Maybe everything was going to be okay after all? He followed her to the door, hesitating before deciding to open it for her. Was that the right thing to do? She glanced up at him, her eyes narrowing, before mumbling a soft, “Thank you.”
She motioned for him to follow her into the club. “You’re over eighteen, right? So you won’t have a pissed off mom or dad coming to hunt you down if you stay late?” she asked as she walked past the club’s entrance into a large room.
Caleb stopped and blinked a few times. The darkness of the club compared to the bright evening outside was hard to reconcile. He fiddled with the clasp of his messenger bag as his eyes adjusted to the dimly lit room, taking in the space. There was a large blank screen against the far wall, with a series of LED lights along either side that gradually changed colors. Beneath the screen was a booth with a single man fiddling with a laptop.
He tried to make a mental note of every aspect he could see of the room while it was still somewhat well illuminated. If he could remember something about the layout for the interview, maybe he could impress the guy and increase his chances of getting hired.
The DJ booth on the main floor was the landing point for the curved staircase. That was most likely how people accessed the second floor, or maybe a back office. He wanted to take in more of his surroundings, but he locked eyes with a man on the landing. Caleb’s stomach tightened, an overwhelming urge to look away from the man making his face grow hot, but for some reason, he couldn’t. Even with his nearsightedness, the man’s intense amber eyes looked crystal clear from across the room, piercing despite the distance and looking… inviting?
“You want anything to drink?” Ophelia’s voice snapped his gaze away from the man. He glanced toward her, realizing she had moved behind the bar glowing under neon lights. Row after row of alcohol bottles sat on the shelving behind her, each one lit from beneath like they were all display pieces—even the lower end brands that sat on the bottle shelves. She flipped through a binder, ripping pages out haphazardly without opening the rings.
“No, thank you,” he said. He glanced back toward the landing near the DJ booth to look at the man with the intense eyes, but he was gone. Had Caleb imagined him?
Ophelia looked even smaller behind the tall bar, just the top of her chest and shoulders visible above the counter. “You gonna answer my question from before?” she asked, pushing the papers across the counter toward him.
Caleb flushed again. “I… um,” he started. What was her question again?
“Are you eighteen?” she asked, turning away to grab a glass. “I ask because whenever we have hired non-serving staff under eighteen, you know, to clean and restock and stuff, we’ve found that overbearing parents tend to throw a fit once midnight hits, so there is a strict no-one-under-eighteen policy. Since we were in school together, I figured I’d double check before wasting Marcus’s time.”
Caleb nodded before realizing her back was still to him. “Yeah, I’m actually twenty, but I’ll be twenty-one soon,” he said. He pulled a pen from his bag, his eyes skimming what appeared to be a generic job application. Ophelia turned around, a drink in her hand that was clear at the top and bright red on the bottom, and she looked at him with her big, blank, dark brown eyes. He shifted uncomfortably and decided to hop onto one of the bar stools. Was she expecting a longer answer? “You don’t have to worry about nosy family members. I’m on my own.”
For a split second, Caleb could have sworn he saw her smirk. She popped a straw into the drink and took a sip, once again reaching into her hoodie to grab her phone, one thumb tapping quickly across the screen. “That’s excellent, actually. Fill that out, and whenever Marcus comes down, he can talk to you,” she said.
Caleb waited until she turned away then began completing the application. The same fields that he’d filled out on at least a dozen other applications were there, so it felt like his hand was moving automatically to fill in the boxes. His stomach growled. It had been hours since he’d left his small, dingy apartment or had anything to eat. Paired with the anxiety roiling in his gut, he felt like he could either devour a three-course meal or throw up right there on the sparkling bar top. He knew it was just his reaction to the new place and potentially a job that could keep him out of a shelter, but the way Ophelia looked and acted was making him uneasy.
He tried to remember what else he knew about her. She had been the talk of his high school for a while—a girl who always arrived at school on the back of her dad’s motorcycle and who was only eleven or twelve years old starting her freshman year of school. He remembered the teachers telling his classmates to be kind, seeing as she was younger than all of them, and to behave themselves. He didn’t know what had happened to her after he left school for good.
He looked up as he finished signing his name, doing the math in his head. He’d been sixteen when she was twelve, so that meant she was… sixteen? Her face looked younger, but her demeanor was unnervingly older, like someone who had already lived a lifetime and hated the fact that they had to go through it again.
“So what happened to your face?” she asked, leaning on the counter with her phone still in her hand.
His stomach knotted again. His scalp joined in on the anxious energy building in him as it began to perspire. His hand went to his forehead, stroking the top of the faded scar that ran from his hairline, through his eyelid and both lips, and curved down to his chin. His scar. He knew it was unsightly, still pinkish in the center even after years of healing, and he knew people stared, but no one ever overtly asked him about it. He swallowed hard, dropping his hand beneath the counter again to fiddle with the clasp on his messenger bag.
“Car accident,” he said, his gaze drifting into his lap. His other scars were a constant reminder of the accident that had ruined his life—the burn scars on his shoulder, the telltale sign on his throat where he’d had a tracheostomy tube that kept him alive in the hospital while his mother and brother clung to life in the same building—but it was that scar on his face that bothered him the most. The one he couldn’t ignore that constantly reminded him his life would never be normal again.
“Is that why you dropped out?” Ophelia sipped her red and clear concoction, her expression more animated than before.
Caleb felt his eyes begin to burn, the lump in his throat rising higher as his heart pounded. A wave of nausea rolled over him. He could suddenly smell gasoline and blood again. The sound of a CD skipping over the car radio crept into his ears, the image of his blood-covered hands flashing in his mind. He stood up, refusing to meet her gaze.
This was a mistake. I’m not ready to be out yet.
He needed to leave.
Caleb turned and bumped directly into a man standing behind him, snapping him out of his memory. Taking a step back, the smell of gasoline and blood in his nostrils was replaced with the scent of cologne, cigarette smoke, and sugar cookies. “I’m sorry, I—” The apology dried up in his throat as his mouth fell open.
Holy shit. He’s beautiful.
Standing in front of him was the man from the stairs, his monolid amber eyes bright and warm like the sun had just come out on a cloudy day. He was older than Caleb, probably approaching his forties, but aside from little wrinkles around the corners of his eyes, his face looked youthful, if a bit pallid. His gray-streaked black hair fell shaggily over the left side of his forehead, as though he had just run a hand through it. His face was long and angular, like a model’s, with a mouth that almost looked too wide for his face, and lips that looked incredibly soft and kissable.