Authors: Ashley Johnson
I felt my phone buzz in my pocket and pulled it out to find a text. As soon as I saw the name on the message, I closed my hand over the phone hoping no one saw it. Not like anyone here would care, but mainly I didn’t want Luke to see. Go
od thing he had become self-absorbed in his conversation about tattoos with another guy sitting at the bar. The guy was interested in getting something added onto his partial sleeve and Luke was giving him ideas and prices. I silently thanked this guy for distracting him for me. Part of me wanted to see what the message said. I hadn’t heard from him since the day he said he was leaving town. That day when he sat on my bed showing me the stupid tattoo he had gotten of a charm bracelet that basically mocked the one he bought me when we were together. The bracelet that I once loved more than anything else. I treasured it and never took it off. The one that I threw in his face that night I caught him and Taylor making out inside The Lounge. He never called or texted since then and that’s how I liked it. He’d kept his word all this time and suddenly he was breaking it. I never once thought about what would happen if he broke his word. I never thought I’d have to. Shit.I angled my body to where if Luke tried to talk to me, he wouldn’t be able to see what I was doing.
My finger touched the message on the screen and the words popped up. “I’m so glad you want to see me Mace…..Halley’s pretty upset you know.”
My blood felt as if it were boiling. How dare he text me! Should I respond or let it be? If I respond then it just opens a whole new can of worms where he may potentially think it is ok to talk to me. If I don’t respond, he may still text until I do answer. Either way Luke can’t find out or I need to squash this ugly bug now. I glance over to Luke where he is sitting with his green eyes sparkling. They always sparkle when he’s talking about something he loves, like tattoos, his car, me….yeah they sparkle when he talks about me. His dark gray shirt had his chest muscles on display, it clung perfectly to him. When he made the slightest movement, his muscles could be seen through his shirt, like a perfect sculpture. Everything about him was sheer perfection and I knew that I had to protect myself and what was mine.
I stared at the message
debating in my mind whether to respond or not. After thinking and thinking I finally hit reply. “I’m not glad to see you and you need to stop texting me. Now.” This seriously felt like déjà vu. Memories of that day in my room when I couldn’t find my phone, then I found it only to discover that I had given Trevor my number the night before. Our conversation went a little like this one now. I shook that memory away after all, everything with him had led to disaster, was this going to end with disaster too?
I drew in
a deep breath and I went to close the message out but another popped up instantly. “Seriously…what does he have that I don’t? He looks lame sitting there at the bar and well you look as beautiful as ever. I like your hair that way. I always have. I miss you.”
What the holy hell. He’s here. In The Lounge, where he wasn’t supposed to be tonight. Halley was going to be getting a few strong words from me later.
She was supposed to keep him out of here. Three of those words she’d hear would be “What the fuck!”
My eyes scanned the bar again looking for Trevor or any traces of him and the first person I recognized was
Taylor. She was standing there in a skirt that looked like it was bought in the infant section and a top that she probably could have gone without since it looked like she wasn’t wearing one. She had a smug look on her face that I wanted to go slap but I just stood there watching them. Ohmigod he brought her in here? Obviously they learned nothing before. So many scenarios passed through my head. Ones where I repeated my actions from that night and Taylor ended up with another bloody nose. Actions where I slapped Trevor again but this time harder or worse. Maybe I’d kick him in the balls this time to teach him a lesson. When Luke wasn’t looking, I threw back two more shots. I felt my old self creeping out and I was ashamed. I didn’t want to rely on the alcohol to help me cope with this but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know how to without it and I was even more ashamed to admit that. I didn’t want the old Macy around. She’d been gone for months now, she shouldn’t be here. The new Macy was just fine.
Taylor
doesn’t seem to have noticed me yet which comes as a total surprise. I just figured with our history or lack thereof, she would have spotted me and made it known. I expected her to gloat that she took what was mine. I expected much more from her whore self. I’m grateful though because that would create an instant scene and Luke would be completely blindsided. To my left of the bar I had to do a double take, Trevor was right there like he was waiting for me to go ask what he wanted to drink. Was he brain dead? He stood there wearing that sexy smile that used to melt my insides like a bar of Hershey’s chocolate but I refused to let it work on me. He slightly brushed his hair away from his eyes so he could see me better and I turned away. If those eyes still held magical powers, I wanted no part in that. Crap. I wasn’t going to serve him anything but a punch to the face if I walked over there. I tapped Luke’s shoulder looking for a getaway and hollered, “I’m going to go sing ok babe?”
He
leaned in and kissed my cheek tenderly. I touched the spot and held my hand there to hold onto it a little longer, just in case that was the last kiss he ever gave me. Sucks if it were. I’d want the full package kiss, the one where sparks flew if I never got to kiss him again.
“Go do your thing. I love you. I’ll be right here waiting.
Oh and baby, try not to sound like a hyena.”
I glared at him and laughed. Hell would freeze over the day I sounded like a hyena on stage. By the way, that day is never coming.
No one was waiting for a drink except Trevor, who locked eyes with me. If eyes could shoot daggers, he’d be dead. He even tried to smile at me again. I kept silently reminding myself that smile didn’t work on me anymore. I was not fazed and I wouldn’t be. The light he was under used to hit him just right and I loved every minute of it. Loved. In the past tense. Now seeing him at all made me want to lose my lunch. Of course I still held some kind of feelings for him considering our history but there was still a lot of hurt there that I would never be ready to let go of.
I marched up to the DJ booth and I could feel his eyes on me the whole time. I hated it. He shouldn’t even be allowed to look at me with those
gorgeous bluish gray eyes of his. I flipped through about three times before I made my choice. Good thing Halley wasn’t here with me. She would have done nothing but make this situation even more awkward than it already was.
Luke was watching me with a smile on his face.
I loved that smile so much. His conversation seemed to have come to a halt for the time being and I got a wild idea. I looked at the DJ and gave him my new song choice and before the song came on, I spoke into the microphone.
“Luke, you need to come up here.”
The spotlight instantly shone on him and he shielding his eyes from the light laughing the whole time. “No!” He yelled, “You sing!”
I stuck my lip out and began pouting. “But I want you to sing with me.”
Suddenly the crowd began chanting, “Sing with her! Sing with her!”
I could see his face flushing and it was kind of adorable. No I lie, it was hot. And after a minute of the crowd chanting, Luke stubbornly stood up and gave me a sexy grin that about brought me to my knees. He made his way towards the stage and the crowd began cheering louder. We haven’t even started singing yet, for all they know, we sound like dying dogs together. I’m sure he was going to kill me later for this but right now, I didn’t seem to care. I wanted to sing with him. Maybe my motives were a little screwed up because of Taylor and Trevor being in here but Luke didn’t know that.
I nodded to the DJ for him to start the song and “Drunk on You” by Luke Bryan came on. Luke immediately looked at me grinning and he beat me to the first verse. I jumped in after I listened to his voice for a few seconds. I almost just wanted to let him sing the whole song by himself because ohmigod, he completely owned it. The only time we’ve really sang together was in the car and that didn’t sound half bad. The crowd loved us, people were dancing and some were even singing along. Luke and I held hands as we sang to each other and I managed to sing perfectly through my goofy grin.
Taylor and Trevor both bore holes into me and I kept eye contact with him most of the time occasionally looking elsewhere so Luke wouldn’t catch on.
I didn’t want to make eye contact with Taylor. She was the last person on my mind and I wanted nothing more than to keep hating her. Trevor watched me closely listening as I sang every word not to him but to Luke. Moments before the song ended he shot me a hurtful look then grabbed Taylor’s hand and they made their exit. The crowd cheered and Luke kissed my cheek. He stepped down by the stage where he swept me off my feet. Literally. And he swung me around planting kisses on my neck.
“I
can honestly say I never thought I would sing karaoke and I was seriously planning on possibly torturing you later.” He said with a mega smile on his face.
“
Oh is that so?” I leaned into him and placed my hands on his chest hoping to hear a little more about this possible torture he was thinking about. If I wasn’t working tonight, we would definitely be in the car right now making our way home.
“Hell ye
ah. I think I will just go ahead and torture you.”
Raising my eyebrows I replied, “Promise? That sounds fun. I’m kind of turned on.”
He leaned in closer to me wrapping my hands around his waist and leaned into my ear. “You better stop Mace, you’re turning me on.”
“Is that so?” I ran my hand down the back of his pants and cupped his ass. He grinned as he crushed our lips together.
“I love you Macy.”
“I love you too Luke.”
I leaned in and got the kiss I had been yearning for. Sparks and everything. I smiled knowing I had eliminated the Trevor problem and stopped potential problems from arising with Luke. Tonight I could breathe a little easier.
The rest of the night went smoothly.
Since there wasn’t a band anymore to fill the slot that Trevor once had, The Lounge mainly did karaoke and finally started playing dance music and I wanted to dance so badly. I wanted to dance with Luke and forget that I saw Trevor for the first time in months. A little after midnight the crowd finally started to thin out and I could finally start closing. When the last few people left I locked the door and went to close the office. This bar really was my second home. There were so many memories good and bad here, but I loved it.
“Thanks for hanging with me tonight. I hope you weren’t bored.”
I leaned into Luke for a hug and let him briefly hold me.
“Me bored? I always have the best time with you babe.
And I’m going to have an even better time when I torture you once we get home. Who knows, maybe I’ll start in the car.”
I pulled away from the hug and started laughing. He was absolutely unreal sometimes.
“Keep sucking up Luke. I’m exhausted, I had fun though. I’m not scared of your torture threats, bring them on big boy.”
I turned off all the lights and we made our way to the door when my phone started ringing. Who the hell would be calling this late? I pulled it out of my pocket to see Halley’s name. Geez, what in the world did she want.
I better answer since it is so late. What if there was some sort of emergency? No clue what it could be, but she doesn’t ever call this late. The only reason I was going to be answering this phone call was incase something was wrong. I mean what if she got hurt or something? She is still my best friend no matter how mad I am at her. I do care about her more than most people in my life. In fact, I care for her a whole lot. I had been avoiding her like the plague since she informed me earlier that Trevor and I were supposed to walk together in the wedding.
“Hey, let me see what Halley wants real quick. It’ll be just a second then we can go.”
“Go ahead. She’s not in trouble is she? It’s awfully late.”
“Yeah, I don’t know
. Let me see.”
I stepped to the side and tapped the answer key. “It’s midnight what do you want? Are you ok?”
Trevor’s voice came in from the other side of the phone and I almost let it slip out of my hands. I probably should have and just prayed it would shatter into a million pieces. I hate to even imagine living without a cell phone even if it was just for a few hours but I was willing to make an exception just this one time. “It’s me Mace. This is the only way I knew you would talk to me. You sounded amazing tonight but was it really necessary to bring him up there with you to sing? I mean were you trying to make me jealous? It worked if you were.”
Shit. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to fall for this trick. Did she even know he had her phone? Maybe she gave it to him.
It was probably some big conspiracy theory to bring me and Trevor back together and drive Luke and me apart. I really wasn’t talking to her ever again. Ever. What am I supposed to say so that Luke thinks I’m talking to Halley? Think Macy. I ran my hand through my hair, taking a second to tuck a few strands behind my ear and took a deep breath and whispered, “Don’t you need to get back to Taylor? I’m sure she needs you to help her tear off that outfit she wore tonight. Why are you calling me?”