Read Chapter One here.
Jax
I like to be alone, most of the time. Which is why it was weird that I'd started spending so much time in this bar. O'Reilly's, read the gold letters on the glass door, and beneath that: The Friendliest Place in Town!
I hated friendly places. Hated friendly people.
So I should really hate the gorgeous bartender. I'd scared off all the women in the place a while ago, but the bartender kept trying. Very definitely a friendly person. Also, almost unbearably beautiful, with high cheekbones, a straight nose, and a jawline that could have been hewn out of marble with a chisel... but only by a really, really talented sculptor. Also he had long hair, the color of mid-July. He had it gathered up into a ponytail for work, but it looked like if he put it down it would fall in a golden, shimmering cloud down to his shoulders, like thunderheads touched by early morning sunlight
I wanted to see it that way.
I wanted to see him, any way.
Stupid. There was no reason for me to hyperfocus on the guy. Sure, he was good-looking, and sure, I liked guys just as well as I liked girls. But there were plenty of people in this bar who'd probably go home with me, if I made the slightest effort to be civil. (Not something I'm good at, but I can do it if I try really hard.) Every Friday the place was filled with women in tight jeans and men in leather jackets, all flirting with anything that moved.
And yet every Friday I came in... and watched Blondie like he was the only other person in the room.
I knew what it was, of course. I wanted to sketch him. Had sketched him, at home, any number of times. But even with my memory, damn close to photographic, I couldn't get the aristocratic shape of his nose and the regal lift of his head quite right. Annoying.
What I needed was for him to come home with me.
Not like that. I mean, yes, like that. But also, I needed him to pose for me, so I could draw the exact picture I wanted. My inability to get it exactly right had been gnawing at me, a rodent nibbling hungrily at my insides, since the first night I'd seen him, then gone home and sketched till two in the morning.
I needed to look at him all over. To run my hands over him so I knew every detail by heart.
I needed him.
Need was bugging the crap out of me. Since Jenna, I wasn't used to needing, or wanting. I was usually okay on my own, by myself. I had an apartment and paint and sketchbooks. Didn't need anything else, not really. Not saying I never had anyone over to sketch over bare skin with fingers, but they usually didn't stay long. Which was okay. I didn't need anyone. Didn't want to need him.
So I glared at him when he came by my table again, and gave him my best fuck off look.
Because wanting him so much was really, really irritating.
***
The night was black, touched with purple shadows, as I went out the door of O'Reilly's and into the warm, thick blanket of dark. I didn't drive; didn't need it in a small town and I didn't like going fast anyway. When you went fast, you missed too much. Even in darkness there's so much to see.
I headed down the sidewalk, a concrete river that led toward home, and pulled my leather jacket around me tighter. Chilly for May, and the cold touched my neck and crept downward like the slow slide of a melting ice cube. Around me the streetlamps washed away the purple, casting sickly puke-colored pools of light. Noise flowed around me, the flock of people that hung out around the bars on Friday like geese around a pond, gabbling. The sound of crowds talking always bothered me, static in my ears, or too many radios playing at once. Hard to pick out any one voice.
Which was why his voice, ringing clear like a knife against crystal, startled me.
"Need a ride?"
I turned and saw the bartender, grinning at me from a car colored like my tenth birthday, happy and bright. Car caught my eye, along with that grin-- I'd been very rude to him earlier, and I'd meant to be, so why would he smile at me like that?-- but what I noticed right afterward was his hair. No more ponytail. Flowing around his face and onto his shoulders, sunlight let loose with a vengeance.
I tried for my fuck off look, but for some reason it just didn't work. Opened my mouth to say something sharp, to keep him at a safe distance with stabbing knife-words, but what came out was something else entirely.
"Sure," I said.
