Down Shift

by K. Bromberg

  “You good, Getty?” Liam asks from above the roar of the customers as someone hits a long fly ball in a close game playing on every television screen in the bar.

  “Yep.” I wipe down the bar top in front of me and take a few minutes to organize the clutter that amasses during a shift, thanks to the lull in orders with the bases-loaded situation in the game.

  “Can you help me with service to table thirteen?”

  “Sure.” It’s rare for Liam to ask me to step out from behind the bar. He knows I like it better behind the counter, but when it’s super busy like it is tonight, I’ll venture out into what I call the Wild West.

  I hate it but know it’s pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone, forcing me to engage and not be so skittish.

  With a fortifying sigh, I pull up my socks, one zebra striped and the other polka-dotted today, the Lazy Dog uniform of logo T-shirt and mismatched knee-high socks as much of a landmark here in PineRidge as the ferry’s horn that goes off every hour. I make my way across the crowded bar to the little alcove near the front. It’s one of the bar’s coveted spots, offering the table’s occupant both a view of the ocean through the open windows and a clear sight line to the ball game. I get distracted by a few comments on the way, have a few laughs, stop to watch the next pitch, before I finally arrive at the table.

  “What can I get for you tonight?” I ask the top of the ball cap before glancing back over my shoulder as the room collectively groans when the cleanup hitter strikes out.

  I withhold a groan of my own when the customer lifts his head and I find Zander’s vibrant blue eyes looking back at me. “Oops, we seem to be all out of alcohol,” I say, sarcasm impossible to ignore as I start to walk away and leave him parched.

  “Socks.” His hand flashes out to grab onto my forearm the same time he says that stupid nickname he’s given me. And the instant I feel his fingers tighten on my arm, alarm surges through me and has me yanking my arm from his grasp like I’ve been burned by fire.

  “Let go!” The minute the words are out, I regret them. And not just the words but the audible sounds of fear and desperation woven in them.

  Zander removes his hand instantly, but the look in his eyes is almost ten times more intrusive than the unwelcome panic his touch sparked. I wait for the questions to come, the look that indicates I have no right to react this way, and yet he says nothing. He just keeps his eyes locked on mine, making assumptions I’d rather he not make.

  “Sorry . . . I, uh, sorry. Too much coffee today. What can I get you?” Heat warms my cheeks as I hold his stare and try to feign that everything is okay. That my heart’s not racing and embarrassment isn’t the reason I’m shifting my feet.

  “Don’t be,” he finally says, breaking the tension between us and allowing the customers around us who’ve taken notice of my reaction to ease back in their seats. But beneath his hat, his brows narrow as his eyes tell me he’s not buying the “too much coffee” line. “It was my bad. Whatever IPA you have on draft is fine. I’m not picky.”

  I move away from the table as quickly as possible, purposefully avoiding the stares from the regulars, since that’s twice in two days they’ve seen me act like a skittish mouse. The last thing I need is to draw more attention to myself, so I’m thrilled that another server offers to take Zander his beer while I fill more orders behind the bar.

  Once I get lost in the work, in the hustle and bustle of filling orders, I remind myself to ignore Zander’s looming presence. I know he’s watching me, can feel his eyes scrutinizing me from the other side of the room, even though every time I begrudgingly glance up, he’s not looking my way. But in between delivering drinks and watching a few key moments of the game, I happen to notice people stopping at his table—men and women alike—chatting and laughing, almost as if they’re enamored with him.

  It’s tempting to roll my eyes and snort in disgust. If they only knew what a grade A asshole he is. But then I’m left to try to figure out how, if he’s new to the island, these people know him, because I’m sure it’s not his charismatic personality drawing them in.

  Why do you care, Getty? He’ll be gone shortly and you won’t have to worry about it.

  A girl can hope.

  * * *

  “Good night.” I shrug my sweatshirt on as I shut the door of the bar behind me and start walking down the streetlight-lined waterfront. My feet and back ache, but I made some great tips tonight, so I’m exhaustedly content.

  “Getty?”

  I nearly jump out of my shoes at the deep timbre of Zander’s voice, and I’m sure I squeal like a little kid, but the jolt of fear overrides any sense of embarrassment. “Jesus!”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Leaning with one shoulder against the streetlight, he steps out of the shadows and into the light once I see him. He has a grocery bag in one hand and his other is shoved in the pocket of his pants. “You heading back to the house?”

  “Yep.” There’s not an ounce of warmth in my voice. Not a trace of welcome. Not a hint that maybe I’d like his company walking me home because sometimes my overactive imagination turns the shadows into scary shit that doesn’t exist. I keep my head down, keep moving, not wanting to question why he’s standing outside the bar where I work at midnight when he left his table well over two hours ago.

  It’s not like I was paying attention or anything, though.

  “Getty.” Where mine lacked warmth, his tone is full of something else. Apology? Remorse? I can’t place it, but it’s enough to stop me in my tracks so I can turn to face him. I don’t say a word, just wait for him to finish his thought. “I know it’s late and you’re probably tired, but do you want to go sit on the beach and have a beer?” He lifts his hand with the grocery bag, where I can make out the shape of a six-pack.

  Bewilderment returns as a glimpse of the man I met last night resurfaces, not the one from this morning. I take stock of my fragile emotions and know I don’t want to be the ball in his Ping-Pong match of mood swings. “No, thanks. You made yourself more than clear this morning. I’m happy with keeping my distance.” I start to walk again, to gain space, because even though I know I need to keep moving, a small part of me wants to stay and try to figure him out.

  “Hmpf. Now the socks make sense.”

  “Huh?” That comment stops me. He’s got my attention now. “What are you talking about?”

  A flash of a grin. A boyish shrug. “When I was lying in bed last night, I was trying to figure out what was up with your socks. It’s not every day you meet a woman wearing nothing but knee-high socks, you know? I thought that style went out in grade school, but I’m a guy, what do I know?”

  I crack a smile, kind of liking the fact that when he was lying in bed last night, he was thinking of me. And then I stop myself. “No.” Hands on my hips as his eyes narrow at the sternness in my voice. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to be nice like you were to me last night after what an ass you were with me this morning.”

  My own words throw me, since it sounds so foreign to be standing up for myself when normally I’d slink away without a word.

  “An ass?” He makes it sound like I’m being unreasonable.

  I twist my lips as I contemplate my terminology. “If you want nicer, we could use the term grumpy.”

  “I was not grumpy.”

  “Yes, you were. What? Do you have something against Sundays or something?”

  “Now I do.”

  His cryptic answers make zero sense and are beginning to get on my last nerve. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and frankly I’d rather waste my energy on someone who deserves it. “You were grumpy. And you’re starting to get there again.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.” He wants to have a school-yard back-and-forth, I can too.

  “No, I’m not. I’m just a moody guy.”

  “Gr
umpy, moody, same difference. And you weren’t moody last night, so I don’t believe you.”

  He reaches down and the crisp crack of a beer can opening fills the air. “Last night was . . . there were special circumstances.”

  Huh? “How’s that?”

  “You were unexpected.” And the way he says it—so matter-of-fact—mixed with the intensity in his eyes causes something to flutter in my stomach. “It’s not every night I come face-to-face with a sock-wearing, wand-wielding woman. I mean I’m so traumatized, I need to drink to cope with it.”

  “I assure you it won’t happen again.” I bite back the snicker but can’t hide the ghost of a smile from my lips.

  “Which part—the naked part, the sock part, or the holding-me-at-wand-point part?”

  Images flash through my mind. Visuals of his physical perfection accompanied by the pangs of desire I refuse to acknowledge flickering to life. Ones I don’t think I ever felt with Ethan. “How about none of them?”

  “Good. That’s good to know. Since they will no longer appear, then neither will my good mood.” He holds a beer up, offering it to me, taunting smirk in place. I just shake my head to decline, but the widening smile on his face and the humor in his eyes slowly win me over.

  “Liar,” I say playfully, but something flashes across his face and is momentarily lost in the shadow cast by the bill of his hat. He looks out to the ocean and I sense that my comment unintentionally touched a nerve.

  “If you want to talk about lying, let’s just go there. Why did you come to the island?”

  “Why did you come here?” It’s an immediate knee-jerk reaction on my part: my wont to avoid talking about me. Hide the skeletons that need to remain buried in the closet.

  “The Socratic method thing doesn’t work for me, Socks.”

  “And your point is?”

  “And yet another question to answer my question?” He lifts his eyebrows.

  “I thought you didn’t want to do the wasted-breath bullshit thing. Weren’t those your words?”

  “Yet another question?” he says, but when I just stare at him, he bobs his head up and down a little before relenting. “Well, yeah . . . But I was rude, and I waited out here to tell you so, because I owed you an apology.”

  “Oh.” The sound falls from my mouth, my mind taken aback by this change of events. I know mood swings, am used to tempers being flipped on at the flick of a switch, but apologies are not something I’m familiar with. And I can tell that even though he means the words, they still make him uncomfortable. “Ah, and the good mood returns.”

  He laughs at my persistence. The sheepish look on his face is such a stark contrast to his dark hair shadowed in the streetlight, and I hate that a tiny part of my frozen heart thaws at the sight. Taking me by complete surprise, he grabs my hand and tugs slightly so that I stumble forward to wherever he is leading. And I do stumble. Not because he pulled with such force, but rather because the minute his hand touches mine, I swear it feels like my entire body has been shocked with an electric current.

  Normally I’d roll my eyes at someone who made a comment like that, say she’s overreacting and playing up the whole I-obsess-over-Regency-romances-so-much-I-have-a-wall-lined-with-bookshelves-to-store-them, but I can’t this time. Because this is me. And it just happened. That unmistakable zap of chemistry. My neurons catching fire. The stilted hitch of breath in reaction.

  And for a split second I think he feels it too. Because with our arms stretched between us, fingers linked, we stand motionless under the glow of the streetlight. Time stops and for that fraction of a second, we see each other in a completely different way. I avert my eyes. Want to shake it off. But when I glance back, there’s something in the way he looks at me—interest, intrigue, desire—that tells me I need to sit down and have a beer with him on the beach.

  “Maybe just a smidgen of a good mood,” he teases; his words break through the sexual tension crackling in the air and bring me back to reality, where chemistry doesn’t ignite and touches don’t make you want. And yet I want. “C’mon, Getty, let’s go sit on the beach, share a beer, and talk about crap that doesn’t matter, since we’re both intent on keeping our reasons for being here close to the vest.”

  “You mean you want to bullshit?” I feign shock, since that was the one thing he was insistent that we avoid.

  “Mmm-hmm. Exactly that. Bullshit. Too bad it’s so cold or I’d go make you jump in the water with me, the proper island welcome, or so I was told by the locals tonight. It could be our way of—”

  “Breaking the ice?” I finish for him, and tuck my tongue in my cheek at my lame attempt at humor.

  “Ahhh, look at that, the lady has some jokes.”

  “You better be careful,” I say as I realize my feet have started moving without my consent and are following him the short distance toward the sand. “I see a glimpse of the nonmoody Zander again.”

  “Shit. I guess I need to summon Mander back up.”

  “Mander?”

  “Moody Zander. Mander.” He raises his eyebrows like he has absolutely no insecurities over his manhood in calling himself that ridiculous moniker.

  And I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’m exhausted from work, that Zander is making me laugh with his silly humor, or that for the first time since I’ve arrived to PineRidge Island, I don’t want to head back to the heavy silence of an empty house, but his comment, his poking fun at himself, causes the guard I’ve been holding up so high to slip a little.

  Laughter I haven’t felt or heard in so very long bubbles out and over. Tears fill my eyes. The sound rings around us and melds with the soft crash of the waves on the shore. I hold my hands up as if I’m telling him to stop, but in reality I’m not sure what I’m doing other than making fun of his ludicrousness.

  When I come back to myself, Zander is staring at me over the top of his can of beer. “You done yet?”

  “Not hardly, Mander.”

  A lopsided smirk tugs up the corner of his mouth. “You can’t make fun of me and then not sit and have a beer with me. Mander rules.” He holds a can out to me and after I stare at it and then back at him, I relent.

  “I don’t really drink—” I stop myself when he gives me puppy dog eyes. “Fine. Just one.”

  “That’s what they all say.” He chuckles as I take a seat beside him on a boardwalk bench.

  “And then what? They’re wooed into telling you all of their deep, dark secrets and fall madly in love with you?”

  “Something like that.” He nods his head and turns on the charm by flashing me a cocky grin.

  “But I thought you were grumpy all the time. Do you get a lot of girls with your moody self?”

  “And we’re back to that again,” he counters, pushing his knee over so that it knocks against mine.

  I open my beer and take a timid sip of the bitter ale, trying to hide my innate dislike of it. And I think I’ve done a pretty good job of masking the look of disgust on my face, but when I glance over, Zander’s head is angled and his eyes are on me.

  “You work in a bar but don’t like beer? How’s that working for you?”

  Ladies don’t drink beer, Gertrude. It’s classless and tacky. My father’s and Ethan’s admonishments ghost through my mind unexpectedly. The chills that blanket my body have nothing to do with the spring storm moving in.

  The memory, the constant refrain running through my mind, makes me want to chug this entire beer and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand in defiance. To reaffirm I’m no longer that woman.

  “Fine. Good.” I take another sip for good measure to try to prove I’m unfazed by the taste I never was allowed the chance to acquire.

  “So I take it you were a bartender elsewhere? Before you came to the island?”

  “Yes. Yeah.” Old habits of grammar die hard, but I try to forget them as I focus on t
he fib at hand.

  “And here come the bullshit lies I warned you about,” he says with a chuckle.

  “Seriously, I was—”

  “No need to explain or lie, Socks. I watched you work for a few hours. You did a fine job. Filled orders quickly. Know how to pull a draft without foam. It’s sad to say that I may have spent a bit of time in bars and can tell a greenhorn from a pro, but I can.”

  “Oh, so now you’re a bartending expert?” It’s a stupid comeback, but it’s my only defense.

  “I’m an expert at a lot of things, I assure you that. Most of which are ones I’m not proud of lately.” There’s a tinge of discord in his voice that makes me want to be the one asking questions, but before I can get them out, he shifts the topic of conversation. “What was so bad in your life that you ran here to escape from it?”

  Hello, curveball. We went from bartending to invasion of my privacy. His question puts every part of me on edge. And it’s not just his question but also the impenetrable stare through the darkness that unnerves me. The one that tells me he knows I am in fact hiding something.

  My mind runs a million miles an hour. Did Smitty tell him the details? Did Zander search through my stuff in the house while I was at work and find something? Did my dad or Ethan send him to track me down and bring me back, even though there is nothing left to go back to?

  “I’m not running from anything,” I state with as much certainty as I can. His expression tells me he’s not buying it, so I try to explain without going into detail. “I’m starting a new chapter in my life. It’s so different here from where I used to live, and I needed that. A change of pace, I guess. But running, no.” I nod my head to put the emphasis on my statement and yet he doesn’t look away.

  I’m the first to avert my eyes. I need to in order to prevent him from seeing things I don’t want him to see. But even when I do, I can still feel the weight of his stare as I look out to the darkness beyond where we sit. To the ocean I can hear but not see.