Bunches (2 page)

“So, how’s life?” Lizzy yells in
my ear.

It’s the first time we’ve seen
each other in a few months, and we have a lot of catching up to do. I know it’s
going to be nice to be in the same place as Lizzy for the summer, especially
since that place isn’t home.

“Fine,” I say back. “Looking
forward to the internship.”

“Where is it again?”  She’s just
bubbling over with enthusiasm. The past doesn’t bother her at all.

“At an art gallery,” I say. “It
should be fun.” It isn’t what I want to do with my life, but my mother doesn’t
approve of what I want to do with my life and I haven’t worked out how to deal
with that yet. “It’s just me and one other intern named Mark.”

“Right,” she says dryly, flicking
her blond hair over one shoulder with a smile. “The law office I’m working at
is going to be SO boring. We have to go out a lot.” She shakes my arm for
emphasis.

“Whatever you say.” I
intentionally pitch my voice so she can’t hear me.

She shoves my arm playfully just
as the bartender brings us our drinks. I thank him, but I know he can barely
hear me over the noise. I wait until I’m sure Lizzy isn’t going to touch me
again before I reach out and wrap my hand around the cold glass, reminding
myself over and over again that this is what people do. They exist, and they usually
exist in the presence of other humans.

“You can’t avoid everyone
forever,” says Lizzy, her pretty eyes filled with worry. She knows me too well.

“I can try,” I say.

Lizzy shakes her head. Her blond
hair spills over her shoulders again and she tosses it back. “No,” she says
stoutly. “I won’t let you.”

My eyes flick to the bartender,
who is talking to a couple of girls who just came in. I sigh. Lizzy sees where
my eyes have traveled and winks at me.

“He’s cute, isn’t he?” She
wiggles her eyebrows at me.

I shrug. He is, and every girl in
the place has noticed it, but I’m not going to admit it to Lizzy. Besides, I
don’t even know what a cute guy looks like. I don’t really check guys out, not
after what happened. There’s no point.

“There are a bunch of people
here.” I state the obvious.

“Yeah,” says Lizzy. “They all
know how to have fun.”

I look at her skeptically. She
has already taken several sips of beer and she points to my glass.

“Are you going to drink that?”

My heart leaps into my mouth. The
bartender is pointing at my untouched rum and coke, his eyebrow quirked in a
question.

“Um,” I say.

“Yes, yes, she is,” says Lizzy
triumphantly. “Thanks for noticing.”

“Is it too strong?” he asks,
pressing. “I can make another one.” His hands are on the bar and I’m having a
hard time not staring at them and thinking about what they could do if. . . .
Never mind!

“It’s perfect,” I say, making a
show of picking up the glass and sipping. I tighten my fingers around the cool
glass, reminding myself not to let it slip because of the condensation dripping
down the sides. I take a deep breath. I haven’t had a drink in years. Five
years, to be exact, not since that night. Lizzy doesn’t know that, of course.
I’ve never told anyone. It isn’t something you tell.

He gives me an amused look. “You
can’t know that until you try it. Some things are better experienced for real.
Like, the drink at the bar . . .”

Before I can respond he turns on
his heel and moves away. It wouldn’t have mattered. I’m breathless anyway.

I’m about to say something to
Lizzy when I feel cool liquid trickle down my leg. Lizzy wanted seats at the
end, but they were already taken when we came in, so we’re sitting in the
middle. I would have liked to sit at the end, because I could have curled up in
the corner and pretended I was somewhere else, somewhere quiet and safe.

I’m wearing black jeans with my
black ballet flats. Lizzy told me I had nice legs and should show them off, but
I didn’t dare to wear a dress. I don’t own any going-out clothes. There’s no
point if I never go anywhere. I hope the outfit I have on tonight has just the
right amount of going out coupled with the I’m-having-a-girls-night-go-away
vibe.

I stare down at my leg. The girl
next to me, who’s wearing so much makeup I’m surprised she can blink, plus a
tight red top that’s exposing too much cleavage, and sky high heels, has just
spilled her wine on my leg. She’s staring at me with wide eyes.

“Oh, I’m SO sorry,” she says. She
blinks twice and I watch the thick black mascara move in chunks.

She doesn’t look very sorry. Her
lips are parted and she looks drunk. She’s exactly the kind of girl I’m
terrified of: the girl who’s so confident in these situations, who’s fine
talking to guys. Everything I’m not.

“JJ? Can you get us some
napkins?” she calls out to one of the bartenders, waving her free hand in the
process. Her other hand still grips her wine glass. Her nails are a deep
maroon.

The bartender glances at her and
then away; he seems to know her, and he’s used to her. He finishes making a
drink, comes over, and braces one hand on the bar. His eyes are a clear warm
gray, like the clouds that still cover the sky right after it stops raining.

He has really dark hair,
close-cropped to his neck. My throat constricts and I feel my hands gripping
each other for dear life. He’s dressed casually in a black hoodie and jeans,
but I get the idea that he’s ridiculously fit. The muscles in his wrist and
lower arm disappear into his broad shoulders.

The relief I feel at his presence
is overwhelming again, and I’m almost comfortable enough to sit back and not
worry about makeup girl. Almost.

He glances at me, but I still
have the deer in the headlights look on my face. Usually when I make eye
contact with someone I shrink away, my eyes searching the ground for every
crack and crevice, but this time I meet his eyes, and inside the torrent of my
mind something stills.

I wonder what he thinks I look
like. Does he see fear? Does he see me at all? Then he raises his eyebrows at
the girl and I realize it’s way too loud for him to try to talk. Or maybe he’s
just the strong silent type.

He definitely looks fit.

I blush at the thought.

“I spilled wine,” the girl slurs,
pointing at me as she says it. The bartender, JJ, looks at me and leans over
the bar. The music is so loud he has to yell to be heard. How did he know some
of her drink spilled one me? My breath hitches, my chest tightens all at once,
and my focus becomes pinpointed on his lips. I lean forward, determined to
catch every word.

“Mason,” he says, shaking his head.
I see a twinkle in his eyes. She’s obviously a regular and he’s giving her a
hard time. She laughs prettily, covering her mouth and pretending to feel bad.

“Sorry about that,” he says to
me, pointing to my leg.

Before I can say anything he’s
gone from right in front of me and I rock a little forward. I feel disoriented
in the most delicious way, and I know the heat is rising in my cheeks. Lizzy
doesn’t even notice. My head is feeling a little fuzzy, and I know it must be
the alcohol. I’m so intolerant, I can get drunk from proximity. At least that’s
a better justification for my embarrassing behavior than just being socially
incompetent.

“Careful,” his voice comes again.
He’s come back to grab the broken wine shard. I stare down at him in confusion.
“If you clutch that glass any tighter it will shatter. Then I’ll have two
messes on my hands.”

“Oh,” I gasp, and I release my
rum and coke before I see him chuckle. Of course he was teasing me. I must
still look like a deer in headlights. But now he’s gone again and I’m left
red-faced.

Lizzy nudges me hard in the ribs
and gives me a glare. “He’s trying to make you laugh,” she grits out. “Help the
guy out and move a couple of face muscles. I promise smiling doesn’t hurt.”

I looked around and try to see
where he is. To my horror, I see him coming around the bar, clean rag in hand.

A blush creeps up my neck and
cheeks as he wipes the spilled wine off the seat of the chair and the chair
leg.

“There really isn’t much,” I try
to explain. My heart is thumping in time to the music.

He glances up, his face
unreadable, then he taps his ear. He didn’t hear me.

I lean over and try again,
“There’s really not much,” I yell in his ear. He smells faintly of aftershave,
but not so much that it’s overpowering. I inhale deeply, then stop. What if he
can tell I’m smelling him?

Oh. My. God.

Finding the bartender attractive
is the last thing I expected to happen tonight. I expected to need to help
Lizzy home after she drank too much, then crawl into bed, obsessively reliving everything
I did wrong and everything that was embarrassing all night, even if no one else
remembers it.

Mason reaches over, bending at
the waist without getting out of her seat, and taps JJ on the shoulder. He
turns, still in a crouch. I don’t know what she says to him, but she sticks out
her lower lip to do it and he nods. His face is still unreadable.

“You should go to the bathroom if
you want to clean that up more,” he says, referring to my leg.

Visions rush through my mind of
his slowly wiping his rag up and down my leg to get the wine off, and I can
easily feel his fingers through the cloth.

I grip the back of my chair, nod,
and slide off the edge of the seat. I’m uncomfortable, but I don’t know why.
Lizzy follows me and we leave our jackets to reserve our seats.

The bathroom is quieter, and I’m
finally able to steal a breath. There are four stalls, and the walls are
covered in a dark blue tile. I try to check casually under the stalls to make
sure no one else is in there. I can’t imagine how embarrassing it would be to
be overheard.

“Star-struck much?” Lizzy teases
me as soon as we’re inside.

I glare at her. So she did
notice!

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about,” I insist.

Lizzy giggles happily. “I never
see you look at guys the way you were looking at him. You couldn’t even talk!
Awesome.”

My blushing starts all over
again.

“That’s not true,” I argue. It’s
such a scary feeling that I want to explain it away with mere words, as if
somehow that will tame the wildness rushing around inside me. “I was just
surprised that someone spilled wine on me. And, you know, that I’m at a bar.”

“There’s barely any wine,” says
Lizzy, examining me closely. “At least it didn’t get on your sweater. He could
have just cleaned it up.”

“Yes, I’m sure it’s totally okay
for the bartender, whose JOB it is to be here, to just randomly run his hands
up and down girls’ legs,” I throw back.

“Oh please,” says Lizzy. “Running
his hands up and down your legs would be the highlight of his night.”

I scoff and start to wash the red
wine off the leg of my jeans. The activity relaxes me, and I concentrate on
using enough water to get the stickiness off without using so much that it
drips onto my flats.

Who knew that finding a guy in a
bar could be considered a contact sport?

“I do not think the bartender is
cute,” I tell Lizzy, as if I’m revealing a massive secret.

She rolls her eyes. “No, you
think he’s hot and sexy and want to rip his clothes off. That’s just fine. Even
better, actually.” She grins at me and heads for the door. “It happens to girls
at bars all the time, mostly because bartenders are such good listeners. You
can tell them your problems.”

“I bet I can’t tell him mine,” I
say softly.

Lizzy comes over to me and puts
her hand on my shoulder. Her eyes soften as she says, “Maybe telling someone
would take the weight off of you a bit. You always say how you feel buried by
it. Maybe telling someone would help you start to uncover your heart again.”

“I don’t want my heart
uncovered,” I say, nearly crying. “It’s safer buried in the ground.”

Lizzy just shakes her head and
looks sad. She removes her hand from my shoulder and I feel the loss of heat
instantly.

“Come on,” I say. “We should get
back.”

Lizzy sets her jaw in a stubborn
line. I recognize the face. “You hardly ever find guys you think are really
attractive, and when you do, you run. Well no more. Come on. Let’s see what we
can do.” With that she winks at me and disappears.

I sigh. If only she understood
that some things just can’t be unburied.

The first time I see her, I’m not
having a good night. I’m hiding it pretty well, but all I want to do is crawl
into bed and get away from the noise. One of the other bartenders called out
sick, so we’re short-staffed. To make matters worse, it’s a long weekend and pouring
rain, so we’re insanely busy.  I’m glad for the business, but I know I’ll be
exhausted by the end of the night.

The Remember is my life, but it
wasn’t a choice. I used to do the whole work hard, play hard thing. I had
enough fun for a lifetime and I won’t lie, sometimes when I see the girls
walking in here looking really good, I think about going back. Then they get
drunk and slur their words and I remember why I don’t want that.

I roll my shoulders and look at
the two other bartenders I’m working with. Both are taking customers’ orders. I
like working at the bar, because it means I don’t have to think. I watch the
customers and mix the drinks. I like to chat and make jokes. If people have a
good night they come back. It’s pretty simple.

I’m just about to ask Lila if
she’s got the guy at the end of the bar when I’m distracted by a lightning
bolt.

I normally don’t notice who comes
through the front door when I’m behind the bar. We’ve got a busy restaurant
section too, and work gets hectic.

But when she walks in, every
guy’s attention, including mine, shifts to the door.

I swallow and stare like I
haven’t stared at a girl in years.

She’s different. She’s wearing
black jeans and a black sweater over a red blouse, bringing the outfit together
with a black and red scarf. She looks incredible. Her dark hair, almost down to
her back, is loose and tossed casually over one shoulder. She has no idea that
every guy in the place is checking her out.

I couldn’t care less what she’s
wearing on her feet.

Something tightens deep in my
gut. Her hair is down and it swishes around her arms as she looks around
furtively. I give her friend a quick assessment, just to make sure it’s not a
guy. It’s not. The tightening in my chest eases infinitesimally.

The bar is already packed, it’s
about eleven and our busiest time. I overfill the beer I’m pouring because I’m
staring at her. I only know because I feel the liquid dribbling over my
fingers. I look down and swear under my breath. She doesn’t notice. She’s busy
navigating her way to the bar. She smiles at the girl she’s with, whom I barely
notice because I can’t take my eyes off
her
.

Please sit at the bar, I think
desperately.

I don’t even know what I’ll do if
she does. I can flirt at the bar no problem, but like I said, she’s different.
She probably gets hit on all the time. And I’m working. I’m not going to hit on
her while I’m working and she’s trying to have a girls’ night out.

Sit at the bar. Please.

She and her friend hesitate for a
second, surveying the scene.

“Hey JJ,” Lila calls. “Can you
come over here?”

I turn my attention to the girl
I’m bartending with. Lila’s in college and new to bartending, but she’s pretty
and she giggles and she gets good tips. I turn away from the girl with the
amazing body and the sad eyes, with legs that I can just picture wrapped around
my waist. I go help Lila, but I keep my eyes on the girl.

Sit at the bar.