I open my mouth at the same time my pocket vibrates. Reaching down, I pull out the phone partway and see a number I don’t know. “Sorry,” I mutter, smiling apologetically at Allison and tapping the button to answer.
“Hello?”
“Is this Aidan?” a man’s gruff voice asks.
“Yeah. Who’s this?” I sit back in my seat and look around the small bar, as though the caller is nearby.
“I own a bar on 73rd. There’s a girl here who’s shit-faced. She dropped her phone on the way back to the bathroom and you’re listed as her emergency contact.”
I shake my head and palm the stubble on my jaw.
“I can call someone else,” he says.
“No,” I bark, then in a normal voice, I say, “I’m coming. What’s the name of the place?”
“Sassy Maiden. There’s a mermaid on the sign out front.”
The line goes dead. I sigh, looking across at Allison as I slip the phone back into my pocket.
“You have to go,” she says, her sexy voice gone.
I nod.
She looks away, and after a moment looks back at me. “That was a pretty obvious bail call.”
I shake my head. “That was not a bail call.”
“Yeah, right.” She stands. It’s a good thing her white wine is gone because I have the feeling I’d be wearing it if there were any left. “Next time you send an SOS, tell your friend to call with a more elaborate story.” She yanks her purse off the corner of her chair with such force that the chair teeters for a moment before crashing into the ground. People turn to look and are met with my sheepish face. Standing, I throw a couple twenties down, stop to right the fallen chair, and stride out of one bar in search of another bar with a mermaid sign.
* * *
“Where is she?”I ask the first bartender who looks my way. There are three behind the bar, two of whom are women wearing white mesh long sleeve T-shirts and hot pink bras underneath.
“The drunk girl?” the blonde asks as the brunette reaches around her for a glass.
“Yes,” I say, thinking of how much fun it will be to tease Natalie about this later.
“I checked on her a few minutes ago,” the brunette says, pouring vodka into a shaker. “She’s sitting on the floor in the bathroom.” She walks off to the other end of the bar and grabs something else to pour into her shaker.
“Great,” I mutter. This is not how my night was supposed to go.
The blonde watches me, her face uncertain. Whatever she’s thinking about, she seems to make up her mind because she inclines her head toward the back of the place. “Bathrooms are that way. I don’t know what happened to the guy she was here with.”
My eyebrows draw together at the mention of a guy. What guy? Natalie just got her first message from the app this morning. She wouldn’t already be meeting him, would she? Rookie mistake.
“Your girlfriend didn’t look happy. With that guy, I mean. Maybe it wasn’t a date.” The blonde bartender is speaking again, and she obviously feels bad for telling on Natalie. Normally I would correct her mistake about Natalie being my girlfriend, but right now I need to step foot into a place I have no desire entering.
“Thanks,” I tell her, and move away, weaving through the crammed tables until I get to the women’s restroom. Three girls stand in line and one of them yells “Hey!” after I push open the door and slip inside. A girl stands at the mirror, leaning over and applying something to her lips, and in the mirror’s reflection I see a mass of dark hair spilling over onto the tile.
Striding over to the crouched figure on the floor, I bend down and say softly, “Best?”
“Go away,” comes the muffled response.
“Okay,” I say, moving to stand.
“Don’t go,” Natalie yells, her arm shooting out to stop me. She lifts her head from her knees and looks at me. Her eye makeup has run all over and her nose is red. If she were in a laughing mood, I’d tell her Halloween was a couple weeks ago.
“I’m here,” I say, crouching down again. She leans her head on my arm.
