Ginny let out a laugh from her spot across the salon where she was cleaning out the sinks we used to wash customers’ hair. “Your tip was that bad?”
The fact she knew why the insult was called for didn’t even register to me. We’d been working together for so long doing this, we were both well aware that there were only a handful of reasons we would call our customers names. It was either they missed an appointment, complained about a haircut they specifically requested even though we tried to talk them out of it, or we were tipped like shit. Under normal circumstances, we didn’t usually complain about our tips. I mean, shit happens; sometimes people have less money than they do at other times, but in this case…
“She just finished telling me she got promoted at her law firm. She left me five dollars, Gin. Five dollars. It took me half an hour to blow out her hair after I cut it. My hand hurts like a son of a bitch from holding the dryer.”
Her laugh exploded out of her, because that kind of shit happened to all of us on a semi-regular basis. Some weeks were better than others. It was why I never tipped waiters badly. While Ginny paid us based off a fair commission structure compared to other salon owners I’d worked for in the past, every penny still counted, especially when you had bills and kids. Today alone I’d had six stingy customers. On the other hand, I’d had to cancel her original appointment because of my hand. Her roots had been pretty brutal.
“Ugh,” I groaned. “It’s just been one of those days.”
“Aww, Di.”
I sighed and dropped my head back before shoving the five-dollar bill into my wallet. “I need a drink.”
“I don’t have the kids today,” she mentioned slyly, earning a look from me.
“You don’t?”
“No. Their dad called last minute and said he’d keep them for the weekend.” She glanced up from her work at the sink and raised her eyebrows repeatedly. “Mayhem isn’t that expensive.”
“I probably shouldn’t be spending money when I have a perfectly good bottle of wine at home,” I said. I hadn’t been back at work long and my checking account was still crippled.
“I’ll buy you two drinks. One of my guys left me an extra good tip as a wedding gift, and I’m not having a bachelorette party. Let’s do it. You and me, one last time before I become a married woman again.”
I knew where she was going with this and I approved. “Two drinks, no more?”
“Only two,” she confirmed.
To give us credit, we were both straight-faced as we recited the greatest lie ever told.
*
“One more!”
“No!”
“One more!”
“No!”
“Come on!”
My face was hot and I’d hit the giggly level two drinks ago. “One more, and that’s it! I’m not kidding this time!” I finally agreed, such a total fucking sucker.
What was this? Drink number four? Number five? I had no clue.
Watching as Ginny leaned over the bar and asked the bartender, who had been very attentive to us tonight, for two more whiskey sours, I wiggled out of the soft button-down shirt I’d put on over a lacey camisole for work that morning. I was hot. So damn hot considering the November temperatures had dropped. The bar was packed. It was Friday night after all, and we’d fought for our two spots at the counter, smashed in between two burly men with motorcycle club vests on and two guys we’d learned a drink ago who worked at Ginny’s uncle’s garage.
What happened to our two-drink limit? Ginny’s uncle happened. The most weathered-looking man I had ever seen in my life had come straight for us the second we sat down and told the bartender the drinks were on him tonight. The man, I learned moments later, was named Luther, put a hand on the back of the chair I was sitting on and said to me, “I heard what you did for Miss Pearl. You’re good here anytime you want.”
“You really don’t have to do that,” I told this man I’d never even seen before.
His intense attention didn’t budge for a second. “My grandson is in love with you. You’re good,” he decided.
Oh my God. Dean.
The man named Luther continued on, “Ginny, I can’t afford your drunk ass. Consider tonight a wedding gift,” he drawled, patting his niece’s shoulder as she choked on a laugh.
And then, just like that, the Alcohol Fairy was gone. And Ginny and I silently said “fuck it” and decided to take advantage of it, which was why and how I found myself five drinks in to an evening at a biker bar, laughing my ass off with someone I loved.
I was fanning myself when Ginny turned with two glasses of the yellowish concoction. Reaching back, I started tying my hair up. “Is it hot or is just me?” I asked.
“It’s hot,” she confirmed, sliding the drink over the counter in my direction. “Last one and we’ll go home.”
I nodded, smiling at her, my facial muscles feeling pretty tingly. “Last one. Seriously.”
“Serious,” she promised.
The much older man to my right, the big biker Ginny and I talked to for half an hour earlier, turned in his seat to look down at me. His bushy gray beard was long and in definite need of a trim. “What’cha drinking now?”
“A whiskey sour,” I replied, taking a sip.
He scrunched up his nose and looked back and forth between Gin and me. “That’s an awful lot of liquor you’ve had for being so small.”
“I’m okay,” I told him, taking another sip. “I’m just going to call a cab.”
He looked horrified. “Honey, that sounds like a bad idea.”
“Why?” Ginny piped up from her spot next to me. She’d been talking to him too over the course of the last couple hours we’d been at the bar.
“Two drunk girls in the car with a stranger?”
Well, when he put it that way…. We’d taken a cab the last time and it was fine. Plus, how many other times in the past had I done the same thing?
“Ginny, have Trip drive you two home. I know his ass hasn’t drunk that much tonight. He’s upstairs dealing with club shit. I’ll go get him for you, or shit, call Wheels. He’ll come get you. No problem.”
She shook her head. “He’s asleep. I don’t want to wake him up.”
“I can take y’all home,” a man sitting on the other side of Ginny, one of the two mechanics, offered.
I didn’t need to look at my boss and friend to know that, though the guy seemed nice enough, we weren’t idiots. We’d learned not to get into cars with strangers. Shit, we’d taught our kids not to get into cars with strangers.
“No. I’m taking you both home,” a new voice claimed from somewhere behind me unexpectedly.
I felt the two arms come down on either side of my chair before I saw the twin columns of heavily muscled forearms cage me in. It was the beautiful brown and black lines of a bird’s wing stamped onto the inside of the biceps by my face that told me who was in my space. I didn’t have to look up to know who was talking. It was Dallas.
I’d like to think it was all the alcohol that led me to drop my head back as far as I could. “Hi.”