“Because I’m just a waitress,” she says, but that’s not a good enough answer. No, something about this girl is very, very familiar.
And very, very attractive.
The kind of attractive that sidetracks a man. Stops him. Distracts him.
But then I snap out of it.
She’s a cocktail waitress.
And I respect the staff here.
“It’s fine, thank you,” I say with less emotion than the words deserve. I am just ready to get out of here.
We make our way out the front door, and I walk behind her for a few steps.
She stops. “Are you following me home?”
“I was going to walk you to your car.”
“Oh,” she says, thumbing in the other direction. “I walked here.”
My eyebrows rise to my hairline at that. “You walked? On this street? At night?” The bar isn’t in a sketchy area, but it’s certainly not a street a woman should walk down alone at 4am.
“It wasn’t dark when I walked here, and I wasn’t expecting to work the late shift. In fact, I didn’t even know there was a late shift.”
“I’ll drive you,” I say before I have time to think about it.
I’m very tired, but I’m not a dick.
I would even consider myself a gentleman, or at the very least, chivalrous. There’s not much point in rescuing her from the hands of an angry, drunk, bare-knuckle boxer only to have her get picked up by some guy in an unmarked van.
“You don’t have to do that,” she says, sounding suddenly panicked.
“You’re right. I don’t. I also didn’t have to jump out of the ring to make sure you didn’t get hurt, taking a knuckle to the face as a consequence. And yet I did. I don’t think you should walk home by yourself, and I’m tired and don’t want to argue about it.”
The girl swallows and bites her lip, and it makes my blood about ten degrees warmer under my skin.
“Alright, fine,” she finally says after another moment of torturous lip-biting. She doesn’t seem to know she’s too attractive to be a waitress. “But you can’t judge where I live.”
“Scout’s honor,” I say, holding up the three-finger sign, but she doesn’t so much as crack a smile. It’s not that she has a resting bitch face, it’s more like she’s nervous, which I get makes sense. She doesn’t know me and has no reason to trust me.
Luckily, I’m not an asshole.
As we drive towards her house, my Maserati is quiet. I can’t help my eyes from dragging over to her once in a while.
She’s wearing the normal uniform for the Cockpit. A very short pleated skirt with a slit that leaves almost nothing to the imagination, a cropped collared button-down shirt, opened down to button four to reveal a black push-up bra from underneath.
And of course, a signature blonde wig.
“You know you can take that off,” I say, breaking the silence.
Her attention whips over to me. “Take what off?” she snaps with the defensiveness of a cat.
“The wig,” I tell her. “It’s got to be uncomfortable.”
“It’s fine,” she says quickly and goes back to looking out the window.
As I come to a red light, I roll to a stop and take the opportunity to study her. I’ve never seen her before at the fight ring, and yet I can't shake this feeling that I know her. “How long have you worked at the bar?”
