“Of the pile of naked, headless plastic people? It’s not a sight one gets to see every day.”
She rears back slightly and peers at me from the side of her eye. “Sure. Whatever you want, Erin.”
“That’d be a good name for a rock band, wouldn’t it? Naked, headless plastic people.” I reach for my bag.
“Are you proposing we start a band?”
I follow her to the coat rack. “Why not? The name alone would get us airtime, and with my tits and your ass, we’d be quite the attraction.”
She turns around and flings her mothball-scented arms around me. “Oh honey, I’d be your support act anytime.”
I laugh into her shoulder. “You’re nobody’s support act, Mal. You’re the headline through and through. I’m just here for the ride.”
She pulls away with a grin. “Speaking of acts, how’s the role of barmaid going?”
I wince before schooling my features into something seemingly professional. But Mallorie knows me well and she sees it.
“Is it really that bad?”
I hesitate before saying anything, because actually, since the night my stranger threw a patron across the room for feeling me up, I’ve been treated with so much reverence and respect I could be mistaken for British royalty.
“It’s fine.”
“Eriiiiin….”
Ugh, I know that tone. It says she’s not going to let this lie until I give her the full truth.
“It’s going okay, to be brutally honest. Better than I expected. Not that I expected much.”
“So, those slimy sea monsters have a soul?”
A part of my heart wilts. I’ve come to realize in the last few days, those slimy sea monsters aren’t bad people—they’re simply humans who’ve lost their way in life. Now that they’re less distracted by my feminine assets, they’re opening up.
Ted, the guy who sits at the end of the bar asking for whisky top-ups and not always paying his tab, his wife passed ten years ago. He was a cop, but he lost his focus, torn between his duty as a police officer, as a father and as a grieving husband. He couldn’t satisfy all of those things, so he turned to drink instead.
He has a rule: never drink at home, which is why he’s at the bar so much. It kicks up quite the check so he’s always in arrears. His son has disowned him, his job let him go, he has no wife to confide in. He’s lonely.
Anders sits in the corner, not speaking to anyone because his anxiety paralyses him. A veteran of ‘Nam, he’s perpetually half a month’s paycheck away from homelessness and lives in constant fear of not being able to pay his lease.
For every Ted and Anders, there are ten more, and that’s only what we see in the bar. As much as I resent having to live with my mother, seeing these men most nights makes me eternally grateful to have her.
So, do those ‘slimy sea monsters’ have a soul? “Yeah,” I reply quietly. “They do.”
She presses two hands to my shoulders and lowers her gaze. This is Mallorie in serious mode. “Don’t get attached, Erin,” she warns. “I know what you’re like. You take along every lost soul, even if they bite your hand when you look the other way.”
“That’s not true,” I say, but my protest is weak because she’s right.
“So, what changed? One minute you were completely opposed to working in that bar, and now, what, you’re enjoying it?” She squints like she’s trying to figure me out.
I fold my arms defensively. Not because I don’t trust Mallorie with my life, but because I’m still figuring out how this all changed.
“I was opposed in the beginning, and the patrons were gropey and sexist…”
“So what happened?”
I look up at her, warily. “There’s this guy…”
She arches a brow and now there’s no escape.
