Sliding Down the Sky (11 page)

“The usual, I guess. Not much,” I shrugged.

“Good. Come around for dinner,” she smiled. “It’s time we did something not related to the business. I was thinking of inviting Jack and Ally, too. Do you think that’d be too weird? I mean, I know they’re our landlords, but they seem really nice and we’d really like to thank them for everything they’ve done for us.”

“It’s not weird at all – I’m sure they’d love to come, and so would I.”

Especially if it gave me an excuse to see Sass.

“Great,” she smiled. “I’ll give them a call tomorrow. Shall we say five o’clock?”

“Sounds perfect, see you then.”

It might’ve been the beer, but as I walked out of the bar, I swore I felt lighter.

“The world is a heart-breaking place, without any question.”

– Annie Lennox

Sass

The changes in my life weren’t all major. Some of them were minor, but the impact was just as earth-shattering.

Before the accident, mundane and routine were dirty words. I didn’t like making plans, and I hated when others made them for me. I preferred to go with the flow, following my inner voice, which inevitably got me into trouble, but at least life was never dull. I was what was known in the business as ‘challenging’. I was probably a nightmare to manage, but I never really gave that a second thought. As long as I was happy and having fun, I was content.

Now, things were very different. Planning had become a way of life. I had ditched my fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants mantra, and had become the poster child for consideration and forethought. Everything – even the smallest things – required careful planning. Could I do it? If so, how was I going to go about it? Would it take me longer? I had to allow for that, as well. There was no room in my life for whim or impulse. Besides which, Leo was counting on me. I couldn’t let him down.

I’d spent the previous two days making myself indispensable at home. I’d cooked, I’d cleaned, I’d taken care of Aria. Anything to make Leo and Gemma see that I was capable of being more to this family than just someone who occupied the third bedroom.

I won’t lie – it felt good. The milestones were stacking up. My confidence was building. I was keeping the dark cloud at bay. I even managed to keep Callum from creeping into my thoughts again. I couldn’t afford a distraction like that. I had to prove myself, and I could tell, even from the few interactions I’d had with him, that he was capable of derailing the entire new plan I’d built for myself. I would allow myself to flirt, because I enjoyed how it made me feel and I had no idea when I’d get that opportunity with anyone else. But that was as far as I was willing to go.

My Tuesday night shift at the bar was much quieter than I’d imagined, but I was grateful. Leo and I soon found our rhythm again, and we had time to talk between serving and cleaning. I got out from behind the bar a few times, cleaned down the tables and collected empties. There were a few sidelong glances at my hand, but I just kept remembering what they’d said in rehab – people will stare, because it’s human nature to be curious.

I tried to act like it was no big deal. I figured if I kept telling myself that long enough, it wouldn’t be.

The next band that Leo had booked wasn’t due until Friday. We’d decided Friday’s were a good time to have live music. I tried not to count down the days until then, determined that this Friday would not be a repeat of the last. I was lining that up to be my next milestone.

Panic attacks were the one thing that I was having trouble exorcising from my life. They’d diminished a lot in the last six months, but they still came out of nowhere, and they were still scary as all hell. I’d learnt a lot about myself during my months of therapy. Like the fact that the panic attacks weren’t random, they had triggers. My triggers were frustration, anger and memories of my old life. In a broad way, I developed a sense of understanding the enemy. Once I learnt how to deal with those triggers, I could control the attacks. That was the theory.

Watching Leo play used to be a trigger, but now I could distance myself enough so that it didn’t send me over the edge. It still hurt, but it didn’t suck my heart out through my nostrils like it used to. I didn’t get overwhelmed with pain and jealousy anymore. I could watch and listen with a sense of detachment, mainly because I could see how happy it made him. The next step was to be able to watch him play with a band and not have that life-shattering sense of hopelessness hijack me. Clearly, I still had some work to do on that one.

We’d only been open for an hour or so when Callum came in. I looked up from the register and he was sitting down at my end of the bar, waiting patiently to be served. My heart gave an involuntary kick inside my chest, and I gave him a quick smile before turning my attention back to the register. I needed a moment to fortify myself. Every time I saw him, he seemed to unravel me a little bit more. I took that moment to ensure my ends were tucked in, where he couldn’t see them.

Running into him in the street yesterday had been an unexpected pleasure. That was, until Aria had gotten personal. I could tell by his reaction when he talked about his parents that things weren’t great between them. It was embarrassing – for both of us. Gemma had told me she’d invited him to a barbeque on Sunday, and that she was inviting Jack and Ally too. I’d be lying if I said that the idea didn’t throw me into a tailspin, but I figured if I planned everything out, it might be alright. In any case, that wasn’t until Sunday. I had time.

I looked up at Callum again, but before I could approach him, Leo walked behind me and beat me to it.

I heard them talking over the music coming through the bar’s sound system, and I watched them out of the corner of my eye. Leo got him a beer and then stood chatting to him for a few minutes, before he moved away to serve someone down his end.

I was unreasonably proprietary towards Callum. He was at
my
end, I felt like telling Leo. He wanted
me
to serve him. The more I thought about it, the braver I felt. I closed the register and made my way down to say hi.

“Hey,” he said, smiling as I drew level.

He really was something else. There wasn’t an inkling of arrogance about him, and I think that’s what confused me the most. He was good-looking, in an unassuming way. He looked like he wanted to blend into his surroundings, not stand out from them, but to me, that’s exactly what he did. He had this vibe that screamed of dogged persistence, almost a disrespect for authority, as if he would rally against injustice if he came across it. It made me curious, and curiosity was something I didn’t usually have the energy for these days.

He sat with his shoulders hunched over slightly as he turned his beer around and around on the bar, like a nervous trait. He always seemed to have that faint, underlying hint of anxiety that I’m not even sure I’d have noticed before the accident. I had always attracted the cocky ones, probably because they were the only ones game enough to approach me. The quiet ones were always a little intimidated. Maybe the difference was that now I was much less intimidating. Along with my hand, I’d lost my confidence, especially when it came to men. As much as Callum intrigued me, he also scared the crap out of me.

“Hey yourself.”

“How’ve you been?” he asked.

For a brief moment, I wondered if he knew what had happened on opening night. Did I do something or say something before I went out to the store room? Did he guess? Or did Leo tell him? They seemed to be getting pretty chummy these days.

“Good,” I said, deciding to play it safe. “And I want to apologise for yesterday, again. Aria can be a little… “

“She’s a kid,” he shrugged, smiling easily. “No need to apologise.”

“Yeah, she is. She’s also very direct, which is kind of embarrassing sometimes.”

“Yeah, well. I don’t have much to do with kids in general, but I hear they can be like that.”

“They can. Believe me. Kids are like miniature, drunken adults, in my experience.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Direct, embarrassing, impossible to reason with. We’ve all had that friend, right? The one who thinks that climbing a tree outside some random person’s window at three in the morning is the best idea
ever
? Right up until the moment the cops show up.”

He chuckled, raising his glass.

“Hey, I
am
that friend.”

“Then maybe you know more about kids than you think,” I smiled.

He grinned back at me, mischief shining in his eyes. I had no idea if he was telling the truth or not, but right at that moment, it wasn’t hard to imagine him shimmying up a tree at three a.m.

“I hear you’re coming around for this barbeque on Sunday,” I said, trying to keep the conversation easy.

“Yeah, Gemma invited me. Is that okay with you?”

I could feel my cheeks heating up, even as I begged them not to. Why was he asking me? Why should he care? I think I already knew why, it just took me a few seconds to catch up and admit it to myself.

“Of course,” I said, as if he’d just asked to use the bathroom.

“Good. I’m looking forward to it.”

Holy hell. His eyes seemed to burn right through me, and all the preconceived ideas I had of flirting harmlessly with him went up in flames. There was no such thing as harmless, not when it came to him. My former bravado disintegrated in a flash, and I realised too late that I was completely out of my depth. He might not have been cocky and arrogant, but that quiet, unassuming mask was clearly a cover for something much more deadly. However he was doing it, he was getting under my skin and it was terrifying.

I glanced around, eager for an escape. Thankfully, I noticed a customer that needed serving, so I snatched the opportunity.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I mumbled.

“I’ll be here.”

I was playing with fire and it was starting to burn out of control.

I made my way down to the other end of the bar. Leo was busy serving another customer, so this guy, whoever he was, was going to be my salvation whether he knew it or not.

“What can I get you?” I asked the guy standing in front of me.

I hadn’t seen him come in, and he had that glazed look in his eyes that told me he’d probably already had too much to drink. I wasn’t even sure I should be serving him. I looked to Leo for guidance, but he had his back to me.

“Whisky, double, no ice.”

There was a definite slur in his voice and he grabbed onto the bar to steady himself. If I was suspicious before, I was positive now.

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to sound like I knew what I was doing. “I can’t serve you tonight. I think you’ve had enough.”

The guy, in his fifties and crumpled, like he’d slept in his clothes, stared at me. Hard. Then he leaned forward, both hands on the bar.

“What did you say?”

I stood my ground, but I could clearly smell the booze on his breath as he got closer. It cemented my decision. The guy was wasted. Serving him would be a mistake.

“I said I’m sorry sir, I can’t serve you tonight,” I repeated firmly.

Before I knew what was happening, the guy reached over the bar and grabbed my right forearm, his vice-like grip closing tight around it. I let out a small whimper of surprise as he pulled me closer, my heart pounding loud enough to drown everything else out. I was completely helpless, and the moment I realised it, I felt sick. He wasn’t letting go.

Like lightning, Callum was there, trying to put himself between us.

“You better let her go, and I mean
now!
” Callum growled, inches from the man’s face as he grabbed him around the chest and tried to pull him off me.

I pulled and twisted, but he held tight. The guy had strength beyond reason, especially considering how drunk he obviously was. From behind me, Leo belted out a stream of obscenities.

Suddenly, the asshole let go, but the unexpected release threw me off balance and I fell back, throwing my arms behind me to steady myself. It was the wrong thing to do, and I felt it as soon as my prosthesis hit something solid, sending a shooting pain right up my arm and through my neck. I grabbed my arm, clamping my jaw shut when I wanted to cry out in pain. In my red-tinged peripheral vision, I saw Leo clambering over the bar.

I somehow got myself up from the floor, pain pulsating from my stump, just in time to see Callum punch the guy, square in the jaw. Callum’s whole demeanour changed. From the slightly insecure, quiet guy I thought he was, he morphed into this hulking madman. His face glowed bright red, his eyes narrow and hard. Gone was the gentle giant. In his place was an angry behemoth. For a moment, the pain in my arm took second place to the shock of Callum’s transformation. He was someone else entirely, and I watched as he and Leo frog-marched the guy towards the door. Choking back tears, I cradled my arm into my body and stumbled behind the bar and down the hallway into the store room, where no one could see me cry.

My pride was hurt, but my arm hurt more. It was so sensitive, a slight knock would have me cursing under my breath, but this was agony. It felt as if the bones had splintered beneath the skin, and I half-expected to find that the skin stretched across the end of my stump had been split open. The thought of it nauseated me.

I had to do something, the pressure was unbearable. I stood in the middle of the room, pacing backwards and forwards, whimpering as I carefully eased the prosthesis off and laid it on top of the nearest box. Shooting pains stabbed at my stump, like a thousand burning hot nails were being driven into it. I bent in half, cradling it into my stomach and trying like hell to suck back the tears. I wanted to tear the silicone liner off, but I needed a moment before I tackled that because I could already tell that it was gonna hurt like hell.

I heard footsteps in the hallway. Leo had come to see if I was okay. I didn’t even care that I’d taken my prosthesis off. Freaking him out was the least of my worries.

“Hey, are you alright?”

I turned around, forcing myself to stand up straight, even though every fibre of my being wanted to curl in on myself in a futile effort to ease the pain. Too late, I realised it wasn’t Leo. It was Callum.