seen her vaguely threaten a rowdy young man as she was cutting limes earlier in the night, apparently causing enough chaos for the club’s owner to make an appearance and pull her out from behind the bar. Since Caleb’s one goal in life was avoiding conflict, he didn’t stick around to see if there would be a repeat. Though that would give him the chance to see Marcus again.
The handsome club owner had barely spent any time talking to him after handing him a black button-down shirt and matching black tie to wear as a uniform at the top of the stairs outside his office. Based on the way Ophelia had acted, he’d been expecting Marcus to be equally jaded and rough around the edges, but it turned out he was almost the exact opposite. He had a warm smile and intense but kind eyes, like he was a fortune teller looking into his soul for only good news to relay.
Caleb shook his head, trying to shake the image of Marcus from his head, and lifted the lid off the ice machine. He fished around in the bin for the large metal scoop that someone had left buried in the ice, despite the sign on the outside that reminded them to put it back in the holder fastened to the side of it.
He needed to focus on making a good impression on his first night, not daydream about older men with whom he’d never stand a chance. But still, it was nice to dream.
“Ah, the Queen of Clubs has you doing her bitch work?” A voice drifted toward him from right.
Andrew rounded the corner, a white ten-gallon bucket in hand, waving at him with his free hand. His buzzed dark hair looked slightly damp under the fluorescent lights, making Caleb feel a little better about his exhaustion. Andrew was only a few inches taller than him, but he was stocky, with wide shoulders and a broad chest that strained the buttons of his black dress shirt, and he looked like he worked out semi-regularly. He was a fit guy, but even he was tired and sweaty. As his trainer for the first half of the evening, Andrew had warned him it would be a bit overwhelming and hard to keep up.
“Queen of Clubs?” Caleb asked, withdrawing the frigid metal scoop and dropping it into his own ice bucket. He rubbed his frozen hand along his pants to warm the digits so they wouldn’t begin to tingle with the awful pins and needles sensation he was so familiar with post-accident.
“Ophelia,” Andrew said, his voice hushed as though she were about to burst through the big swinging doors. He reached into Caleb’s bucket and took the large ice scooper, holding the lid open with his shoulder. He began filling Caleb’s bucket for him. “I’d call her the Queen of Hearts, since she has that vibe, but she’d need a heart for that. She’s freaky as hell. I’m pretty sure I had a nightmare once where all she did was yell at me for having poor penmanship.”
Caleb stifled a laugh. “I don’t think she’s that bad, just… different?” He crinkled his nose as the words came out. Ophelia was off-putting and blunt in a way that made him and, from what he had seen, others, uncomfortable, but he tried his best not to judge others. He had no idea what her home life was like. Given all the times he had been less than pleasant in the past few years due to his own personal circumstances, he tried to afford others the benefit of the doubt that he seldom received.
“You say that now, but give it a week, tops, and she’ll be chewing you out for something stupid, like having your shoelace untied.” Andrew began filling his own bucket, again glancing at the door. “You know, when I first started here, I thought she was like some weird loli girlfriend of the boss, and that’s why she was allowed to be such a wicked cunt to everyone.”
The suddenness of the vulgarity startled Caleb and he nearly dropped the bucket. He wasn’t a prude or uptight, but he hadn’t expected someone he barely knew to drop the C-word so quickly and casually.
Andrew grinned, seeming pleased with the reaction. Caleb had an overwhelming urge to turn away and hide as he felt the blood rush to his face in embarrassment.
“Ah, sorry man, I know I got a potty mouth. It gets me into trouble all the time.” He grabbed the bucket of ice from Caleb. “You go take a few in the break room. I’ll give this to her majesty and drop off the other one for Brittany at the other bar. I’ll join you in a minute,” he said. Caleb moved to take it back from him, suddenly feeling like he wasn’t pulling his own weight. “No, let me help. It makes me feel useful. I used to do all the heavy lifting for my ex. He was scrawny like you.”
Andrew shot Caleb a wink before he disappeared through the doors back to Ophelia’s side of the club, leaving Caleb standing there for a moment, stunned.Was Andrew just flirting with me? He ran his hand through his brown curls, his still chilled fingers cooling his scalp.
This was nothing like working at the gas station.
* * *
He was relieved when he found the door that read Staff Only after having walked to the wrong side of the building looking for the break room. Andrew had only pointed at it vaguely when they were doing a quick tour of the back hallways that the staff moved through, and he’d already forgotten where it was located. He had accidentally walked into the kitchen then quickly ducked back out, hoping that the three people working on bar food hadn’t noticed his intrusion.
Caleb pushed the door open and sighed when he saw the room was empty and the other entrance on the opposite wall was closed. He went over to the mini fridge on the chipped countertop and pulled out an unlabeled bottle of water, plopping down on a hard plastic chair that lurched to the side on an uneven leg. The water was so cold it hurt, but he couldn’t stop himself from chugging it down until the thin plastic crinkled in his hand.
