Broken (2 page)

She had been coming to the bar
for a couple of months at that point, and I had always watched her carefully.
The first time I saw her in this bar, I did a double take. Who could possibly
forget that hair and those big green eyes? I don't think I ever will. She was
exquisite in the way that made you want to know her mind, not just her body.
She wasn't the kind of someone who came there to pick up guys, because I had
never seen her leave with anyone―not in all the months she had been
coming. Like I said, I was surprised that no one ever tried to pick her up,
because she was beautiful. It could, however, have something to do with the
fuck you
she seemed to have etched into her forehead. She wasn't exactly
giving off the friendliest vibe to guys. I didn't mind, however. I liked a
challenge. I wasn't quite sure what I would have done if a guy had hit on her.
I wanted her for myself, and I didn't like to share. Not a girl like that.

I wondered often as I sat
watching her what it would be like when she smiled. She probably had a
beautiful smile.

Surprisingly, I had never gone
over to talk to her during any of her visits to the bar. I wasn't shy, no, that
wasn't it. Girls were all over me frequently. I never had issues with meeting
girls or striking up a conversation with one of them. I could have any girl I
wanted, so that had nothing to do with why I hadn't approached her. There was
just something about her that I liked watching. I was in no hurry, but again,
that could change if someone else entered the picture. I was not about to let
someone else steal my thunder.

She was a puzzle―one that I
hoped to unravel. She never did anything but sit at the bar with her friend,
and drink. They never got up to dance or even scope out the room. That's how I
knew she wasn't interested in picking up, because they never did laps around
the room to check anyone out.

I normally would pick up a girl
on the dance floor, and take her home to have sex with her. It was just so
easy. When girls danced, they always danced suggestively, which made it easy
for a guy to grind up against her. It wasn't long before I’d be making out with
a girl and then running to catch a cab. It was like fishing with dynamite,
picking up girls was so easy it almost bored me. That's why I found this girl
so intriguing―mesmerizing even.

Guys never approached her because
she gave off that wonderful “fuck you” vibe. That’s easily the deadliest vibe a
girl can give off at a bar; she's pretty much guaranteeing a guy that she is
going to shut him down before he can even say
hi
. Guys don't like rejection, not even the smallest bit.

I decided then that it was time
to go talk to her, to see if she was just as interesting up close as she was
from far away. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, one that I hoped I
wouldn't regret. I strolled over casually, and sat on the bar stool on the
other side of her. I waved to the bartender to bring me a drink. I looked over
to find her friend was gaping at me, and I wasn't sure if I should let her know
she could catch flies with a trap open that wide. The scene must have looked
comical to someone else. Aside from the gaper, the redhead didn't even know I
existed, even though I was inches away from her.

“Can I buy you girls a drink?”

“Yes!” squealed the friend. She
clapped excitedly, and I had to chuckle.

“Julie! What the hell are you
doing?” My beauty didn't seem too pleased by my invitation. She was already
drinking, so why not have more? What harm was there in me buying them drinks?

“What? What's wrong with him
buying us a drink?”

“Oh, forget it, I don't care.”
The ginger girl seemed to have given up hope of getting rid of me quickly.

I felt like this was my
opportunity to get on that girl's best side. The bartender arrived with my
drink, and I ordered the two girls another round of what they were drinking.

“Thank you, that was really sweet
of you,” the friend gushed. She thought I was possibly interested in her, but
she was only a means to an end. I wanted the redhead.

“It's my pleasure.”

I looked at the girl beside me
and said, “Hi there, beautiful, do you have a name?”

She didn't even look over at me.
She just stared down into her watered-down rye and Coke. “Yeah, sure I do; it's
get lost
.”

That made me chuckle. “That's
kind of mean of you. I only came here to say hi to you.”

“I didn't ask you to, so why
don't you go back to where you came from?” She smiled into her drink as if she
enjoyed her joke.

I glanced over at the friend, who
just shrugged her shoulders at me. “Is your friend always so mean to people?” I
queried.

She looked embarrassed, as if she
wasn't quite sure what to say to me. “No, she doesn't know who you are, really.
She's just having a bad night.
For the past like eight months
though ... the same bad day.”

I couldn't help but laugh. That
girl was sort of funny.

“What's your name?” I asked.

“
Julie,
and my friend’s name is Natalie.”

“Natalie, what a beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”

Natalie snorted. “Is that the
best you can do ... Jet, is it?”

“You do know my name, wonderful.”

“Hardly.
Julie was nice enough to impart your glowing reputation
to me.”

“You can't possibly dislike me;
you don't even know me. And I just bought you beautiful ladies some drinks.”

Natalie finally looked up from
her glass, and met my gaze. “I know about guys like you. You're all the same
and I couldn't be less interested. Did you really think you could come over
here and I would just go home with you? You can't be that deluded.”

I laughed out loud. She was a
total trip, I was quite certain that no female in my entire life had talked to
me that way. I kind of liked a girl with a set of balls. Girls these days
kissed ass too much to land a boyfriend, but not this one. She was on fire
tonight.

Julie laughed, too, though more
nervously.

“Give me a chance here,
firecracker. Come dance with me. You will have fun, I promise.”

“No shot.”

“Well, would you be interested in
coffee sometime? In a nice, safe, public place so I can't trick you into sex?
You can’t believe everything you hear about my reputation.”

“Just beat it,
Jet,
I have a drink to finish.”

The drinks I ordered arrived, and
Julie grabbed hers, while Natalie just left hers sitting there. I wasn't quite
sure what to think of the whole situation.

“Are you really not going to give
me a chance here?”

She looked up at me again, and
met my eyes. She lingered there momentarily, just long enough to give me hope.
And then she whispered, so softly I almost missed the words, “Fuck off.” She
then turned back to finish her drink.

I took a look around, wondering
if I should hit the dance floor alone and pick up another chick to take home to
warm my bed. I didn't like sleeping alone. This little interlude was going
terribly, so it was definitely time for me to move on to the next one. But
before I was able to make a decision on whom to hit on next, Natalie and Julie
got up from their seats, drinks
unfinished,
and left
without even glancing at me again. No
see
ya
later
, no
thanks
for the drinks
; they just up and left me.

I was dumbfounded by Natalie's
behavior. Bars were the best possible place to pick up girls, and yet I was
turned down by a girl who hadn't even known I existed until that night. It had
never happened to me before. I didn't like the feeling; I'm not going to lie.

Chapter Three

Natalie

Class ended with me thinking
about my art assignment for the new semester. I lingered in the classroom as my
fellow classmates filtered out of the room, onto their next class or maybe off
on a break. I had nowhere to be at that particular moment, except to study.
Sometimes I liked watching people, wondering what their lives were like outside
of school. How much different were their lives from mine? Were they happy? If
not, what was going on in their lives to cause unhappiness? The amazing thing
about watching people is that you could never tell what kind of life they lead
by their expression, or the way they held themselves. Hell, with all this
reflection, I probably should have been a writer; then maybe I would know human
nature a little better. I smiled at a few of them as they walked past me,
quizzical looks on their faces, probably wondering why I wasn't escaping with
them. To be honest, I was exhausted.
Exhausted from my life,
and now this project.
I took my classwork seriously, because honestly,
it was all I had. Maybe all I would ever have, and that certainly was a scary
notion. It had occurred to me that I should stop the melancholy thought process
before it got the best of me.

I looked down at my notebooks,
unsure whether I should head out just yet. I flipped through the notes I had
made in art class, hoping that an idea would pop out at me. For the first time
in a while, I didn't know what to do. No brilliant ideas had come to me thus
far, and yet I had to get started working on it before I got behind. I was
puzzled by the assignment, and wasn't sure how I should handle it. I loved the
class, and everything to do with my new semester, but the classes certainly
forced me to dig deeper as an artist. The professor had assigned a task for us
to complete, and I wanted to do a good job on it. My art career was very
important to me, and I was determined to excel. I didn't want just any job when
I graduated―I wanted the best job out there. I hoped to one day work in
Europe, in one of their finest galleries, that is, until I became a famous
artist myself. Until then, however, I planned on working amongst the greatest
art pieces in the world. The assignment was to draw a changing object once a
month, and at the end of the semester I would hand it in. I hadn't a clue what
object I would use. I would have to find something that would constantly
change.
Something interesting, fascinating even, something to
knock the socks off of my professor.

I grabbed my books, art supplies
and slipped them in my bag. I stood up, pushing the chair in, and I headed out
the door. I was lost in the puzzle of my art project when I walked down the
hallway toward the end of the building, and pushed through the doors. Sunlight
shone in my eyes, and I ran smack into Jet, dropping my bag, and spilling my
books all over the ground.
What.
The.
Fuck.

“Great, you again.”

He laughed, “Yep it's me, and
sorry about that. It wasn't my intention to body check you.”

“What exactly was your
intention?”

He bent down to help me pick up
the books. He handed me the books one by one and I slipped them back into my bag
as neatly as I could.

“Art, right?
I heard you were into this
stuff.”

“This ‘stuff'?’
Wow, you're a real charmer today
aren't you?” This guy was really one of a kind, in the most unfortunate sense
of the word.

“Well, I'm showing interest in
you, aren't I? Come on, you know I didn't mean it like that.”

“Yeah, lucky me.
Are you stalking me right now? ‘
Cause
I'm pretty sure the balls and sticks aren't found on
this side of campus.” I almost smiled when I said it, but I caught myself. No
need to encourage him with friendliness.

My books were safely
back
in my bag, which was now slung over my shoulder, so
that was my cue to start to walk away from him. He followed beside me quickly,
in an annoyingly persistent way.

What
was with this guy?
 
H
e couldn't have actually been interested in me. I was nothing like him.
But wow, he had a real hard-on for me.

“Will you hang out with me
sometime?” he stumbled over his words as he tried to keep pace with me.

I stopped then and turned to look
at him. “Hang out with you? Why would I want to do that?”

I turned again, and headed away
from him. I couldn't think for the life of me why he was bothering me, out of
all the girls on campus. I wasn't his type at all. I didn't know what he saw in
me, or whether this was just a game of his to get me in the sack. My luck, I
was some bet he had to win against his buddies. Oh man,
I better not be a
bet
. Either way, I wasn't impressed at all by his behavior, and wondered
what I could do to get him off my back. I had bigger issues to deal with than
this guy.

“Come on, Natalie, just give me a
chance. I'm really not a bad guy. Yes, I have a reputation, and I always like
to have a good time in one way or another, but it's all in good fun.”

“I bet it is.”

“I'm not out to hurt you,
Natalie.”

I ignored him. What did he expect
me to say? Of course, he was going to say something like that. Did I really
expect him to tell me he was going to stampede all over my heart? This guy was
a real rich one.