Sweet Forty-Two

“Do you have food?”


She looked behind her to a set of double doors, turning back around with a smirk. “We have a kitchen.”

“Great, food’s that good, huh?” I rolled my eyes.

“Settle down, I’ll get you the boneless wings. Those are good. You like ‘em hot?”

“As hot as they make them.”

She arched her eyebrow. “We’ll see.”

“You keep saying that.” I challenged her assertion from last night that we’d see about Georgia.

“I keep meaning it. It’s Lissa, by the way.”

“Huh?”

“Lissa is my name.” She stuck her hand across the bar.

“Oh ... Regan. Nice to meet you.” I shook her hand.

“You were amazing last night.”

As she pulled hers away, she let her fingertip drag across my palm. Her inflection suggested way more than my playing ability. One look into her nearly black eyes told me she was trouble. The kind CJ wouldn’t mind getting into more than once.

“Thanks. It wasn’t my first time.” I couldn’t help it.

Lissa threw her head back in a light laugh that didn’t match the sharp edges of her frame. A second later she disappeared around the corner, and I rested my forehead on my fists for a minute before a provocative voice lured my eyes back up.

“What’s the matter with you? Last night’s show rocked.” Georgia dried the insides of pint glasses as she talked. She was in dark, ripped jeans and a fitted purple tank. Her hair was tied back with a black bandana.

As she set the glass down, I noticed a bruise around her wrist that nearly matched the color of her shirt.

“What happened to your wrist?”

She picked up her arm as if she were viewing the mark for the first time. “Huh, who knows? Anyway, what’s up your ass?” She and CJ seemed to share an idea of where all of the attitude in the body was held.

“I still can’t find an apartment.” Reluctantly, I continued, “You know of any?”

She looked up in thought for a moment. “No. I live in La Jolla, so I don’t know much about what’s open around here.”

“La Jolla?” I sat up.

“Don’t contain your surprise...” She rolled her eyes and picked up another rack of glasses.

“That area is ... really nice.”

“What, I can’t have nice things?” She blew a giant pink bubble, her tongue collecting the sticky gum from her lips after it popped. I studied the way her lipstick didn’t budge, even when her tongue slipped back into her mouth.

“That’s not what I meant, Georgia.”

About ten-seconds too late, Lissa came back with my order of wings.

“Here you go, good-lookin’.” She set the plate on the bar with some napkins and silverware.

“Thanks.” I looked around her to try to continue my conversation with Georgia, but she was nowhere to be seen.

“So,” Lissa filled a plastic compartment with cherries, and lemon, lime, and orange slices, “is your cousin as big of a pig as he acts?”

I snorted, which was a bad idea given how hot the wings were. “Probably worse.”

She nodded, and with a twisted grin on her face, went about her work. Thankfully I didn’t appear to be on her radar for whatever it was she did with those eyes.

Several minutes later, Georgia returned from a room in the back. Her relaxed wardrobe had been discarded, and she was wearing tight red shorts—very short—with a black tank top covered in cherries. Her right wrist, the one with the bruise, was decorated with a thick black cuff that had silver squares set through the middle. She looked like a 1940’s pinup girl with her hair tied back with the same red bandana I’d seen her wear the day before.

She stood at the tap for a minute, filling three pint glasses. She gracefully navigated through the crowd in several-inch high black high heels to a table in the back.

“See something you like over there?” Lissa took my empty plate from my hands.

“Why does she do that?”

“Who do what?” Lissa looked around behind me.

“Georgia. Dress like that.” I looked away as Georgia bent over to give a beer to someone across their table.

Lissa frowned slightly, almost sardonically. “Surely you’ve been in a bar or two in your day.” She stepped back, holding her arms out and turning once.

I could see she wasn’t dressed much differently than Georgia. Lissa was wearing an electric blue skirt that matched the highlights in her hair, and a black tank top without straps. I think my sister had called that a tube top. She was right. At nearly every bar I’d been in, the female bartenders played up their assets. That’s just part of the culture. But as I chewed my lip and stared into my empty pint glass, I wished it wasn’t.

The familiar clip-clop of Georgia’s dangerously high heels signaled her return. Peeking up slightly, I caught Lissa staring at me for a few seconds before she returned to the other end of the bar.

“Regan,” Georgia set the empty tray down in front of me, “I wanted to run something by you.”