Why won’t he leave? Doesn’t he have to get home? Or, you know, wherever he’s sleeping?
Rex lived in Chicago from preseason until after the playoffs, of that I was sure. I had no idea what he was doing down here in Texas during the middle of the regular season.
“I’m cashing out table six.” Ingrid held up a credit card, talking over the loud song. “And I did all my side-work already. Do you need any help?”
“Nope. I’m almost finished. Everything is prepped for tomorrow.”
Ingrid looked relieved, but then she dipped her head toward the bar. “What about the big guy?”
I glanced at Rex, my throat dry, my eyes moving over his broad shoulders and back. He seemed to be having difficulty adjusting to the sudden brightness of the room as it looked like he’d shielded his eyes with a hand.
“I’ll encourage him to finish up.”
She continued to contemplate him. “Should I call the security guys? Or Walker? Just in case?”
All the businesses in the shopping area surrounding the bar shared a security team. They watched over the storefronts at night and occasionally helped us with customers who were reluctant to leave at closing. Rarely, they had to call the police for backup.
I shook my head. “Nah. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
She shot me a disbelieving look. “He’s huge. Once table six leaves, it’s just you and me. Are you sure?”
“He’ll go, no problem.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I know him. We—uh—went to high school together.”
“Ohhh. Good.” Ingrid gave me a nod and practically skipped to the register. She didn’t have three days off like me, but we’d both pulled a double shift and were equally anxious to get home and off our feet.
As I abandoned the half-filled dispenser, I wondered if perhaps Rex’s presence was an allegory for my life. He’d walked into my bar still just as untouchable as he'd been in high school. He was right there, right there, but it made no difference. I would always like Rex, admire him like I admired fancy vacation destinations, but—given who he was and who I was, and my limitations and/or lack of ambition—I could never do anything about it or change my currently comfortable, minimal-stress existence.
Presently, however, I had no choice but to speak with him. I could no longer wait for him to leave on his own. Chin held high, I marched to the bar with every intention of continuing down the galley. At the last minute, I turned to the back office and decided to double-check inventory, hoping against hope he’d be gone by the time I emerged.
I skimmed the shelves, recounting all the supplies I’d tallied a few minutes prior. I checked my numbers against what I’d written down, feeling validated when I found one less bag of single-serve potato chips than last time.
“Good thing I did that,” I muttered, changing my chip bag count from 102 to 101, then checked my watch. We were on the third repeat of “Never Gonna Give You Up,” and I’d given Rex an additional ten minutes.
Replacing the clipboard, I peeked my head around the doorframe, looking toward the end of the bar and . . . there he was. Sitting in the same position, his hand over his eyes, leaning forward, elbows on the bar.
Hells BALLS.
I rubbed my forehead, frowning with every ounce of my being. Now I really had no choice. Drawing in a fortifying breath, I strolled down the galley, clinking bottles and glasses together purposefully as I passed them, and then tapping the surface of the bar noisily with my nails when I drew even with his hunched figure.
He didn’t move.
I reached under the bar to the volume of the speaker and lowered it manually so I wouldn’t have to shout over Rick Astley promising to never let me down. We still had one more full Rickroll to go.
Clearing my throat very loudly, I asked, “Can I get you anything else?”
He still didn’t move, made no sign or sound that he’d heard my question. Ignoring the siren call of his forearms, I debated whether or not to nudge his shoulder, chaos brewing within me at the thought of touching him.
We’d touched before. In kindergarten, he’d passed me glue and our fingers had brushed. In third grade, I’d collided into him on the playground while failing at summersaults. In seventh grade, another finger brush when he’d handed me a plate of pizza during a Girl Scout meeting at his aunt’s house. Our junior year of high school, he accidentally bumped my chair in the cafeteria and put his hand on my shoulder to brace himself.
But there’d never been any purposeful touching.
I opened my mouth, uncertain what to say.
But he spoke before I could translate my plans into action. “Did we go to high school together?”
CHAPTER 3
“On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”
GEORGE ORWELL, ALL ART IS PROPAGANDA: CRITICAL ESSAYS
I snapped my mouth shut, my spine stiffening, caught, a jolt of adrenaline pulsing from my chest to my toes.
Rex removed his hand from his face and blinked at me with hazy—but still so amazingly handsome—hazel eyes, bleary and red. “Where’d you go to high school?” he slurred like his tongue was heavy, his head lolling to the side.
My shock at his initial question was quickly replaced by new shock, this time heavily flavored with panic. Balls.
BALLS!
“You’re drunk?” It was a rhetorical question. He was drunk, anyone could see that. Very drunk. Commode-hugging, knee-walking drunk, and I’d served him two beers! Which meant— “You were drunk when you came in.” My stomach plummeted.
He gave me a sloppy nod which transformed into a sloppy head shake. “Don’t-don’t change the subject. You. I know you.” He pointed in my direction, his head lolling again, giving me the impression he was having trouble keeping it upright. “But I don’t remember, and I should.”
“Lord, help me over the fence,” I mumbled, covering my mouth with my palm, panic now a beating drum of doom between my ears.
I’d served a drunk person.
“That waitress said we went to high school together.” He tossed his thumb over his shoulder; the movement would’ve sent him careening backward had he not been sitting on the stool. His eyes moved over me. “I don't member you,” he said, squinting. “Are you married?”
“Am I what?”
“We didn't date, if we'd dated, you'd be married.”
“Excuse me?”
“Training wheels,” he muttered, breathing out a weird laugh, like something was both really funny and sad. He closed his eyes and pointed to himself, his tone anguished. “I'm Training Wheels.”
I knew his nickname, everyone did. He’d been dubbed TW, or Training Wheels, in high school because he used to help incoming freshman football players find their footing. It was a sweet nickname, at least I’d always thought so. But now the moniker appeared to cause him frustration, and I supposed I knew why.
Over the last year in particular, a fair number of his friends had gotten married, and they had all married Rex’s former girlfriends or women he’d dated. A sports announcer named Clarence O’Dea had thought it would be funny to repurpose Rex’s nickname and apply it to his—ahem—training of women for male friends, or that the women had used him as training wheels.