‘Hey. Need a hand?’
She looks up at me, her eyes rimmed red.
‘Don’t come back here, you’ll cut yourself,’ she says, brandishing a giant shard of glass.
‘Can you not wave that thing in my face?’ I hold up my hands in surrender but she doesn’t drop her weapon. ‘I’m trying to help.’
‘I don’t need help.’
‘Do you have a dustpan or a broom or something? Lemme sweep while you clean up the spill.’
‘I said I don’t need your help!’
Kneeling in a pile of broken glass, Meyers looks up at me, tears streaming down her cheeks and the fire of one thousand fucking suns burning into me.
‘Yeah, looks like you’re doing great,’ I say as I back away. ‘At least let me grab some paper towels or something.’
‘Over there.’ She sniffs and nods to a fresh roll at the other end of the bar. ‘I was prepared.’
With a grimace, teeth bared, I toss the roll her way and she catches it without moving. ‘Not your first spill?’
‘Not my first spill today.’
‘Didn’t you say you were expecting help?’
‘Help that didn’t come,’ she confirms, wiping her face with the first piece, then spreading out paper towels on the floor. ‘It’s only my second shift and I think I’m already in negative pay.’
‘Shit, Mia, your book!’
I point at the thick-ass novel on the floor behind her but it’s too late. By the time she grabs it and lifts it out of the mess, the pages are soaked through.
‘Perfect.’ She attempts to flip through the soggy pages but they’re all gummed together with a toxic combination of vodka, gin and tequila. ‘Just perfect. Like I wasn’t having enough trouble with the damn thing already. It’s not going to make any more sense now.’
And to wrap it all up in a perfect bow, she sinks back onto the floor, puts her hand down and immediately slices open her palm on a piece of glass. I jump into captain mode, hopping over the bar and crunching glass under the soles of my boots as I grab her wrist to move her hand into the light. There’s no glass in the cut, but ruby red blood is already spilling down her wrist. She’s staring at it like she’s never seen blood before, but I have. Too much. In a flash, I’m right back there, Bre’s forehead busted open, Chris unconscious as I drag him out of the Jeep on the side of the road.
‘Damn it, that looks deep. We gotta get you to a doctor.’
‘I can’t leave the bar, I’m the only one here,’ she says, pulling her hand away. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’
‘If you’re trying to prove how tough you are, you can quit it, you already turned green. Do you want to bleed out in the middle of a bar on the third day of school or do you want to come with me?’
‘My folks would kill me,’ she murmurs. ‘I’m not supposed to be in a bar.’
A laugh hacks its way out of me as I press a bundle of paper towels to her hand, cleaning up the worst of the blood. It doesn’t look as bad as I first thought but I sure would feel better if she’d let a doctor take a look at it.
‘Evening, Mia. Sorry I’m late, rowing club ran— Christ on a bike, what is happening here?’
A freaking ginormous dude with white blond hair walks in through the back door and stops dead in front of us.
‘Anders,’ Mia looks up at him with big, wet eyes, ‘I’m sorry, I was—’
‘It was my fault, I distracted her,’ I cut in. ‘You okay to take over here if I take her to the medical centre?’
The Nordic giant nods. ‘Yes, totally, get over there before they close and you have to spend all night in A & E.’
‘It’s really not that bad, I don’t need a doctor,’ Mia continues to protest, even as Anders reaches down to help me pull her up to her feet. ‘I don’t want to leave you here on your own.’
‘Then please stay and bleed all over our four customers,’ he replies. ‘Go. Now. That’s an order.’
