There’s nothing I can really put my finger on, though, and at this point I’m afraid to make any kind of trouble at the restaurant, seeing as I know I’m only back because Sam talked to them. I wonder what he did. Did he ask nicely? Or did he make a threat? I can imagine it going either way.
“I’ll give you another couple of minutes,” I say brightly, leaving them to attend to another table. I feel as though they’re watching me as I go, and when I glance back at them out of my peripheral vision, all three of them are staring hard and in a hostile manner.
The hair on the back of my neck starts to rise. What the fuck do they want? Sometimes guys hit on me and stare at me, but not like this. This feels like I’m about to be eaten by a predatory creature—and not in a fun way. I kind of want to leave work, but if I do that it will seem suspicious to everyone and probably piss Sam off too. I could call him, maybe, but he’s laid up with injuries, and we’re not supposed to use phones while we are on shift. So I come up with an alternative that the guys at the table won’t know is weird, and gets me out of the situation as much as possible.
“I think there’s something weird going on with the guys at table one,” I tell Sally. She has the other section next to mine, and she’s a good work friend.
“I’ll take them,” she says quickly. I know what she’s thinking. They’re wearing suits. They might tip well. For her sake, I hope they do.
“Want me to take one for you?”
“Yeah, you can take the guy who can barely afford to take the girl he’s with out,” she says. “I don’t think he’s going to tip at all.”
“Deal,” I say. She gives me a weird look, but I don’t care. We swap tables all the time for all sorts of reasons, really. Sometimes it’s because we don’t like the look of a customer. Other times it’s because we just can’t be bothered with a certain type of person. Sometimes it’s an ex. Or a parent. Or just a dick.
The rest of the shift is not so bad. I wonder if Sam is going to pick me up, then I remember he wants me to live my life like normal, so he’s probably not going to risk that. It’s going to be the bus home.
By the time I am clocking out, I have forgotten about the men in the suits.
“You shouldn’t have swapped that table with me,” Sally says. “They tipped a hundred bucks on an eighty-dollar bill.”
I smile and hold back the urge to tell her that I have like twenty grand in my purse still. A hundred bucks is a big deal. A lot of money to people our age.
“They must have liked you,” I say.
“Yeah. I should have got the cute one’s number,” she says.
I go and wait for the bus. I have memories of what happened that fateful night the creep tried to get me here, and what Sam did to him as a result. I forget about that more often than not. Strange how very terrible things can sort of fade into the background most of the time until they are triggered.
The bus comes. I get on. No freaky evil guy tonight. I guess I should think about catching up on some of the reading I’ve gotten behind on since all this stuff happened. I remind myself that school is important, and work is too, and whatever is happening with Sam is probably just a temporary thing. He’s a bad guy, even though he’s hot, and nothing good can come of knowing him.
The sex is incredible, though.
The bus rolls into the interchange. Usually there’s a wait for the next one, but tonight my connection is standing at the next bay already. There’s nobody else on it, but that’s not unusual. Most people are at home and in bed by this time.
I get on the bus and sit close to the front. It heads off, and at the next stop we pick up a couple of men.
They look familiar.
It’s the guys from the restaurant. They get on without looking at me and sit somewhere behind me. I don’t dare turn around and look. I feel like a kid in bed who just heard something go bump in the night. If I don’t make them real, then they won’t be real.
I look out the window. Maybe I’ll catch something interesting in the reflection. That’s when I notice that we’re not on our usual route. We’re not even in the right neighborhood.
“Um, driver?” I ask. “Is this the right bus? Is it the 4…”
I don’t even get to finish the question, because the driver looks around from his seat and I recognize him. It’s not the usual driver. It’s not a person who looks anything even remotely like a normal driver. Instead it’s one of the men from the restaurant wearing a driver’s cap.
I don’t know what to do. I try pressing the button for the next stop, but all that does is make the man behind me chuckle.
I can’t pretend that this is normal anymore. I’m being abducted in a city bus.
I pull out my phone, planning to call Sam.
It is smoothly removed from my hand with a relatively gentle touch. “I don’t think we need you doing that, do we?” one of the suited men asks.
The spell is broken. We’ve talked to each other. We’re all openly acknowledging that each other exist.
“What are you doing?”
