Jest [Miniminter] *ON HOLD*

II.

Jamie hurried back over with their drinks. "Would you three keep it down?" she whisper-shouted, as she served them, eyebrows drawn in annoyance. "You're getting rude looks."

"Aw, don't worry about us, babes, we can handle ourselves," Kicks slurred slightly. He raised his beer to his face with a grin while Jay and Hank laughed as if he'd told the joke of the century.

Jamie grimaced, glanced to my right.

"And you two," she snapped, borderline viciously. Sommers' large head popped up and away from Georgie. If anything was enough to control him, it was Jamie's scolding. "Stop coming into my bar to dry-hump on my stools. People eat here. You wanna suck face? Take it out back. Have some respect for yourselves and for everyone else."

Georgie blushed deeply, but Sommers put on his best charmer face (which wasn't very charming at all) and leaned the weight of his body on the bar toward Jamie. With a wanna-be-seductive smirk and folded hands, he said lowly, "Jamie, baby, don't stress yourself. We're just trying to have a good time."

"Too good a time," I muttered into my glass.

Jamie wasn't unnerved by Sommers' sickly-sweet voice. She was never unnerved by anything. She replied, just as lowly, "Well take your good time somewhere else, buddy, because you haven't bought a drink and you're grossing out my customers."

A shadow crossed darkly upon Sommers' unshaven face as his expression morphed into one of irritation, but Georgie tugged feebly at his shirt. "Baby," she said quietly, "baby, I wanna go anyway. Let's not take up space at the bar."

Sommers spit, "'Take up space,' my ass. This shit joint ain't gonna last much longer anyway." Jamie prepared to hit him with another snappy comment, but Sommers rose to full height and howled in an unnecessarily loud voice, "Boys, let's go, we're heading back to mine."

The relief spread through me warmly when the foul-smelling guys to my left began to rise from their barstools and stretch out, paying their tab and still making distasteful political jokes. I was only just settling back into comfort, making a kind of all-knowing eye contact with Jamie, when Georgie started to rise from the seat to my right. Was she going with them?

I swallowed part of my panic in a sip of ginger ale as I turned to her quickly. "Georgie, are you leaving? You're my ride home!" In hindsight, I should've known something like this would've happened. Georgie had been borrowing Sommers' sedan since hers had broken down, and as I watched her hand the keys back over to him now I knew he wouldn't opt to drop me back at my place.

Georgie knew it too, and she looked at me with a semi-distraught expression on her face. "Right, well... Kicks, Hank, and Jay are all riding in Hank's car back to Branchside Villas," (the motel complex they sometimes resided in) "so maybe they can drop you at home?"

I raised an eyebrow at them as they made toward the exit. "Georgie, they're drunk as hell."

Shyly, she rubbed her folded arms. "They're not that drunk..."

Sommers called across the restaurant, from the door, "Georgie, let's go!"

Georgie was never the loud type, and would never be, so she just flashed him an apologetic smile. Then she turned back to me. "You know what, Nova, ride with me and Sommers to the Villas and catch that bus that stops right there. You've been on that bus before, haven't you? The 463."

I have ridden that bus before, when I used to visit my mother regularly. But I wasn't the biggest fan of riding the bus late at night because people like Sommers and co. rode public transit late at night. Not that I couldn't handle myself.

I found myself agreeing with Georgie's plan anyway because I had no other option, saying goodnight to Jamie and drifting out into crisp night air after her. For being a small town, Branchside Heights was spread out quite a bit, and sometimes, walking to your destination wasn't an option (especially at night, when you had types like Jay hanging out at every corner).