I know the first thing Nick would do—that is if he doesn’t haul her back to rehab—is put her on a leash. Which is what drove her to what she did last night.
I need a new plan.
It’s the very last thing on earth I should be doing and the one thing I’ve been longing to do. I pull her into my arms and hold her. Her body tenses at the sudden invasion of space—but within seconds, she clings to me, burying her face, hiding her tears.
Tears I didn’t believe she had.
Tears no one believed she had.
My whole body is on fire and I can't think straight. I swallow hard, release her, and hold her at arm’s length. “I’ll give you a few minutes to get dressed. Meet me downstairs.”
She sighs defeatedly. “I have no control over my life.”
“Fifteen minutes, Nicole.”
3
12 hours ago.
Everyone turns. Everyone always turns. The country music plays on but the chatter and laughs stop instantly.
“Look who it is.”
I ignore Bud Singer and the unwavering trail of his eyes on the side of my face as I walk past him and up to the bar.
“Hey Griff,” I greet the bartender and my old…let’s call him colleague.
He doesn’t look surprised to see me. Or at least he’s acting like he’s not surprised. In a better—less cloudy mindset, I’d be able to tell, but not tonight. I only want one thing.
“Is Sylvie here?” I ask flatly.
The kitchen door bursts open behind the bar and out walks Sylvie Greene, the owner. Her hair is a silver bob that always grows out a little too long before she manages to cut it back to her signature length. She’s a tough biker-babe type in her mid-fifties. Save for the last two years, Sylvie and I were friends. If you could call it that. She was more of a mother-figure. She looked out for me as long as I kept trouble out of this place.
I bartended here for a bit. Brought in the crowd with what Sylvie insisted were my good looks since it certainly wasn’t my charming personality.
I came in here for a drink after getting thrown out at my last job for cursing out a handsy customer. A bar was the only place I could go where people didn’t look at me with pity.
Oh, there’s Nicole Kane, who’s drug-addict mother pimped her out when she was sixteen.
Not true. My mother left me with a man by the name of Frank Lidowsky, her dealer, at his warehouse with his friends, as assurance that she would get him his money within the hour. But I won’t get into that right now.
I heard she does so much drugs…
Also not true. I don’t do drugs.
She was probably fired for drinking all the inventory.
Fake news. I don’t drink on the job. There’s plenty of time—and booze all over town—for it after I get out of work.
No one knows the real story. And no one dares to ask. In this town, I’m either feared or pitied.
I prefer feared, so I play into that image of me.
Go ahead—believe what you want. The worse, the better.
And that’s where Sylvie comes in. I came in and asked for a job five years ago. When she laughed in my face and told me to "take a hike kid", I was about to tell the old hag off when someone behind me commented on my having “better luck as a barista, sweets.”
I twisted his arm and kicked him against the back wall, causing three picture frames to come tumbling down and told him to never call me sweet.
