He grabs his martini and scuttles away. I finish my whiskey. The bartender hands me another one. I turn back toward Zandra. She catches me looking. I force myself to not look away. She’s had a few drinks herself by now. The alcohol and the contentment on her face creates a radiance under her skin that warms me from across the room.
A man in a cowboy hat stops in front of her. He leans over to talk to her, their faces unnecessarily close to each other. I can only see half of her face. The contentment changes. Her eyebrows furrow together and her mouth pinches together. She shakes her head at the man, but he doesn’t back away from her.
He better back the fuck away from her.
I walk over. I know I shouldn’t, especially with Julietta right there after she’d warned me away from Zandra, but that man is crossing a line and he needs to know that. As I put my hand on his shoulder, Zandra’s eyes lock with mine. I break the gaze, pulling the man back an inch. He looks at me with contempt, his thumbs hooking around his belt loops.
“What’s up, partner?” he asks me.
“I need you to step away from that woman right now,” I said.
The man gestures to Zandra. “Is this your girl?” he asks.
“I don’t owe you any explanation. Step away.”
“Fucker, if you want to fight over her, I’d gladly whoop your ass,” the man sneers.
I open my arms, taking a step back. “Take the first hit,” I say. “But make damn sure it puts me on the floor or you’re going to regret it.”
“Hey, hey, hey!” Aaron jumps out of his chair, getting in between the two of us. His hands are raised at my chest and the other man’s chest prepared to try to stop us. He’s full of such dumb bravado that he doesn’t see the man’s punch coming. After the hit lands, Aaron stumbles against me. I catch him, but quickly shove him toward Julietta, throwing my fist the same way my uncle taught me. It lands near the man’s temple. As he staggers back, I hit him again, my fist slamming below his left ear. He totters, his back hitting the wall before he slumps down. His eyes are blank as he stares ahead.
“Is he dead?” Aaron whispers. “Like actually permanently dead?”
“He’s just knocked out,” I say, but I focus on his chest until I see it expand. As I turn back to the table, I’m unprepared to see Zandra on her feet. She shoves me.
“You are an asshole,” she hisses. “What is your problem?”
“You didn’t like him talking to you. I intervened.” I indicated the man. “Would you like to continue the conversation with him? It will be a better conversation now.”
“I didn’t like him talking to me, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t handle it,” she snarls. “You don’t need to save me because you feel guilty. I can take care of myself.”
I run my thumb over my knuckles, a burning pain rippling across them. My head is swimming in whiskey, and it wants to lash out at her, tell her everything I’m thinking, but I can’t do that in front of my employees.
“I’m going to dance,” I say. It’s a dumb plan—I have two left feet—but it’s the only reason I can find to leave the area without being a complete coward. I turn around, joining the small crowd of people who are swaying to the music. A beautiful blonde—around college age with a tube top that prominently presents her cleavage—strides up to me, smiling and turning around to roll her hips in front of me. She has a nice ass, but my thoughts can only trace the body shape of Zandra. Zandra’s ass is a representation of a flawless shapely, perky ass.
Zandra cuts in between the woman and me, her fingertips on my chest to push me back a couple of inches. The woman’s face is flushed with indignation until she notices Zandra’s face. She quickly retreats into the crowd of dancing drunks.
“What do you want, Mark?” she asks. “Do you just like to play with people’s feelings? Do you just like me—"
“You need to back up,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “You’re the one who keeps giving mixed signals. Yesterday, you were ready to fuck me twice and you put the brakes on both times.”
“I’m sorry?” she blurts. “You are so full of yourself. You put on this act where you pretend to be this little,very little,boy who is desperate for people to give him a pat on the head, but you jerk yourself off enough to never need anyone else. And that’s good with me because I don’t need you either.”
“If you want to paint me as the villain, have fun with that,” I sneer. “But at least admit that you’re lying to yourself. You never forgot about us. And you might not need me, but you want me.”
She stares at me, angry and defiant. “I’ll admit that if you admit that you don’t feel the same way about me that I feel about you. You never did.”
We’re both drunk. Any confessions could be excused as alcohol-fueled drama. But I can’t lie to her.
“Paris was a long time ago,” I say.
“For you, it was,” she says, shaking her head. “Forget about it. I know you want to.”
“You wouldn’t like who I was in Paris if you knew the truth,” I say, the words rushing out. “You liked the world traveler, the man you found puppies with, the man who snuck you into the Louvre. You saw me as someone who was twice the man I’ll ever be. I only pulled off half that shit because I wanted to impress you and the other half because… because of my parent’s money. And you made it abundantly clear that there’s nothing you hate more than someone dependent on their parents for anything.”
She opens her mouth, her lip curling up in anger, but another voice cuts through the music.
“Zandra?”
