“Yeah,” I
agreed. “I didn’t want the flyer displayed outside for
obvious reasons.” I knew it would make me an instant celebrity.
Head down. Stay off the radar.
“Can’t
blame you.” He finally walked away then, lightly patting the
back of my shoulder as he passed, heading towards the grill to
continue cleaning.
Joe dropped in at his
usual time and ordered the same boring meal. He was clearly jealous
of Nick and the time we got to spend working together. He’d
given me the cold shoulder all week, and for the life of me, I
couldn’t figure out why he continued to come around if it truly
bothered him. Especially since he had to know Nick intentionally came
out to keep me company when he came around. I privately rolled my
eyes over the two, but I’d take Nick’s attention over
Joe’s any day. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but
I felt a sense of safety when Nick was around.
By eleven, the diner
had died down. I was sorry to say it, but I really didn’t care
to work Friday and Saturday nights after midnight. Never in all my
shifts did those nights
not
fail to produce some type of drunk
coming in after hitting up the bar down the road, and tonight was no
exception.
I didn’t
recognize the three men, so I could only guess they were traveling
through or visiting someone for the weekend. They ranged between
early thirties to early forties, topped their heads off with grungy
baseball caps and all three of them were due to shave their five
o’clock shadow two weeks ago.
I groaned when they
sat down at the four-top, loud and obnoxious all the way, blurting
profanities left and right. I turned my back to them and pulled my
hair back in a knotted mess. Making sure to get off a necessary
preempted eye roll, I made my way towards them with a forced smile.
This was exactly why I wore loose-fit clothing and praised myself for
my lack of make-up.
I passed them menus,
ignoring the suggestive leers that came from two of them, and asked
them what they’d like to drink. Beers, of course…
“Sorry,” I
replied, “We lost our liquor license, so we no longer carry
those. How about a round of coffees?”
“How about a
round of you?”
Oh, how original
,
I smirked internally.
I ignored him as the
one with the blue baseball cap began to complain about our lack of
alcohol, but his neighboring companion waved him off, pulling a flask
from his jacket pocket. “No worries, fellas. We’ll just
make them Irish.”
I rolled my eyes as I
walked away.
Shit. I should’ve just given them the damn
beers.
I poured the coffees, muttering curse words all the way.
“Hey,”
Nick said through the pass-through. Guess my mutters weren’t as
quiet as I thought. “If you don’t want to serve them,
just kick them out.”
“Yeah,” I
retorted, “like they’re going to leave because a
nineteen-year-old, one-hundred-and-ten pound girl told them to.”
He grimaced when I turned my back on him, heading back to the
dumbasses at table eight. I had intentionally filled the cups to the
rim, so naturally, they tipped them to make room for the booze,
allowing the coffee to dribble onto their saucers.
Once I took their
orders and turned to leave, I felt a flimsy pinch to the bottom cheek
of my ass. Score one for the baggy jeans for prohibiting something
more. But still, it pissed me off that he felt he had the right to do
anything of the kind.
“HEY!” I
snapped angrily, whipping around, smacking the hand that still
lingered with such intensity that the crack overpowered every sound
in the diner. The three men got a huge kick out of that and turned
their attention to one another to laugh hysterically.
I was debating about
dumping the ass-grabber’s coffee in his lap when I heard Nick
command, “Out,” harshly behind me.
The three men jerked
in their seats, but it was the ass-grabber that threw his hands up
defensively, crying, “WHOA! Shit, man!”
Fighting the sudden
tension in my neck, I forced my head to spin sideways. The moment I
caught sight of the black cylinder out the corner of my eye, my heart
jumped and I sprung to the side. Nick was in a hunter’s stance,
the shotgun aimed at the head of his prey.
“We have the
right to refuse service,” he said sternly. “And I’m
enforcing that liberty right now.” He cocked the shotgun,
making the men jump again. I instinctively removed myself from the
path between their table and the front door, placing myself
protectively behind Nick. The friends were quick to leave, but the
ass-grabber was a little more careful with his moves; slower, as the
barrel was still aimed at his head. As he nudged his way through the
door, Nick threatened, “Don’t
ever
come back here
again.”
Ass-grabber fled at
full speed, stumbling and tripping his way into the back cab of the
old pickup truck that tried reversing out of the parking spot without
him. Only once they were out of sight did Nick lower the shotgun,
lock the door and turn the placard from
Open
to
Closed
.
I was suddenly very
aware of the intense pounding in my chest, as the
boom-boom-boom
echoed in my head. My arms crossed over my chest, hands gripping my
shoulders, and I swallowed a lump in my throat. I didn’t
recognize the face before me, as kindness no longer resided there.
Nick’s face was red and irate, his eyes cold and dark and
unrecognizable. I pinched my eyes as images began to flash through my
head without permission.
Dark eyes on a face
too blurry to see.
Fire all around me,
the putrid air choking my lungs.
An uninvited hand
snaking its way up my bare thigh, and me, powerless to stop it.
That last one
lingered, refusing to relieve the mental anguished it imposed.
Acid bubbled and
churned in my stomach, and heat rose up from the bottom of my throat.
I bolted for the bathroom, crashing through the door, barely making
it before my dinner resurfaced. Stomach acid burned the lining of my
throat, and another memory flashed before my eyes.
Fire licked across
my skin, the red inflammation growing darker and darker in color as
the pain attacked my nerves.
I collapsed to the
dingy ivory ceramic tile beneath me, my eyes taking turns dripping
tears down my cheeks, the imagined pain very real to my damaged skin.
I swallowed the saliva in my mouth, a pathetic attempt to wash away
the sourness overtaking my senses. I still felt sick to my stomach,
but the real threat had passed. Pain burned behind my eyes and I
wanted nothing more than to go home and collapse on my bed.
A light knock rapped
on the door. “Megan?” Nick asked softly. “Are you
alright?”
“I’m okay
now,” I answered, pulling on the edge of my sleeves, which had
managed to creep up a bit, exposing the permanently damaged skin
beneath.
The door must have
shut behind me at some point. Its knob slowly turned, then it opened
at a glacial pace – perhaps to give me time to object, which I
didn’t. A better version of Nick peeked inside, this one the
calm, caring guy I came to adore, the coldness in his demeanor long
gone.
“Here.” He
passed me a clean wash towel and a glass half filled with red liquid.
Gatorade. I couldn’t believe how delicious it tasted, despite
how it felt like I was swallowing needles. I drank it all down in ten
seconds.
“I’m sorry
about what happened back there. I was so focused on those shitheads
that I didn’t realize I was upsetting you.”
I set the glass down
on the tile and wiped my mouth down, the sourness still burning my
throat and chest. “It’s not your fault. Those guys were
assholes. I just…”
Bad memories
, I wanted to say.
“…sensitive stomach,” I lied.
“Yeah,” he
muttered. “Can I take you home?”
“We still have
two more hours.”
“No,” he
said sternly, “We don’t. Come on. If Paul has a problem
with it, he can take it up with me tomorrow.”
I allowed Nick to pull
me up, and with my feet planted on the floor in front of his, we were
almost close enough to touch. He had like a foot on me, but the way
he dipped his head gave me a perfect view of his pale pink lips, soft
and supple and demanding attention as he took that moment to hydrate
them. We were slow to pull apart, my gaze locking heavily with his.
His hand still held mine, and it was warm and comforting, and I
didn’t contest when he continued to hold it as he guided me out
of the bathroom and into the diner again. But he abandoned the grasp
there, and I hated how disappointed I felt.
I grabbed my bag as he
moved through the kitchen turning off equipment and lights before
locking up. And then it was just like every other night, with him
driving me home. Only this time I didn’t thank him for the ride
and get out. I just sat there, staring at my front door, seemingly
darker than its normal shade of hunter green, as my porch light had
finally burned out. Luckily, my neighbor’s light kept my
doorstep from being completely absorbed by darkness.
I no longer liked
the night. The darkness was where he lied in wait, waiting for it to
swallow me whole each night, suffocating my senses with fear.
I’m not sure how
long I sat there, but it was Nick’s voice that broke me from my
trance. “I can stay and keep you company for a bit.” I
turned his way, and he fidgeted before adding, “If you want me
to.”
I liked the way the
mixture of street light and shadow painted his face. It brought about
a sense of calm in me, and I nodded. I didn’t want to be alone
right now. After directing him to the parking spot that came assigned
with my apartment, he followed me inside #E3.
My apartment was
actually a decent size for a one bedroom, but the sleeping and living
areas were only separated by sliding doors, hidden and stuck in the
two walls that almost joined in the middle of the room. I had an old
TV in front of the cream floral sofa, which incidentally, lined up
with the full-sized bed, but was really too far away to see the
screen from. I hardly watched it anyways since I only got the free
channels. Everything in my place was used and disposable. All except
for the bag I kept packed at the back of my closet, ready to go at a
moment’s notice, just like the money tucked beneath the carpet
underneath it.
“You’ve
got a nice place.”
Lightheartedly, I
replied, “It’s a dump and you know it.” I leaned
into my closet and tossed my purse atop the packed bag.
“So you’re
used to better then?”
Once upon a time,
before my parents passed away. But since then, no. “Sadly, it’s
nicer than the last place I lived.”
White and gritty
windowless walls, cold cement floor, a single vent for poisoned
recycled air…
I shook the thought from my head,
instinctively pulling at my sleeves again.
It just dawned on me
that this was the first time that I’d ever had a guy in my
place since
before
, and it surprised me that having him here
didn’t bother me all that much.
“Are you
hungry?” he asked, already pulling the refrigerator open. He
wasn’t going to like what he saw in there. “Wow,”
he deadpanned. “A jar of pickles, a water bottle that’s
been used five hundred times, a block of cheddar, and a half jar of
mayonnaise, but no sandwich fixings. I knew you were lying about
cooking at home.”
“The food’s
all in the cabinet.” All things that were room temperature and
could be packed in just thirty seconds.
He opened two empty
cabinets, giving me a look of disappointment each time, before
finding the one I used. Teasingly, he grabbed a bunch of saltine
packages I swiped from the diner, giving me a look that screamed
Really?
I just shrugged. Food was food. Nick pulled out a can
of chicken gumbo and held it up, silently asking for my approval, and
I nodded with a smirk.
I only had two place
settings of everything and nothing matched. Nick grabbed one of the
bowls to microwave the soup in, saying, “FYI. This isn’t
cooking, it’s heating. And if this is what you have to come
home to, why wouldn’t you want to eat at the diner?”
“Everything’s
greasy and makes me sick to my stomach. Sometimes I eat a salad, but
they’re not very filling.” But with all of the food Nick
made me this past week, this was the first time I had to eat anything
from my canned collection.
That seemed to satisfy
him, and when the microwave beeped, I sat down on the sofa with my
dinner, Nick on the opposite end, angled towards me. “I’d
offer you your own bowl, but I’m pretty sure you’d scoff
at me if I did.”
“You’d be
right. And I already ate tonight.”
I scarfed down the
soup. Guess I was hungrier than I thought.
“So what was
with the gun earlier?”
He rubbed his chin,
seemingly regretful that I brought that up. “Not my normal
course of action, but I didn’t know why you yelled and I sure
as hell wasn’t going to wait to find out, so I just grabbed it
and ran.” A moment later, he sincerely added, “Sorry.”
I shrugged one
shoulder and shook my head like I didn’t care. There were worse
people in the world to worry about. I supposed it didn’t hurt
to bring that jackass down a notch. Maybe Nick’s actions would
keep him from doing it to another girl anytime soon.
“So what do you
do around here on your days off?”
After swallowing a
mouthful of warm gumbo, I replied, “I don’t take days
off.”
“
Ever?
”
“Nope,” I
said, getting up and passing him on my way to the kitchen to clean my
bowl. “Can’t afford to.” And I hated being alone,
especially under the cover of darkness, which was why I had no
problem working the nightshift.
Following me to the
kitchen, Nick asked, “Does Paul pay you enough?”