Infatuated (9 page)

“No. I’m standing out in front of the bar, looking for my kissing date again. I’d stopped, but you know…since I’m too high maintenance for you—”

“I knew you were trouble.” I could picture him shaking his head at me. “Walk home. I’ll stay on the phone until you do, then I gotta get off here. Rob—my friend—is about five minutes away from falling over unconscious.”

“If you need to go, it’s okay,” I said as I started across the street. It wasn’t the same as having him walk—or drive—me home, but it was the next best thing.

“Trying to get rid of me now? Maybe I should find someone to kiss goodnight.”

“Rob’s around,” I said, and then I laughed when I heard him sputter.

“Walked into that one, didn’t I?”

“A little.”

I heard a crash, followed by Kale’s muffled laugh. “My five minute estimate was about four minutes off.”

“Get off the phone. I’m nearly across the street.”

“Hey, who’s the one walking you home? I make the rules.”

“You’re so bossy.” I made it to my door and unlocked it. “I’m home. You can go kiss your boyfriend goodnight now.”

He let out a low whistle. “That’s cold, Ally. Cold. Remind me not to stand you up again.”

“Gladly.” I closed the door and locked it. “Okay, Romeo, I’m safely tucked away in my apartment. I didn’t even bring home a date, so you can thank me for that later.”

“I will. And I’ll make it up to you, too.”

“No need. None of them had on leather jackets. I think it might be a requirement now.” I kicked off my shoes as I went to the bedroom. I paused, sniffing the air, and winced when all I could smell was cigarette smoke. “Ugh.”

“What?”

“I reek. I need to get these clothes off, they—”

Kale groaned. “Now you’re just being mean. I’m hanging up before you start something we can’t finish.”

I sat on the edge of my bed and pulled out my ponytail. Grinning, I said, “Oh, so you don’t want to hear about me slowly peeling off my shirt—”

He muttered a curse and then the phone went dead in my ear.

I fell back on the bed, laughing. When the phone rang again a minute later, I was nearly out of breath. “Yes, Kale?”

“I only called back to say goodnight. Now I have. So goodnight. And dream well. Preferably of me, slowly peeling your shirt—”

I hung up.

CHAPTER 7

O
ver the next week, my days were Kale-free. Not by choice, but because Kale worked morning shift when I had school, and then I had work at night. So he texted me every morning with ‘miss you’ or some other cutesy message, and then texted throughout the day when he could. At night, he called to ‘tuck me in’, which made me swoon a little.

It was amazing how quickly I got used to seeing him every day and how much I hated it when I didn’t.

Work was a nightmare with Earl coming in again every night. Like tonight, I thought, fighting a frown.

I delivered a drink to a table near Earl’s and instead of bypassing it like I usually did, I went to his table. We stared at each other for a full minute before I finally said, “Will you please stop staring at me?”

He blinked.

I grit my teeth. “My—my boyfriend,” I said, for lack of an easier explanation, “asked you to and now I am.”

When he still said nothing, I turned away and clenched my jaw until my teeth hurt. This was getting ridiculous.

Even though Earl hadn’t acknowledged me at all, I’d hoped my talk would help. Not so much. Now when he stared at me, he actively moved around in his seat if anyone got in his view instead of just waiting for them to move like he usually did.

Over a dozen times, I found myself wanting to flip him off, just to see if that got a reaction out of him or offended him enough to leave. I refrained. Barely.

I snagged Laura’s arm when she came back behind the bar. “Can you watch the front for a few? I need to talk to Dave before he leaves.”

She smiled. “Sure thing.”

“Thanks.” I glanced over my shoulder as I went to the back. The urge to shout ‘Get a life!’ hit strong, so I whispered it instead.

Dave’s office was toward the back of the building in what used to be a tiny supply closet. It had enough room for a filing cabinet, a small desk, and a short stack of milk crates that he used for a chair. Dave always looked awkward sitting there, hunched over as he worked. Me and Laura had tried getting him to section off space for a bigger office, but he refused, saying the supplies needed the space more than he did.

The door was open, but I tapped on it anyway.

“Yeah?” he answered without looking.

“Can I talk to you about something?”

Setting aside his paperwork, he shifted around to face me. He took off and cleaned his glasses, then put them back on. His brown eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to like this conversation, am I?”

No point in lying to him.
“No, probably not.”

“This is the Earl thing again.” He made it a statement instead of a question.

“Yes, it’s the Earl thing again.”

“You get hit on by a lot of guys in here, Ally. Some just watch you. A lot of the guys in here find you…you know. Attractive.” He blushed and scratched the side of his face. Anytime he mentioned me in the not-a-kid-anymore sense, he blushed and looked uncomfortable. Probably because he’d been a family friend since I wore pigtails and he was best friends with my dad.

“Don’t even try that excuse again. No one else in here stares like he does. Even Blondie, and he hits on everyone and every thing. Earl’s creeping me out, Dave, and it’s only getting worse. It’s been months and he keeps staring. A friend has asked him to stop, and just now, I did the same thing and he completely ignored me.”

Dave sighed. “He’s a quiet person, Ally.”

“He’s the loudest quiet person on Earth and it’s driving me insane. I’ve spilled three beers tonight because every time I look at him, he’s giving me that damn look.”

“So he’s infatuated with you. You’re a beautiful young woman, Ally. Take it as a compliment.”

I knew infatuated as it explained my feelings for Kale. But I didn’t look at him like that, and Kale, whatever his feelings were, didn’t look at me like that. Lust-filled looks? Yeah. But no one ever looked at me the way Earl did.

“Looking at me once or twice I can handle, but all night, every night? Come on, Dave. You can’t think that’s okay.”

“He’s a family friend.”

“A family friend who happens to be freaking out another
family friend.
” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Or don’t I count because I’m not my dad?”

“Don’t say that.” He ran a hand through his reddish brown hair. “When you moved out here, I told your dad I’d look out for you as if you were my own kid—”

“And you’d let Earl stare at Candy the way he stares at me? I don’t buy that for a second. If he looked at her for more than a minute, you’d take the baseball bat you have behind the bar and bash his head in. I know you would, because I’ve seen you come close to doing just that.”

“Ally.”

“Dave,” I said, mimicking the same exasperated tone. “I’m asking you, as a friend, as a woman, to talk to your other friend, a man, and ask him to stop staring at me before I’m tempted to use the bat on him myself. Or maybe even you.”

He grinned at me. “You wouldn’t. You’ve got your mom’s temper.”

“No. I have Dad’s temper and my mom’s patience.”

“Alright, fine. I’ll talk to him, okay?”

“Thank you. That’s all I’m asking you to do.”

“I didn’t know hiring you would cause so much damn trouble,” he muttered as I turned to leave.

“Yes, you did,” I called back without looking.

“You Sawyer’s are all the same. Pains in the ass, that’s what you are.”

I could have argued the point, and probably should have, but it was true. The Sawyer’s were pains in the asses under normal circumstances. But pissed off or scared? We were a hundred times worse.

“S
o how are things going with that cutey?” Laura asked, pausing as she scrubbed down a table after shift.

“They’re…going. I think. Slow this week. He works mornings and afternoons mostly.”

“Yeah? What’s he do?”

“Mechanic.”

She grinned up at me. “Bet he’s good with his hands then.”

Blushing at the thought, I turned away so she couldn’t see. “Yeah. He’s definitely got skills.” A lot of them—and I’d only had a sneak peak.

“Have you slept together yet?”

“What?” I spun around. “No! No. You know me better than that.”

“Yeah, I do.” She said it like a sigh. “I just thought, since you made out with him that one night, that things were progressing at a faster-than-a-snail pace.”

“We didn’t make out. We kissed. Once.” Well, once in the bar. But it hardly counted. “You sound like Max now. I knew introducing you two was a bad, bad idea.”

And now that she mentioned the whole sleeping together thing, it was back on my mind. Not that it really took a lot to think about. Kale was sexy and smooth and the teasers he left me with had me wanting more. A lot more.

When I looked up again, I found Laura grinning at me.

“What?” I snapped.

“You’re practically licking your lips and drooling over there. If you haven’t done the deed, you’ve thought about it.”

I scoffed, and then I frowned. “It’s hard to think about much else. You’ve seen him.”

“Yeah, yeah I have.” Her tone was dreamy.

“Now who’s drooling?”

She shrugged as she cleaned down Earl’s table. “So? I’m not married. I can look. Besides, I would have went for him before Ted asked me, but his eyes were always on you.”

“They were not. Were they?”

“Yup. You were just too busy staring at Earl to notice.”

Just hearing his name made my skin crawl. And she was probably right. The more Earl stared at me, the harder I tried not staring back, but it was hard not to. He sat in the same spot every night, so finding him through the crowd was too easy. My eyes just gravitated to him, because I could almost feel
his
on me.

“Ally?”

I looked up from scrubbing the bar counter. “Yeah?”

She made a come-here motion at me. “Come check this out.”

I didn’t move. She was still at Earl’s table. “Why?”

“You…you need to see this.”

The only reason I went was because her voice sounded strained. I’d known her for only a few months, but she couldn’t talk without sounding like she was smiling.

As I approached, she held up a napkin. My skin went cold. It had my name in the middle, then ‘mine’ written on it dozens of times, all around it. If I hadn’t been convinced it was Earl who was calling before, I was now. I believed in coincidence as much as the next person, but not this much.

I took the napkin from her and closed my fist around it until my fingers ached. “I hate that creep!”

She shook her head. “That’s just…”

“Creepy?”

Wordlessly, she nodded.

“Do you believe me now?”

“I’m sorry, Ally. I’ll talk to Dave—”

“I already talked to him about it tonight. But go ahead and mention it.” One more nail in Earl’s proverbial coffin couldn’t hurt, could it? Dave needed all the help convincing him he could get.

A
t the door, Laura set the alarm behind us and locked the bar. I looked around, checking for signs of Earl. I didn’t see any, thankfully.