“You can stay away from my boyfriend.”
I laugh and shake my head. “I don’t want your boyfriend or his mediocre dick. Either tell me what you want to drink, or I willserve someone else. I don’t have time for the jealous girlfriend bullshit.”
“Maybe your manager wants to hear about my bullshit.”
“ROGUE!” I call out for my boss. She is a tiny little thing, and her head pops out from the wall of liquor. “What do we do to jealous women who want to talk to the manager?”
Rogue bounces over to me; she is always full of energy. She snatches up the glass of ice water in front of me and throws it at the woman. “We cool them down.”
The redhead shrieks her outrage. “You have no idea what you’ve done! My brother won’t like this.”
Both Rogue and I laugh. The number of times a woman has caused a scene because one of the bar staff was apparently hitting on their boyfriend or something equally ridiculous pissed Rogue off, so now she likes to cause a scene. Bruce appears beside the woman and tells her it’s time to leave. I’m sure she is a nice girl, and Kyle has created this whole situation. I broke up with him because he was cheating on me, but of course I am the bad guy. Maybe I stayed longer than I should have, mainly because looking for somewhere to live wasn’t something I really wanted to do, and his apartment was in a good part of town. Now all I can afford is the loft apartment over Mabel’s house, a half-deaf, lovely old woman, who has her television on volume 100 and lectures about safe sex whenever I bring someone home. However, the worst part is her trying to set me up with her grandson. Unfortunately, a thirty-year-old man who still lives at home with his parents and smokes weed all day is not my type.
Rogue gives me a high five and goes back to whatever she was doing, and I serve the next customer. One who actually wants to order a drink and not warn me to stay away from their boyfriend.
The night drags on, but at least there’s only one fistfight. Again, it’s due to petty jealousy; a woman’s husband accuses another man of staring at her, and fists are thrown. It’s highlyamusing until they’re all dragged out and told not to come back if they can’t behave like adults. It would be nice to have someone who’d throw hands over me. Douchenugget rarely gave a fuck I existed until I left his ass.
“Holy shit, Lala, that guy at the end of the bar is looking at you like he wants to do some really bad shit to you.”
As I look over, I can see she isn’t wrong; the man sitting at the end of the bar is staring at me, and he doesn’t even try to hide it. I busy myself with serving customers, thankful that it has died down a little and we can start preparing to close.
I can feel his gaze the entire time—he hasn’t moved, and he hasn’t touched his drink. I’m used to men staring at me. Usually, I can ignore it, but this guy feels different, and I don’t know why. It’s almost as if he’s cataloging my every move, and it has me on edge.
I grab a cloth and start wiping down the bar, keeping myself busy as I ignore him.
Another man comes up to the bar and slams his glass down.
“What can I get for you?” I ask.
He wants a beer, so I pour the glass, then process the sale.
And when I glance back up, the guy at the end of the bar is still staring.
Now this is really pissing me off—maybe he knows me. It’s time to find out, so I stomp right over to him and place my hands on my hips. If he wants to fucking stare at me, he can do it right to my face.
“Do you need a camera so you can take a picture?”
He doesn’t answer me straight away, his dark eyes moving from my face, down my tattooed neck, and then back up to meet my burning gaze. The silence between us is a power play to a man like this.
“Just watching,” he says finally.
“Well, stop,” I snap. “You’re making my staff uncomfortable.”
It’s a lie, he is not making anyone uncomfortable, but he is pissing me off. I would like to handle this myself before calling in Rogue. She gets off on making men suffer.
“Your staff?” he says, tilting his head slightly. “It’s cute that you think you have that much power here.”
Heat crawls up my neck, and my anger steams from my ears. “Look, I don’t know what your deal is?—”
“No deal,” he says, cutting me off. “What’s your name?”
“Why the fuck does it matter?”
“It doesn’t,” he simply says. “Color me curious.”
I glare at him for a moment, and he stares back. I wonder what his deal is, because men don’t just come in here and stare at me like this and get away with it.
“Kayla,” I snap, because now colormecurious. There is no way I will let this man try to intimidate me. One of my personality flaws is that I’m not scared of anything. Should I be? Yes, but really the worst shit that can happen to you will happen in the safety of your own home—I know that from firsthand experience. “And you need to finish your drink or get the fuck out.”
