We’d had this discussion once before, too. My protestations that Emma had been ok with a casual hookup had fallen on deaf ears. Kate was convinced that I’d led Emma on, or somehow tricked her. To be honest, it had been somewhat offensive then, and it was still offensive now. I might be promiscuous, but I’ve always been honest about it.
I shrugged. “Well then neither of you have anything to worry about, since I’m not a committed relationship type of guy. You know that.”
Kate nodded. “And don’t antagonize her, either.”
“I really didn’t start it.”
“Oh yes you did,” Emma interjected. She’d come back up to the bar to grab something and heard me defending myself. “Willie,” she pleaded, “tell Kate what happened. Tell her what a jerk he was.” Her irritation was back in a flash. The woman clearly wanted to win.
Predictably, Willie shook his head. “Who me? Oh, I wasn’t listening.” I looked over to my buddies at the table behind me, but they were also pretending not to be paying attention while attempting not to laugh. Disloyal jerks. Then again, seeing Emma again and getting her all hot and bothered was a rare treat.
“Yes, yes you were,” Emma insisted to Willie. She was determined to win our argument. “You were definitely listening. Tell her that Ward was trying to get a rise out of me.”
“Oh no, I can’t Emma. I really wasn’t listening. That’s just my bartender face,” he said sagely. “I always look like I’m listening. That’s how I get such good tips.”
Emma glared at him, but Willie was immune to negativity. He’d been doing this longer than we’d both been alive, combined. When I bought this bar from him four years ago, he’d taught me everything. The fact that he was silent meant a great deal more than Emma realized. He was, in his way, defending her.
When I purchased the bar from Willie, it had been an investment and an impulse buy. ‘The Lone Star Lounge’ had been operating out of a converted bungalow in Austin for more than forty years and was as popular among students as it was with the Yuppie crowd. Austin had become a tech and culture Mecca, a city that over a hundred people moved to a day, and I felt like I had a responsibility to preserve a piece of original Austin culture. Owning a bar had seemed like a cool idea, as well as a solid business move. When the local institution came up for sale, I pounced.
Even so, I hadn’t necessarily thought it would ever be my livelihood. But after my NFL career came to a screeching halt, my dumbass approach to money and lifestyle inflation came back to bite me in the ass. This bar rapidly became one of my only sources of income. If not for the business acumen of my sister and a heck of a lot of time and effort from the both of us, I’d have lost everything. I’d learned to respect her opinions. And occasionally, her orders. Still I wasn’t sure I would be able to obey her request of professionalism.
Oblivious to my inner conflict, Emma flicked her long gold hair at me and marched back toward her tables with a satisfied spring in her step. I never expected her to walk back into my life and suddenly couldn’t stomach the idea of her walking back out of it.
3
Ward
Emma, who looked just like Tinkerbell whether she wanted to admit it or not, was watching me. She’d been keeping an eye on me all evening, even before we got into our little re-introductory fight. She wasn’t exactly subtle about her interest. Every time my eyes slid her direction, which I found them doing often, she was suddenly looking away and blushing that adorable bright pink color. She was still very cute, I’d give her that. Better than cute. Stunningly beautiful.
I liked being stared at by a beautiful woman. Loved it. There is no better drug for the male brain than basking in the glow of an attractive female’s attention. I preferred it over any legal or illegal drug I’d ever tried. I found myself daydreaming about Emma all night long.
“You know,” Willie said to me about halfway through the evening crowd, “having some more help around here isn’t so bad. We’re usually running on fumes by this time of night.”
He’d been quieter than usual tonight. Watching me and Emma. Watching me watching Emma. Watching Emma watch me. I rolled my eyes at him. He probably thought he had us both figured out. Heck, he probably did. The man was far too good at reading people’s faces.
“I take it you like her,” I told him. He shrugged as if totally uninterested.
“You don’t?”
I didn’t reply, focusing instead on pulling the four beers that Emma needed for table three. She returned after a moment and scooped them off the bar without so much as a ‘thank you’. I watched her round ass twitch back and forth as she carried them to their destination. She had a fantastic body, shaped like a perfect, petite hourglass—especially when she bent forward over a table to wipe it off, as she was doing right then. I was momentarily distracted by Emma’s incredible, heart-shaped ass. Willie cleared his throat to get my attention. I looked at him in embarrassment. He’d seen me looking Emma’s way while she was bent over. Willie knew I’d been staring and why. Admiring. Whatever.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea for her to be here.”
“What’s not to like?” Willie asked.
“That’s the problem. I’m not sure if she belongs here.”
“Why not?”
I busied myself with cutting some citrus for garnishes. “I would think that would be obvious to you. She’s clearly just doing this because she couldn’t find something better. She thinks she’s too good for this place, and she’s probably right.” I punctuated my words with little chops of the knife.
“Oh, do tell,” came Emma’s voice from behind me. Willie tottered off to check on the patrons at the other end of the bar, leaving me alone with my foot in my mouth. He’d set me up.
Emma looked up at me expectantly. Embarrassed, I shook my head at her after a moment.
“When will you get your PhD?” I asked her instead. “You’re working on it, right? Surely you’re too busy for this job.”
She shook her head. “Look, you don’t know a thing about me,” she sighed. “I need two cosmos and a Bud Lite.” Emma turned and walked away before I could say another thing, grabbing a water pitcher to make the rounds.
Part of me admired the fact that she hadn’t quit on the spot earlier when I’d pushed her buttons. She was doing well tonight, if I was being totally honest. It was a busy Friday night and she’d managed to ride the rush without getting flustered. Her customers seemed happy enough, not that we ever attracted a particularly rough or demanding crowd.
“How long have you been a cocktail waitress?” I asked her the next time she arrived at the bar to grab drinks. Despite having spent the night together once, I barely knew anything about Emma. Kate was too protective of their friendship to ever feed my desire to know more.
She looked at her watch. “Four hours, thirty-six minutes, and twenty seconds.”
I blinked at her in disbelief. “This is your first time waiting tables?”
“It’s not exactly rocket science.” She took the drinks off the bar and disappeared again.
That wasn’t an answer. There’s no way she’d never waited tables before, and no way Kate would hire her if she hadn’t. Emma was using the register, pulling drinks off the taps, and moving with the grace of someone used to carrying a heavy tray of drinks. I must have been too specific.
“How long have you been working in restaurants?” I asked her during her next visit to the bar.
“Since I was fifteen in one way or another,” she replied. She looked annoyed at either the question or her time in the restaurant industry. Maybe both. “Any more questions about my qualifications?”
“Am I bothering you?”
“Yes, you are. I’m trying to work. Kate has my resume if you want to check my references or something. I need two pitchers of Bud Lite, a glass of the red house wine, and another pair of margaritas no salt.” Emma walked off again without further comment. I found myself getting annoyed with the way she was doing that, even though I knew it wa
s her job to be on her feet and circulating around to her tables. I was trapped here behind the bar.
Speaking of the devil, my sister chose that moment to check in on me.
“Everything going ok now?” she asked, watching Emma settle a new table in with satisfaction. The eyes of the male patrons followed her around the room longingly, myself included.
“She’s an alright waitress,” I conceded, “but I really wish you hadn’t hired someone without telling me. Especially not someone that I’d…well, you know.” This part, at least, was true. Call me a control freak, but I do like to be involved in the decisions that affect my everyday life.
“Sorry about that,” she said, softening. “I really was desperate. I just couldn’t do another Friday night like last week. It was insane.” Kate touched my arm, making me look at her and imploring me with her eyes to believe her.
I sighed. “Yeah. I know.” We’d both gotten blisters on our heels that night from all the running around.
“Plus, she really needed this job. But wouldn’t you have picked Emma? If you put aside your history, she’s exactly what you said you wanted. See, I even wrote it down.” Kate pulled out her notebook, where she’d recorded the attributes that I’d told her we should look for when we inevitably hired someone. Of course, she’d written it down. She read it out loud, “Organized, diligent, reliable, and sexy”. The last one had been a joke, but Kate was very literal.
“I don’t think I would have hired someone who hates sports, bars, and sports bars.” My voice was dry.
“This isn’t a sports bar.” Kate went straight for the obvious, ignoring my other points. “Half the people coming in here have no idea who you are” she pointed out.
“Gee thanks sis.”
“You know what I mean! They’re hipsters, musicians, computer nerds. Everyone that knows who you are is hanging out down the street at the wing bar. I told you we should fill this place up with TV’s and start serving 100 different flavors of wings, but you told me it’s important that we keep this place authentic. So, it’s still the divey coffee shop-bar-event venue its always been.”
“Fine. Fine.”
“So, what if working as a cocktail waitress isn’t Emma’s ultimate dream job? So, what if she hates football? She’s doing a good job isn’t she? She already organized both supply closets, mopped all the floors. She even cleaned out all the garbage disposal traps—and you know how much I hate doing that.”
“She’s just going to quit as soon as she gets a better opportunity.”
“So am I. By the way, I need one margarita no salt, three Miller Lites, one Fat Tire, one Guinness, and an extra dirty martini.”
“You didn’t think she might be a bit too snobby and intellectual for this crowd.”
“Snobby?” Emma was back, and she’d heard me again. Damn. It was extremely difficult to shit-talk a coworker in this environment. She pursed her pink lips at me in apparent disappointment. “Hmm. You really do like calling me names, don’t you, sweetheart? I need a bloody mary, a vodka tonic, one jack and coke with a lime, two Dr. Peppers, one margarita no salt.”
Kate snickered.
“Oh fine. Whatever. Maybe the place could use a touch of sophistication” I said to Emma. She grinned at me triumphantly. It was her first real smile of the night. It made me feel weirdly tingly and lightheaded. I’d totally lost my train of thought. “What was I making again?”
Kate and Emma shook their heads. Down the bar, Willie chuckled.
I turned my head towards him, “Glad I’m amusing you.”
4
Emma
“All those concussions have really done a number on your memory, huh Ward?” Kate seemed to take every opportunity to tease her brother.
Concussions?
“My memory is just fine, thanks.” Ward rolled his blue eyes at her as he made the drinks. His voice was less defensive than amused. “I remember more stuff than you’ve forgotten,” he mumbled.
“Why would you get concussions? Do you get in a lot of bar fights or something?” I asked. Looking at Ward’s size and imposing build, I’d doubt many men would pick a fight with him. He was practically a giant. He could probably punch someone through a wall. Then again, drunks were stupid. Maybe it was an occupational hazard. My words had an unintended reaction. Willie’s jaw dropped open. He looked utterly horrified.
“No, I was talking about the football,” Kate said.
I shook my head, remembering. “Oh right. You played football.” I shrugged. I’d done everything I could to avoid Ward and news about him. That meant avoiding football, which wasn’t exactly hard since I hated watching sports.
Willie pointed at Ward, looking offended on Ward’s behalf that I wasn’t an expert on his career. “That man is a legend. His first two seasons in the NFL were art.” Willie’s voice was full of second-hand pride. He slapped Ward on the shoulder affectionately, causing the later to laugh uncomfortably.
“Huh,” I managed. “So, I guess you got tackled a lot?” He didn’t answer, but now his face looked simply mystified by my ignorance.
I looked him up and down, trying not to linger too much on the good parts (which was pretty much all of him). Ward looked physically intact, at the very least. I knew that Ward had retired due to a catastrophic injury early in his career, but he looked just fine.
Ward looked at me like I was speaking another language. He pushed the glasses at me across the bar. “Here are your drinks.”
Suspecting that was the best I was going to get, I shrugged and headed off. My tables were waiting and google would tell me all I needed to know later. I wasn’t going to give Ward the satisfaction of knowing how curious I was about him. “Thanks,” I said over my shoulder to Ward, which earned me the world’s tiniest, least-sincere smile.
Ego. That’s what Ward had: too much damn ego. Obviously, Ward had developed an inflated sense of self-importance because he was slightly better at feats of strength and agility than the average man. As if being born with a physical advantage was some sort of character recommendation.
Our societal feedback loop rewards guys like Ward far beyond what they objectively deserve. People like to think we’ve progressed over the animals, but we’re just the same. Ward’s sports career was the human equivalent of resplendent plumage on a bird. Like any peacock during mating season, all a guy like Ward would need to do is shake his tail feathers and screech the loudest to find a mate. Now he thought that all us peahens wanted him to put an egg in us.
The next time I stopped by the bar to grab the water pitcher, Ward was still talking about football and traumatic brain injuries. Only now, he was talking to a customer who I vaguely recognized as one of Ward’s buddies from earlier in the afternoon. He was a lanky, sandy-haired guy about my age.
“They don’t wear helmets in rugby,” the guy was arguing, “and they don’t seem to have the same sort of issues with brain injuries later on. Maybe the league should just get rid of helmets altogether.”
“Rugby matches are much more like wrestling than football though,” Ward countered. “They don’t run nearly as much, so they don’t have as much force when they hit slam into each other.”
“All I’m saying is that I hear that bare-knuckle boxers have a lot fewer concussions than gloved boxers.”
“Sure. They have to protect their hands, as well as their faces. But the sports are wildly different. Football isn’t about hitting the other team repeatedly in the face until they fall over. At least usually.” Ward grinned like the idea of a match devolving into a brawl was exciting, rather than disgraceful.
“But maybe the sport needs to change,” the man argued. “You don’t want to end up with Parkinson’s disease just because you have a nostalgic attachment to the starting line configuration, do you?”
“I think I’m safe at this point,” Ward said. He sounded annoyed. Did I detect some bitterness there? Was Ward disappointed that he was safe from Parkinson’s disease? What a strange man.
“A
re you sure?” His buddy pushed. “You wouldn’t know if you had memory loss. That’s kind of the point.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. My mind is like a steel trap.” He tapped his temple with a long, thick finger. Ward noticed me staring and smirked down at me. “For instance,” he continued to his friend all the while maintaining eye contact with me, “I remember the name of every girl I’ve ever slept with.”
I ground my teeth, suddenly regretting my eavesdropping. Yuck. What a complete and total asshole! Who says shit like that in a public place?
“I stand corrected,” Ward’s buddy said with a laugh. “I can’t even remember the number of girls I’ve watched you go home with in the time I’ve known you.” He sounded genuinely impressed with the number of his buddy’s conquests. Their subsequent fist bump made me feel positively ill.
I knew Ward was just trying to get a rise out of me. I knew responding with some sharp comment was what he wanted. This was all entirely childish, and frankly, I’m above this sort of talk. I wasn’t going to take the bait.
“Gee, you’re such a gentleman, Ward.” My sarcastic voice wasn’t obeying my brain. It almost never did.
Ward and his friend looked over at me. Ward’s surprise was obviously, and poorly faked. “What? Would you rather I didn’t remember the names of all the girls I’ve slept with?” Ward laughed. “Jealous already Emma?” He smiled a slow, smoldering smile, revealing perfect, white teeth. Like a shark. “A name like Emma isn’t hard to remember. Just two syllables: Em-ma.”
I sucked in my breath and squeezed the water pitcher with a white-knuckled grip. Don’t dump it on his head, Emma, I reminded myself. You really, really need this job.
“I’m hardly jealous.” I wanted to storm off, but I needed something first. “I’m feeling nothing but pity for you Ward. You may know my name, but I bet you can’t spell it.”
The last word.
Admit You Want Me Page 3
