You Make Me ▶▶A Hunter Hayes Fanfiction◀◀

Chapter 3

The bar is stuffy inside. There are so many people that I bump into someone with each step I take. Talking, laughing, drunk, and dancing people fill the large new bar. I don’t recognize a single one. Before this bar was built, there was a bar further into town that had mostly older country folks that would be pleasant to talk to. It eventually ran out of business, and then this bar was made. Now, I feel even more alone in this crowded place than in the old near-vacant bar.

I finally reach the bar and take a seat. The bartender, a young man with black tattoos running down his muscular arms, turns to me.

“What can I get you?”

I don’t hesitate as I lock eyes with him and say lowly, “Give me the strongest drink you’ve got.”

He laughs, his voice deep and extremely masculine. “Sweetheart, no offence, but  you don’t look like you’d be able to handle it.”

I lower my voice, making myself sound as serious as I am. “I. Don’t. Care.”

He laughs again, but obliges anyway. I stare at my phone in my shaking hands as he prepares the drink, but when he sets it on the bar in front of me, I immediately set my phone down on the table and take it and chug half of it down in three big gulps. I would’ve kept going, if it weren’t for the bartender taking the drink away from my lips, causing a little bit of the drink to spill. I glare at him, my throat burning.

He sets the drink down. “Easy,” he tells me, “I don’t want you to get alcohol poisoning from your first drink of the night.”

I don’t say anything as I throw some money on the table and walk away, my head already spinning. What was in that drink? I don’t know.

It dawns on me that I have to drive myself home. With my face in a scowl, I move towards the exit. When I’m only a few steps away, someone blocks my way.

“Harper, right?”

Hunter, from the car wash. The one with the sweet ride. The one who was invited here by Willow.

He’s smiling up at me as he’s holding a half-empty glass of some concoction. As he spoke my name, the scent of alcohol fills my nostrils. He’s clearly drunk.

When he sees my scowl, he frowns. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Yes, Hunter,” I answer with a sigh. “I’m fine. Have a nice night.”

I step around him and walk out. The usually humid and thick air of Nashville summers has turned chilly tonight. The breeze whips my loose clothing as I step into my car. My head spins again, and I can’t think straight.

Perfect.

I just sit in my car, staring out the windshield with my hands gripped tightly around the steering wheel. No thoughts haunt me, which is what I was hoping for when I came to the bar.

I lose track of the time, not really caring anymore. Maybe by some miracle Willow will be too hungover to yell at me tomorrow at work.

With my mind a little less hazy, I decide that I should get home. I stick the keys in and start up the car.

I go back home and get some peaceful sleep for the first time tonight.

-

“I THOUGHT WE WENT OVER THIS YESTERDAY!” Willow screams at me from her office window.

I turn to her. I’m in the middle of waxing a car, does she not see that? And, what is she going on about this time?

“What now, Willow?” I call from across the lot.