On The Run

Chapter Thirty-Nine - "Unintended"

Trey

  

I could have tried to be mad, I guess. But I really wasn’t. That didn’t mean that I didn’t care about Kayla, but rather, that I cared for Fitch more.

But I couldn’t face her. Not out of embarrassment, but for the fact that I wasn’t ready to analyze my receding feelings. The truth was, there was a time that seeing Kayla got me feeling like an obsessed thirteen year-old girl. But lately, I’d started to think of her and long for her less.

I knew some of it was thanks to Chloe. She served as an exciting new distraction; complicated, blunt, kind, mature, and even though I felt nothing for her in a romantic manner, focusing some of my attention, love and care on her did start to change a lot of things.

And then there was Samantha.

I’d always thought that you could only feel either love or lust for a person, but from the day she walked into the bar in her grey work suit, I could barely think of anything else.

It had been a long day at the bar. Three people had gotten fired and I was worrying about myself, and about Fitch, hoping that we had some hope to come in the next day. The job wasn’t great, and the hours were terrible, but I needed something to fill my nights with – listening to other people’s problems in order to feel less like I had the worst life; just one of.

These eight suited up people had walked in; looking like they’d just left their high-class offices for the day. Samantha was among them, but I had no idea who she was at the time. I just took in the curious stare, the slumped shoulders and the large guy attached to her arm. I didn’t care who they were and I served them all as I would any other customers, especially considering they were all about a decade older than me.

I didn’t pay any attention to them after I served them, and didn’t realize if or when they left; I was more absorbed with the yelling coming from Felix, the manager, at one of the bartenders.

I went on to distract myself with the cleaning of the men’s bathroom stalls, a duty which Fitch had gladly handed over to me.

It was as I was mopping up the water beneath the leaking sinks that I heard the sniffing behind one of the stalls. This was completely far beyond the norm for the men’s toilets, as was the accompanying floral scent.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

The sniffling stopped and I heard movement, then the stall door opened. I remembered her from earlier – in the group of suited up people.

“Are you alright?” I repeated.

She sighed, “Sorry. The men’s toilet stalls always seem to be the best place to hide out. There’s too much gossip and puking in the women’s.”

I didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t your usual striking beauty who turned heads the minute she walked into a room – or maybe it was just the tightly pulled back hair and firm exterior – but she was beautiful nonetheless. Loose strands of her blonde hair fell across her forehead, and her brown eyes, though puffy and red from crying, held a certain confidence.

She went on, “I guess bar-tending doesn’t really end at the bar.”

I cracked a smile, “Well, thanks to shrinks, it usually does.”

She stared at me coldly, “Are you calling me crazy?”

I wasn’t even thrown off by the iciness. If anything, I was more curious.