“You put lime on this, and you know it!” I snapped. “What the absolute fuck, Shade?”
“Seriously?” Cody asked, standing up now.
But since she was shorter than me—barely five feet—she didn’t look all that ferocious.
She did, however, continue moving straight onto the bar as if she was going to launch herself across it at the asshole.
To do that, however, she had to crawl partially down the bar toward where Shade was standing talking to someone at the end.
Which put her ass directly in the face of the man she’d been ogling the entire night.
“Whoa, darlin’,” the man drawled as he reached to save his beer.
He placed his hand on the back of her thigh and squeezed, forcing her to stop crawling across the bar.
She didn’t stop pointing at him, however.
She put on her best teacher voice that she used with all of her students and snarled, “I will murder you. I will pull out your entrails using my hunting knife that I’ve gutted no less than fifty deer with, and I will feed them to you. You’ll be eating your own shit by the time I’m finished with you.”
The man that was holding her steady had a manic smile on his face as he heard her speak.
“You can’t do anything to me.” Shade rolled his eyes dramatically. “You can’t prove that I did anything.”
I pointed at my swollen lips. “Then why does it look like I just got filler done, Shade McDonalds?”
“Maybe because you did?” he scoffed. “You are vain as fuck after all.”
That made the man I’d been studiously trying to pretend wasn’t here laugh. “Man, she’s wearing worn jeans with grease stains on them. If that’s what you call vain, then every single person in this bar is.”
He was right.
Everyone had made it an early night and had come straight from work to get a drink due to the storm that was about to hit. Nine-tenths of the people in the room were blue-collar workers that had some version of dirt or grease on them.
Even the man who was holding on to Cody’s thigh still.
Though he had what looked to be a burn mark on his pant leg.
I wondered what he did for a living…
Cody snatched up the tip jar and shoved her hand in it, taking out several bills.
“Hey!” Shade leaped for the jar.
The man holding on to Cody pulled a manly move so smooth that I would’ve never believed it possible had it not happened right in front of my eyes.
Before Shade could get to Cody or the tip jar, the man beside me literally picked Cody up like she weighed nothing and brought her into his chest.
“You can’t steal that!” Shade hollered.
“Actually, I’m going to go next door and buy her some fucking Benadryl, you fucking asshole. And you know the gas station overcharges. You did this to her, you’ll pay the money to fix it.” Cody sneered at him, extricated herself from the man’s arms, and stomped out of the bar.
She had well over the amount that she would need, but no one said anything.
Change and dollar bills fell down in her wake.
No one went to pick anything up.
Yet, they were all very aware of the altercation.
