“Why did you call?” she asked.
“I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me on Saturday. I have a work thing, down in Tempe. I know it’s a bit of a drive, but it’s a dinner. I’m, uh, getting an award, and it’s a get-dressed-up sort of thing and go have a free meal, listen to boring people talk about boring accounting things, and I don’t know why I’m even bothering to ask you, because it’s starting to bore me just talking about it.”
“You’re getting an award?” Jennifer asked him.
“Yes.”
“Wow. I’ve never known anyone who got an award. What’s it for?”
“I’m the Arizona accountant of the year,” the nervous young man said.
“Ryan,” Jennifer said, “I will go with you.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I can pick you up, uh, at three? We’ll be there by six then, and it starts at seven, but we can mingle, grab a drink or whatever.”
“Sounds great,” Jennifer said, and she hung up. She bit her lip as she stared at her ceiling. She wondered what she was doing. She needed a good man, a good guy. Someone who had a good job and had to wear a tie to the office. That was who Ryan was. She found herself feeling nervous suddenly, her stomach in a knot.
She stood up and took her T-shirt off. Then she unclipped her bra and let it fall to the floor before sliding her panties down to her feet and stepping out of them. She padded into her bathroom on bare feet and stopped in front of the sink. If she backed up far enough, she could see most of her body: her face, her chest, her flat stomach. She was attractive. She always had been. She’d been the first girl in school to develop, and now, at twenty-five, her breasts were round and heavy. Her pubic hair was trimmed, a small strip above her pink slit. Her hair was blond and long, loose and framing her shoulders. Her lips were plump, and she had a small beauty mark above her lip on the right side. When she smiled, there was a dimple in just her left cheek.
She was hot. Beautiful. And she had never been with a good man. Ever. Ryan was a good man. She was excited to go with him to Tempe that weekend; she was excited to go on a real date with a good man. The last man she had gone on a date with was Michael. He was an asshole, to put it simply. He never took her out; he just expected sex, and even then he never made love to her. It was just hard fucking, hair pulling, ass grabbing.
Looking in the mirror, she wondered what kind of lover Ryan was. Would he pull her hair? Would he grab her breasts so hard that it hurt her? Would he smile when she yelled out in discomfort, or would he let up? Jennifer found herself wanting to know. She took a hot shower, thinking of Ryan. She let her hand fall between her legs, her fingers sliding over her slit. She came, and then she washed, and then she got out and dressed.
She spent a couple of hours cleaning the house, and then she went and collected Jaxson from school. They hung out for a while at home, but soon it was time for Jennifer to go to work. She dropped Jaxson off with Barbara and then hurried to her bar.
She employed two other night bartenders, a guy in his thirties named Steven and a girl younger than her, with bigger tits and a more vacant expression, named Brittany. It was Thursday, and Steven was working. One guy manned the bar during the day, seven days a week, an old man named Bert. He only had to come in from two in the afternoon, when the bar opened, to five, when the night tenders took over. Jennifer liked all of her employees, even if Brittany was rather vapid and airheaded. She also had two cooks in the kitchen who worked part time, alternating days. On that Thursday, the cook was Andre, a tall black man who had once been headed to the NBA before an injured knee brought him to the world of cooking. He was smoking a cigarette at the rear of the building when Jennifer pulled into the employee lot.
“Hey, boss,” Andre said, and he smiled. He was always smiling; Jennifer wasn’t sure she had ever met a friendlier person.
“Hey,” Jennifer said. “How’s the wife?”
Andre was married to a petite white woman four years younger than him. She was eight months pregnant and looked as though she was ready to pop at any moment.
“Sherry is fine,” Andre said.
“I thought you were kicking the cigarettes,” Jennifer said.