I mean, I wasn’t anything that special. I had nice skin and big blue eyes, but a pretty blonde was a dime a dozen, and there was nothing I had going on that made me stand out in a crowd. I think the fact that I was naturally curvy, not too tall, not too short, but endowed in all the right places and then some, really was what most of my recent admirers had been after. I had a rocking body and had no trouble exploiting that fact if it meant I kept my head above water financially and didn’t have to resort to grinding on a pole or paying the bills on my back.
I fluffed up my asymmetrical bob, spritzed on some perfume, and hit the floor running. It was “Thirsty Thursday,” so that meant the place would be packed with a lot of kids from the university headed in different directions to drink the night away. The clubs on the Hill offered expensive martini bars and high-end dance clubs. The places kids went in the Point were all underground. You had to know someone that knew someone to even find out where they were. I heard the stories of the drugs, the bloody fights, the thumping music, and “anything goes” atmosphere. I had even been to one once with Dovie when she had been tricked into going just so she would have to watch Bax get the crap pounded out of him by a drugged-up monster. I didn’t fit in either place, so it was no skin off my nose that I could work the crowd and make money off either taste while they pre-gamed. Really, it was the story of my life. Too poor to belong up on the Hill, and too rich to fit in with the hard-knock life of the Point. I just existed somewhere in the middle of everything.
I was running like crazy for the first few hours. Ramon, the bartender, was taking forever with the drinks, and the kitchen crashed more than once while the tickets piled up. I was pretty organized and had impeccable time-management skills, so it all went pretty smooth. By the time I got to take a breather and find a second to shove a taco in my face before the next wave, I was surprised when Ramon wandered over to the service area, where I was hiding with a bemused expression on his face.
“Hey.”
I wiped sour cream off my chin and lifted an eyebrow at him.
“What’s up?”
“Were you planning on meeting someone here tonight?”
I frowned and pulled my phone out of my bra, where I stashed it looking to see if Dovie had sent me a message about Race. There was nothing, just a message from Karsen asking me to bring her home some ice cream.
“No. Why?”
He lifted his elegantly groomed eyebrows and clicked his tongue at me. “There was this guy at the bar. He kept looking around and looking around. I asked him like five hundred times if I could help him with anything but he just ordered a soda and sat at the bar. I saw you come out of the kitchen with an order and so did he. I watched him watch you for a minute then he got up and left. I thought maybe it was a friend or something.”
I felt my jaw drop and I blinked at him like an idiot. “What did he look like?”
Considering Ramon liked the fellas way more than I did right now, I figured he would have a spot-on description for me, but he shrugged.
“Nothing special. In fact, it was weird, like he was trying to blend in. He had on glasses and a hat, like he was trying to look different. He didn’t say anything to anyone either.”
I felt a chill race up my spine and suddenly my taco tasted like dirt in my mouth. Sure, there were creepy guys that came in and tried to hit on me and gave me the lurking looks, but a weirdo who didn’t say anything, combined with that strange text message, had me totally freaked out.
“That’s weird.”
Ramon nodded. “It was very odd.”
“If you see him again can you let me know?”
“Sure thing. Maybe you need to wait and have someone walk out with you.”
I shivered again and numbly agreed. My phone went off and I groaned when I saw Dovie’s message.
He’ll be there at close. Wait for him.
Could life hand me anything else difficult and covered in thorns to work my way through? I was starting to doubt it.
I texted back that that was fine and went to work the later crowd that filtered in right before we closed the kitchen down every night. I was hypervigilant, my eyes shifting all across the restaurant. I didn’t like the idea of some lurker hanging around watching me, liked it even less with the weird text messages still floating around in the back of my mind. I tended to think I could take care of myself, I was smart and considered myself savvy, but I had never actually had to put that theory to the test. It was a frightening thought.
By the time my last table finished and I was done doing the side work and my cash out for the night, I was tired and stressed out. I was ready to change back into my normal clothes, get my sister some ice cream, and go home . . . well, not so much the last part, but still.
I twisted my hair up out of my face in the front, changed back into my jeans, and shoved my uniform into my purse to take it home to wash. Ramon still had a straggler at the bar and all the guys in the kitchen were busy cleaning or just ignoring me, so it looked like I was walking out to the car to grab my computer by myself. I really wished the idea didn’t have the hair on the back of my neck standing on end, and I was secretly disappointed that Race wasn’t already here to accompany me on the trek.
I pushed out into the night and let my gaze skim across the parking lot. Things were generally mellow here, but we had encountered more than one rowdy drunk on occasion. The last time it happened, Bax had shown up just in the nick of time, and ever since then things had been quiet. Dovie’s boyfriend had a reputation that reached far and wide, but she didn’t work here anymore, so now the degenerates were popping back up.