Mutual Release

by Liz Crowe

  “No, no, don’t go,” she said, getting to her feet in one fluid, sexy move. She was over six feet tall in her shoes, curvy, womanly, and sending out the sort of signals he had not intercepted in a long time – too long, if the way he was overreacting was any indication. “Really, I want to know why you think my company would be in any way interested in yours.”

  He processed her barb, clenched his jaw, and poured out the reasons behind why Dawson would benefit from jumping on his bandwagon now, in the early days, so they could grow the brand in a key market together. She listened, standing behind the stupid receptionist’s desk, her assistant wildly typing notes on his tablet.

  Finally, she held up a hand again. “How very… creative.” She walked around to the front of the desk, giving him an eye-popping full view of her. She was like sex on two perfect female legs, the exact body type he craved – full breasts and hips, cinched in but not obnoxiously small waist, long hair, and legs that went on and on… and on. “And, um, Evan?”

  He jumped back, hearing his name again.

  “Yeah, my eyes are up here. But never mind. I’m used to being ogled, and by way more successful brewery owners than you.” She held his business card between thumb and forefinger, as if it were made of dog shit. “Tell you what, why don’t you let me ponder your… proposal. And assume that your eye-fucking session won’t happen again.”

  She turned from him and walked away without a word. Her assistant shrugged and followed her back in, leaving Evan breathless, furious, and never more aware of his neglected libido.

  Part II: Julie

  Chapter One

  “But… Mo-o-o-m…” Julie let the vowel drag out as only a teenager could and still not sound like a toddler. “I hate going there. It’s smelly and hot and…” She clenched her eyes shut, closing out all the clutter and chaos of the small apartment kitchen. Her hands shook as she poured hot water onto the used tea bag, hoping to squeeze one more use out of it, capture a last gasp of the caffeine before giving up and tossing it in the trash. “Shit,” she muttered, watching the hot water stay clear and the used-up bag of generic tea leaves sit like a lump at the bottom of the chipped mug.

  She looked up when her mother brushed her cheek with the typical, noncommittal air kiss. Julie felt something hopeful in her chest, a brief flexing of a muscle long abandoned when it came to maternal concern. It hurt, which surprised her, this yearning for something more than a brief brush of her mother’s lips to her cheek, zero eye contact, and even less concern for the fear in Julie’s voice. The back office of the large suburban Detroit restaurant where her mother was the bar manager and hoped to soon get promoted to general manager was small. It was hot. It was smelly. But there was something worse there. Something Julie couldn’t or wouldn’t name, even to herself.

  “Honey, look, I don’t want you here knocking around this place for so long without me. At least when you’re there, I know you are safe.”

  Julie opened her mouth to shatter that particular fragile illusion. Then closed it again at the sound of the apartment door slamming shut. Typical. She sighed, repressing the shiver that shot down her spine at the thought of that stupid room awaiting her at the end of a long, boring, lonely school day.

  After drinking the tea-flavored hot water, she grabbed an overripe banana and her backpack and headed outside to the curb. The bus was its usual chaos of overabundance. Too many kids, too much drama, too many warm bodies and hot breath, and not nearly enough deodorant, in Julie’s opinion. She flopped into her towards-the-front seat next to Amy, the one friend she’d managed to keep through her last year at yet another school. Julie smiled at her and was struck again by the girl’s apparent oblivion about the pariah-ship Julie had operated under since setting foot into high school.

  Amy’s father was an attorney. Her mother stayed at home and did whatever it was to make Amy’s house always smell like a combination of fabric softener and cookies. Julie loved it there. So much so she’d begun avoiding it, in a lame effort at convincing herself that her home was okay; it was fine. That her own mother did not job surf and boyfriend hop so much Julie had not managed to live in one place longer than three years at a stretch.

  “Hey, did you get the calc done or what?” Amy ran her fingers through her perfect straight black hair. A gaggle of noisy students whose sole mission in life it was to either ignore or tease her to tears twenty-four-seven poured in the bus door and erupted down the aisle. They all managed to bump into Julie’s shoulder. She sighed and looked straight ahead.

  “Yeah. Do you need me to help you?” She was a math whiz, practically a prodigy if you asked her AP teachers. One of them had even contacted her mother once early in this, her senior year, to ask what Julie’s “plans” were for college. She stared out the window at the annoying, picture-perfect Michigan fall day. Julie’s plans were pretty much set and involved putting on a cocktail waitress dress and serving drinks when she wasn’t going to a few community college classes. That much had been made clear to her after her mother had put down her phone from that conversation and accused Julie and her teachers of trying to “gang up” on her. Julie would go to community college, period. It was all they could afford. Loans were out of the question.

  The bus noise and stench ramped up as it lurched towards the fancy suburban high school where students like Julie stood out like a handful of sore thumbs. Students like her didn’t join clubs or play sports or act in plays. They didn’t run for student council or mentor younger students or even attend the myriad athletic, musical, or dramatic events put on by the wealthy kids. No, students like Julie came to school, tried to fade into the woodwork, be ignored – because the opposite of that for kids like her was, in the way of teenagers, brutal.

  “Hey, Julie, why don’t you come over after practice?” Amy bit the side of her perfect fingernail as they ignored the disgusting sounds and insults emanating from the back of the malodorous bus. “Mom says she hasn’t seen you in a while, wants you to hang out more, like we used to.”

  Julie didn’t meet her friend’s eyes. Her mother had launched into one of her epic “them against us” tirades the last time Julie had asked to sleep over at Amy’s and forbidden her from going there ever again. Luckily the woman’s schedule did not lend itself to constant oversight of Julie’s every move. So she spent her fair share of time at the perfectly decorated, always immaculate large home where Amy Terrance lived with her doting parents and adorable little brother. However, the specter of her mother’s words accusing Julie of “taking charity” from people who didn’t really see her as anything but a “poor project” never quite left her psyche.

  And today that ghostly voice prodded her to refuse Amy’s offer. “No, that’s okay. I am… um… you know, they’re letting me earn a few bucks bussing tables and stuff at Hardin’s.” She named the expensive restaurant where her mother supervised the alcohol servers. This was only a half lie. She did bus tables, but got nothing for it. Well, she got to eat pretty much anything she wanted off the menu, food her mother would never be able to afford. “I gotta go there,” she muttered as the bus groaned to a halt and disgorged its load of teenagers into the hallowed halls of learning and subtle torture known as Novi High School.

  By the time three o’clock rolled around, Julie was close to taking back her lie and following Amy to soccer practice and then home. She’d done it before. It gave her an hour and a half of homework time on the bleachers while her friend ran around. Her mother would be pissed. But since when was that a new thing? And Julie had no interest in spending a second in that stifling manager’s office shoved into a corner of the huge restaurant. The rank odors of a kitchen that had been used, cleaned, and used over and over again made her want to retch.

  Her mom used to accuse Julie of making herself throw up on purpose, just for attention, but Julie was convinced she had something like a super-hero sense of smell. And the stronger the aroma, the more she reacted to it. She hated perfume and used only unscented shampoo and soap and det
ergent, since she was responsible for all the laundry. She found all these things at the discount store not far from their apartment building and justified it by claiming she broke out when she used anything else, if her mother ever complained about it.

  And the kitchen of Hardin’s Restaurant, a Zagat’s five-star “must visit locale” that served giant slabs of beef or expensive seafood alongside imported wines and beer and fancy cocktails, had been open long enough to truly have that horrifying, putrid stench of well-used and not-so-well-cleaned commercial kitchens everywhere, no matter how high the ticket averages were. Julie shivered in the overheated first floor bathroom in the high school building. Just contemplating Hardin’s back office made her want to puke.

  She sighed, pulled her uncontrollable, mousy blond hair back in a ponytail as the door flew open to reveal a couple of senior girls in the middle rung of the popularity hierarchy. “Oh, hi, Julie. We’re having a little back-to-school party tomorrow night. Want to come?”

  She shrugged, not meeting their eyes. She’d learned by now that while not overt, most of the conversations she was included in contained a certain level of jealousy-tinged sympathy. She tugged her loose-fitting t-shirt down over the waistband of her jeans. Cursed with her mother’s curvy body by the time she was fourteen, Julie had been hiding her giant boobs ever since, wearing loose clothes as much as possible, no makeup, and keeping her hair barely under control in an attempt to camouflage the fact she was prettier than eighty percent of the girls in her class. But they knew it. There was no hiding it from the female of the species when one of their own outshone them. But these two were among the least bitchy, so she considered it for a half-second.

  “No, thanks. I’ll be working. Have fun.” She started to walk past them.

  “C’mon, Jules.” One of them – Alice, Julie thought was her name – caught her arm. “Nathan will be there. I heard he likes you. Wants to ask you out.”

  A strange, unfamiliar buzz shot down her spine. Her face flushed. She heard herself stuttering more excuses before escaping their trap. Nathan Harrow was the best-looking guy in their class of nearly three hundred almost-adults. He was center on the state-championship basketball team and was going to play for Michigan State on scholarship. He was one of those rare gamma males – handsome, popular, not a total asshole, with brains to match his brawn, and a reputation as the sort of guy you would love for your parents to meet and be proud of you for dating. Yeah. As if Nathan Harrow even knows I exist. Nice try, girls.

  Angry tears clouded her vision as she yanked her locker open to grab her books for the last hour. All the athletic kids were hollering and running around, headed out to their various practices. Most of the other kids were slouching towards seventh hour, the one that supposedly got them their credits early, leaving senior year for fun. But Julie still had to finish her language requirement, as it was the one class where she struggled, and Spanish III was only offered during first hour, when she had AP Chemistry, and the final, hottest, most boring hour of the day.

  “Jules!” Amy’s voice made her wince and try to sink into the metal wall. She hated it when someone drew attention to her. “Hold up!” Her friend bounded up, already dressed for practice, with her backpack slung over her shoulder. “Did you hear? Did they ask you? Oh God, Julie – Nathan…”

  “Stop.” She held up a hand, pissed her friend was rubbing her nose in this annoying lie. “I don’t believe it. I have two classes with him, and he has never once even looked at me. I’m not going to some stupid, boring party just because of a rumor.”

  “Oh yes you are… I’ll make you!” Amy skipped down the hall. Julie watched her go, frowning and trying to process how the day had started so badly and now seemed to be ending on a promising note. She turned, frustrated she was now late to the one class she dreaded more than anything and ran straight into a distinctly male torso.

  “Shit, sorry,” she mumbled, reaching down to grab her notebook and pens that had scattered across the hall. She rose and came face to face with the crooked smile of one Nathan Harrow, Mister Perfect High School Specimen. “Oh, uh, hey. I’m late.” She shouldered past him but he made a quick side step, blocking her. A thrill of fear-tinged anger shot through her. “Excuse me.”

  “Hang on, hang on. Julie, right?” He ducked down to her level, forcing her to meet his bright blue eyes.

  She looked away, uncomfortable and acutely aware of the sweaty odor coming from his shirt. She gulped, cursing her stupid hyper-sensitive nose. “Yeah. Hi, Nathan.”

  He grinned, and his face looked so goofy at that moment she could barely suppress a laugh. But realizing that she was standing here with the Most Popular Boy in High School, giggling as if she knew what she was doing, she choked it off, ducked her head and moved past him.

  “Hope to see you tomorrow night,” he called out, making her face burn hot as she slipped into the Spanish classroom to the sounds of roll already being called.

  Chapter Two

  Julie rode the city bus in a daze across town to Hardin’s Restaurant. The temptation to skip it and go home with Amy had passed, distracted as she’d been by the sudden, bizarre attention from Nathan before seventh hour. She felt different in her skin somehow, as if that awful, awkward moment in the hallway of the steamy-hot high school could change anything for her. She bit her lip, tried to keep from smiling. But it broke through, and when the bus hissed to a stop she nearly skipped from it down the few blocks to the large building where she would be forced to spend the next few hours holding her nose, doing her homework, and avoiding her mother’s boyfriend.

  She pulled the back door open, already holding her nose in anticipation of the stink. After letting it wash through her for a few seconds, she stepped into the dim back hallway. A few of the wait staff nodded at her, slumped over their newspapers and boring lives. But Julie had a new lease now. Nathan Harrow liked her. He truly did and had proven it by actually talking to her in the hallway today. She had no use for these sad sacks, not anymore. She breezed past them and into the corridor between kitchen and bar.

  Hardin’s was an old-school-style place, no “open kitchen” nonsense which implied customers could actually see what went on during the preparation of their expensive meals. The bar boasted a few regulars hunched over beer bottles and glasses full of ice and booze. Her mother was at one end chatting with a new bartender. Julie poured herself a coke from the fountain and continued around behind the bar towards the room she hated.

  Her mother’s office was a tiny square with an anemic overhead light and a butt-sprung chair where people sat when they got fired. It was nearly impossible to maneuver in the small space, and Julie had suggested more than once that she get rid of the too-big chair and replace it with something that actually fit the space. Sometimes in a rare fit of maternal attention, her mother would listen, nod, and say she’d think about it before turning away from Julie to pay attention to whatever man was hanging around.

  Julie’s mother was in a perpetual state of “Finding Mr. Right.” She’d run through at least five Mr. Almosts and two Mr. Assholes that Julie could remember, and was currently working on Mr. Restaurant Owner – Bartholomew Hardin, great-grandson of the original restaurateur, who was rapidly squandering the family’s hard-won fortune by opening a series of stupid-concept, high-priced cocktail bars. Bart had latched on to her mother for some reason, and Julie could tell he was bad news from the get-go.

  She set her soda on a pile of computer printouts with the week’s inventory reports and dropped into the desk chair. The blazing, obnoxious fall heat wave was multiplied times about a thousand in this tiny inner room. But somehow her mother had it in her head that Julie should be in here, gagging her way through a pile of homework, “safe.” But Julie was about as far from “safe” as she could be in this space, and she knew it.

  After two hours, she’d plowed through all of her math homework and was half done with an English essay. A growling, empty stomach made her stand and stretch, and she wondered if s
he dared emerge to find some food. The heavy door made a loud creak when she eased it open. She peeked down the hallway to make sure it was clear before tiptoeing around the corner. The bar was nearly full now, her mother in overdrive, laughing, and joking with customers and wait staff, relaxed and happy in a way she never was with her own daughter. Julie frowned when she spotted him. Bart Hardin leaned on the far corner of the bar, near the service area, blocking it in his large, annoying way while waitresses suffered his flirty comments and bossy presence. Julie narrowed her eyes, studying him for a few minutes.

  His tall frame was poured into what must be an expensive suit, but it hung on him funny. His smile was too wide, his dark eyes predatory. She hated the way he would stare at her mother, then flick his eyes up and down whatever woman was closest to him, as if devouring her in one gulp. Julie had zero real experience with boys, having avoided them like the plague thanks to her mother’s long harangues about the importance of this very thing. The way she slid in and out of the lives of so many men baffled Julie but, up until this year, she’d listened, absorbed, and tried to keep a steady head and her “knees together” around members of the opposite sex, just as her mother ordered.

  Realizing she needed to concoct a lie to cover the fact she planned to go to a party – with plenty of boys, including one she had nursed a crush on for nearly a year – she refocused on the far end of the bar at the sound of laughter. Her mother stood close to Bart, and even Julie could see the woman was attempting to establish her claim on him in front of all the waitresses he was eyeballing. She sighed, put a hand over her loudly protesting stomach, and slid to the side hoping to make it into the kitchen without being noticed.