Hearts Series Bundle: Books 1-6

by Sabrina Lacey

  2

  Annie

  Coffee: keeping me alive.

  Le Barré: fucked.

  ________

  I had to search for my staff’s applications to get their phone numbers, then call from the bar’s landline, since my phone vanished along with everything else. Then I went to Philz and got coffee for everyone, where I took my time and read the paper in an effort to remember I’m not the only one in the world with problems. It lifts my mood to see their crazy green bathroom that looks like a magic marker attacked it when no one showed up to clean. But apparently that was a bad decision. I should have stayed here to babysit.

  Taryn runs up, her eyes flashing to the debacle of police tape and broken glass. “Annie! I’m so glad you’re okay!”

  “I’m great. Le Barré however, not so much.”

  She hugs me and I squeeze her tight, too. We turn to the windowless mess.

  “The liquor bottles are all gone!”

  I sigh. “Yep. And guess what? They were here when I called you. Then I went to get these.” I hand her a latte, three left haphazardly in the cardboard tray. “I guess I was too out of it to imagine someone would take them. Someone’s having one hell of a party; that’s the silver lining.”

  Taryn stares. It’s quite a sight. “What are you gonna do?”

  I shrug. I’m all dried up of tears, dead inside, everything heavy. “I called the insurance agency and told them what happened.”

  “Well, would you look at this mess! I mean, wow!” Laura walks up, her eyes on the disaster. “When you climax, you’re something else! Give a building a warning next time, would ya?”

  I roll my eyes. “Funny.”

  She purses her lips together, takes the coffee I point to – Americana with Almond Milk – and eyes me with empathy. “Hey kid. Our garage got robbed three years ago. It’s the worst. How’re you holding up?”

  “I’ve been better. Shall we go in through our new door? This isn’t something you get to do every day.”

  We step in through the broken window, the three of us dressed in old jeans, t-shirts and mucked-up sneakers.

  Laura quips, “The novelty is appealing.”

  “Adventures in bar-owning!” Taryn throws up her fists.

  We tromp through broken glass, but the sight of blood on the cement floor stops us cold. It’s dark and awful and there are brownish-red footprints leading out of the largest blotch. With the shadows of afternoon sunlight pouring in through the missing window, highlighting the glass fragments and the dried blood, it looks like something out of a horror movie.

  “Oh my God.” I hand the tray to Taryn, walk over and pick up his jacket, an excruciating reminder of a better time. The girls stare at me as I look through the pockets. “His phone is in here.” On the screen are a slew of message and text notifications from Mark, some names I don’t know and Rebecca Wells. Her name knocks the wind out of me. Did I know her name was Rebecca? Did someone say that to me this morning when they assumed I was her? I have no idea. With my hand shaking, I tuck the phone back in the pocket and take a deep breath. Laura and Taryn walk over and lay their heads on my shoulders.

  “Hang in there, kid. I brought hardcore cleaner that gets rid of everything. We’ll have this place back the way it was in no time.”

  “It’ll gleam like crystals on a sunny day,” Taryn whispers and kisses the side of my head.

  They walk to the bar, but my feet are frozen where I stand. My fingers are clutched tightly on his jacket and I stare at his shoes, wondering how this could be happening. The girls are in front of me, but to my left, the door to the storeroom opens. Fear races up my spine. I spin around. Nearly scream.

  “Hey Boss,” Manny says, wiping sweat from his forehead. All eyes are on me.

  “I guess I’m still jumpy,” I mutter. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  He looks from the girls to me. “I got here forty-five minutes ago.” He points his thumb behind him to the storeroom. “I put all the bottles in lock down.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. They were sitting on the shelves like a candy store.” He gives me a sad, lopsided smile. “I didn’t want anyone to take them.”

  “Well that’s a relief.” My heart is still pounding and I have to focus hard against it. “Thank you. There’s a coffee for you over there.” I point to where Taryn set down the tray.

  The room is quiet. They’re worried and nobody knows what to say. I want to do something, say something that will make them feel safe. I’m supposed to be the one in charge.

  “You guys? Um…I just want to say how much it means to me that you’re here. You didn’t have to come. This obviously isn’t part of the job description.” I try to chuckle but the sound is false. “You’re on the clock and I will pay you, but aside from that – the fact that I’m not having to face this alone means so much to me.” I pause to work up the nerve to continue. I’m not so great at open shows of intimacy or vulnerability. “Well, I um… opening this bar with you and struggling together… and now you’re here with me during this, it’s a lot. It means a lot to me. I feel like you guys are not just my employees – you’re my friends. So, thank you.”

  “We are your friends.” Laura tosses her purse on the bar like she’s just said the most obvious thing in the world.

  “You don’t have to pay us,” Taryn adds.

  “Oh shush. People get paid for work. This is labor, not a company picnic.” They smile. “Beside, the give/take of energy is important, and money is just green energy. It’s not take/take. There’s a balance.”

  Manny heads for the bar, “Well, let’s get going!”

  I throw a last long glance at the floor before joining them. Brendan’s jacket gets set on the bar, but I can’t seem to let go of it. I call out to Manny, “Hey Captain Gung Ho, how about pouring us some beers?”

  All three of them cheer loudly, which makes me smile. I’m trying hard to loosen up. “You guys can drink as much you want to – as long as I can drink double that!”

  Laura beats on the bar like a drum and Taryn swings her hips in a solo dance, singing, “We neeeeeed music!” She pulls her bag off her shoulder and digs in, producing an iPhone with a bohemian-style case. “Oh you guys are going to love me for this.”

  I get a push broom from the storeroom and land a smile on the rows of bottles as soon as I see them. Less money to claim for insurance means lower rates. Thank God they didn’t get stolen last night. I guess the police tape was a deterrent. And who knows how long they were here, rubbing for prints and picking up evidence.

  Taryn selects a playlist, hits a button, and calls out, “Okay Annie. This is A-Punk by Vampire Weekend. Upbeat and perfect.” She’s not lying.

  Five minutes later a police officer appears on the other side of the shattered window. He scans our faces and lands on mine, recognition evident. “Good afternoon, Ms. O’Brien.” He steps over the frame and walks on the glass as everyone watches.

  I lay the broom down and walk to meet him halfway. “Taryn, could you turn the music down for a second?”

  “Sure, Annie.” She lowers the volume, exchanging looks with the others.

  He nods to my staring team. No one’s hiding curiosity. He’s a beefy dude, over two hundred pounds and about 5’10,” with a bulbous nose and smaller eyes. I don’t recognize him, but I know he must have been there from the familiar way he looks at me, and he’s holding my lost purse. “You’ve got a lot of glass to clean up.”

  With a quick glance to the floor, I nod. “Yeah. It looks harsher in the daytime.” I motion to my purse. “You found it. Thank you. Is my phone in there, too? And did you find any prints on the door handle?”

  His eyes say no before his mouth does. “Your phone is in here, yes, but no prints on the door. He must have wiped them off. We think he wasn’t a first-timer.”

  “His hand wasn’t shaking.”

  He takes this in. “We’ll need you to come down and file a report.”

  “Of course.
Can I do it after we’re finished here?”

  He pauses. “I think that’ll be fine. We didn’t find prints but there was blood on the ground where he was shot. How did you get the gun from him?”

  I explain it, with everyone listening. The police officer’s blown away, but I’m not feeling particularly proud of myself.

  “Impressive.”

  I shrug.

  “You should take credit where credit is due. We could not be having this conversation right now.”

  He means I could be dead. A fact that has never once escaped me. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. It was my dad who taught me basic self-defense. But I’ve been taking Krav Maga classes over on Bush Street ever since I got back to the city, to work off some steam. Some people like yoga, but I’ve never been the Zen type. I’m more the throwing punches or bottles type, ” I smile.

  His eyebrows rise, but only very slightly. Policemen don’t wear emotions on their sleeves. They’d make excellent poker players, I guess.

  “Krav Maga is some serious stuff. We train with them, too.”

  “Really? You know why I chose it?” I look around, including everyone. “Because of Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider. She trained Krav for part of that. She was such a badass.”

  Taryn laughs. “You just said that so seriously,” she explains at my questioning glance.

  “Well, she was seriously badass. Am I wrong?”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  I turn back to the policeman. “Did you see it?”

  He shakes his head, his mind on something else. “No, but I’m going to enroll my daughter as soon as I get home tonight. If someone as little as you can disarm a man from his gun, that’s a skill she needs to have. Look inside your purse.”

  The change of subject threw me and it takes me a moment to understand. Looking down, I stretch it open to find a large stack of bills inside. “What’s this?”

  “It’s the money you threw at him. We picked it up from the floor.”

  “Oh,” I whisper.

  He concentrates on me as though he can tell if I’m okay or not, by looking hard enough. “You’re still in shock. You need to take it easy.”

  “Alright.”

  “Make sure she takes it easy?” he asks the room.

  “You got it.” “Will do.”

  Satisfied, he glances to me. “In case you realize later and wonder why, the money is clean because we took the liberty of exchanging the bills for new ones. The ones we recovered were… not pretty.”

  I see Brendan’s wound held shut by my red fingers, the bloodstained money lying all around us as if it’s happening now. The urge to see him alive and well is so strong that I feel so sick. “Thank you. What’s your name, sir?”

  His lips form an uncomfortable line as he looks at me. He can see I’m fighting the vision. He’s seen people like me before. “Sargent Lewis.” He reaches out, shakes my hand. “You need some sleep.”

  “I know. I have to clean up first. I can’t get my brain to stop racing, anyway. I need to do this.”

  He nods somberly. “Have a good day.”

  Everyone says goodbye and just as he’s about to walk out of view, he turns. “You’re new to the area, right?”

  I nod. “Just opened up six months ago.”

  His heads shakes. “Damn shame this happened.”

  I shrug and one corner of my mouth turns up as I say with comic sarcasm, “I wanted to open with a bang?”

  “Keep that sense of humor.” He points at me, gives one last wave to the room, and leaves.

  I can’t stop staring at the money. The night’s images are on shuffle, just like Taryn’s playlist, but so much louder – horrible and wonderful moments skewed out of order, each as intense as the last.

  “That was really nice of them to change the money out,” Taryn says, quietly, pulling her soft, hazelnut brown hair into a ponytail so she can work.

  Laura mutters while removing her bracelets and placing them on the bar, “I guess it must have been pretty bad for them to do that.”

  I nod and say, without feeling, “Yeah.”

  Manny wrings excess water from a bar towel until it's almost dry. “Makes me want to like cops. Almost.”

  “If 911 didn’t exist, Brendan would be dead.”

  Taryn reaches over and picks up her pint glass. “Let’s toast to cops.”

  We all raise our glasses up and touch them together. Death Cab For Cutie’s Follow You Into The Dark plays in the background and while I love them on a normal day, no thank you. “Can we change this?”

  “Something more cheerful,” Manny mumbles.

  “Sorry. Got it.” Taryn slides off her barstool and jogs over and puts on Florence and The Machine’s Shake It Off. She calls over with a wink, “Better?”

  Mutual agreement all around. Laura touches my back. “You sit for a little while.”

  I look at her and she repeats it. I hadn’t heard her. She guides me to a bar stool and I let her, like I’m one of her children. She puts the pint glass in my hands and I cling to it. I feel so numb. The images have stopped. My mind’s gone blank. It’s like someone emptied it. The three of them clean around me, but I’m not even here. All sense of space and time is lost to me as I stare ahead at nothing.

  The muffled sound of a phone ringing from my bag startles me more than it should. I don’t know how much time has passed. Christiano’s name is on the screen and his photo kills me even though I’ve seen it hundreds of times. It’s of him making omelets, shirtless, his hair disheveled from a morning fuck we’d had before our friends were to arrive. He’d flipped the spatula with extra zing, the omelets perfect. I’d tossed his shirt to him. Put this on or Sophia won’t be able to focus on her meal. He’d winked at me. But will you? Knowing the table is where I’ll take you, tonight? I’d grinned. I wish they weren’t on their way now. Before he’d plated the meal, I’d run to grab my phone so I could take this picture. I want to remember this moment, baby. Then I froze time forever with the miraculous push of a tiny, magical button.

  I watched the call go to voicemail, aching for him. He doesn’t know I was held up at gunpoint. He doesn’t know Le Barré is closed for business until who knows when. He doesn’t know I’m scared and hurting. And I can’t tell him. Because I brought this on myself. What could I say, I was here with the man I left you for… only you don’t know I was in love with someone else the whole time I loved you, too?

  “Was that your boyfriend?” Taryn asks, the broom in her hand now.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend,” I mumble, staring at the dark screen.

  “Oh ...right.” Taryn exchanges a look with Laura.

  Laura’s not one to hold things in. She motions to Taryn to join her and they both come to sit to the left and right of me. Manny wipes his forehead with a napkin. I glance around to all of them, then look around the bar. It’s clean.

  “Wow – look at this place, you guys. Thank you! Oh my God! It looks amazing.”

  There’s no more glass, no more blood, and the window has been shut off from the public. They taped large sliced-open, black garbage bags together, forming a boundary. People could break through, but they’d be less inclined to.

  Manny points to it. “We kept the police tape on the outside. I figured that would help keep out looters or squatters.”

  “It looks incredible you guys. Thank you so much.”

  Taryn shrugs and puts on Swedish House Mafia’s Don’t You Worry Child. “I guess we’ll be using the real door now.”

  “That’s the one downside,” Laura says, smiling ruefully.

  Manny pours us another round, the mood much lighter now, one hurdle overcome. The first step on the path to recovery.

  Taryn hesitates, wanting to say something. “So…you rattled off a few gory details on the phone.”

  “I’m sure I made a lot of sense, huh?”

  Laura snorts. “Hardly. So fill us in, please. Who’s this guy Brendan? Did you just meet him?”

  “Are
you a slut, is what she’s getting at.” They’re teasing me and Taryn’s face is hilarious.

  “I’m a complete whore. But let me be clear, that if I had just met him, I get to fuck whomever I want to. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s my body.”

  “Hallelujah!” Manny says under his breath, cracking the three of us girls up.

  Taryn leans in like she’s got a secret. “Oh good, because I hooked up with some guy at a party last weekend.”

  “You did?” Laura slouches, comically overdoing it. “I’m jealous. I’ve been married forever.”

  “Happily married forever,” I correct her.

  “Don’t rub it in,” she mutters. “So Taryn. How did you manage to do that at a party?”

  Taryn pretends to wipe beer off her mouth, making us wait for the answer. “Bathroom. I dragged him in there.” We all start laughing. She bows. “Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.”

  I ask, “What happened? Are you dating him now?”

  “Hell no!” She shakes her head like the idea is distasteful. “He wasn’t too bright. I need a guy who’s a bit quicker on the uptake. Intelligence is probably more appealing to me than looks even, so the guy I end up with is going to be smart! But I couldn’t help myself. This guy’s body was soooooo hot.” She melts. “A total man. Broad shoulders, little hips. Tight ass. Cowboy boots.”

  Laura and I make a noise that sends Manny to the far side of the bar.

  Taryn laughs. “Manny! We’re sorry. Come back.”

  Laura cuts her glance sideways to me. “So… what about this guy you were here with?”

  “His name is Brendan Clark and I’ve been in love with him since college. There. I said it.” I haven’t talked about Brendan with anyone. Not one single person since Corinne. I exhale, swiping one hand across my cheek. “Can I have a napkin, Manny?”

  “Sure.” He rushes to the stack and hands one to me.

  “Thank you. I haven’t seen him since back then. I'm sorry. I thought I was all done crying. Apparently I'm not. It's just that, last night he walked in here like a gift from heaven. He flirted with me and didn't remember me from before and thank God because we got into a horrible fight back then. So he asked to help me clean and he was late. But then he showed, right Manny?”