I always loved when she called customers guests. It was just one of the ways her kind heart shined through. I pulled two menus out of the basket and made my way over to the table, happy to have something to do.
As I walked toward the table, I could already smell the stench of whatever cheap liquor they had been into the night before. One was chatting loudly into his cell phone about some girl from somewhere and all the horribly raunchy acts he had committed with her the night before while the other just sat there howling in approval. I immediately wished I was some place else doing anything different.
“Good morning, gents. Here’s some coffee to get you started. What can I get you to eat today?”
“Holy fuck, will you look at this,” one of them slurred, barely pulling his phone away from his ear. “Sorry, dude. I’ll have to call you back. Got something here.”
Something. I suppose I had been called worse, but right now it didn’t feel like it. Especially coming from the sorry excuse for a man in front of me. I could see a beer belly sticking out underneath the V-neck shirt that was too tight for his body and despite the backwards cap he wore, he was too old to use the word dude, no matter how much he wished he wasn’t. He looked me up and down aggressively with his bloodshot eyes and slapped the table in front of his friend sitting across from him.
“I told you, dude. I told you it was a good idea to stop here, man. Look at this little piece we got taking care of us this morning. You’re going to take care of us, aren’t you, baby? We had a long night, but we saved a little for you. Don’t you worry.”
It was apparently going to be one of those days. I was less a waitress and more a piece of meat. Hunter had said as much when he came in. Except these two didn’t make me feel the way Hunter had. They had none of the power he carried, and there certainly was nothing passing between us. They didn’t make me feel anything but uncomfortable and I found myself wishing he hadn’t gone.
“So, I’ll give you a couple minutes with the menu then?”
I needed to separate myself from them until I knew how I was going to get them to leave. If I could get them to leave. We weren’t exactly in a position to be turning down customers, even the ones that made my skin crawl. I started to turn and walk away when, to his friend’s delight and my surprise, the talker grabbed me by the apron, pulling me back toward him, and wrapping his arm around my waist.
“No, no, no, baby! I see everything I want right here. You going to give us a spin and show off that fine ass?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and was genuinely afraid. Grace had slipped into the storeroom to grab stock and Dennis was nowhere in sight. It was just me and these pigs and I didn’t know how to make it stop. He slid his hand down my waist, over my backside, and to my thigh. This couldn’t be happening. I felt him start to move his hand up my leg and under my skirt.
“Please,” I stammered.
I couldn’t even get the word out of my mouth before I saw the friend knocked out of his seat and onto his back on the ground. Before I could register what had happened, a cup of scalding hot coffee splashed across my attacker’s face. I was so confused and I felt dizzy in all the commotion.
Between the screaming of the one guy, frantically trying to wipe the burning liquid off his face, and the blur of a boot heel being brought down on the one on the ground, I had no idea what was happening. But somehow, I immediately knew who it was. Hunter.
Where had he come from? I didn’t even hear the door open or see him until it was all happening. When he turned his attention from the man on the ground to the one who had grabbed me, I saw his eyes. It was brief and he didn’t look directly at me, but he made sure I knew why he was there and who he was doing it for. It was the same intensity I’d felt when he touched me. Now it was firing out of him, but it was different. It was equally primal, but this time it frightened me. Not for my own safety, but for anyone that got in his way.
Was he enjoying this?
He got one hand wrapped around the collar on the man’s shirt and he brought the other down in a heavy fist knocking him clean out of his chair and silencing his screams. It was hard enough to hurt the man worse than anything he’d felt before, but not hard enough to satisfy Hunter. The man would have hit the floor had Hunter not held him by the neck of his shirt as he repeatedly hit him. All I could do was stand there. I didn’t know how to make it stop. I knew I couldn’t make it stop.
Suddenly, someone came running from the bathroom in the back. It was Dennis.
“Hunter. Hunter. What are you doing, boy? You’ll kill him.”