“Have you seen her in here before?” I asked, taking advantage of the momentary lull to polish the scarred top of the bar—and to keep an eye on the blonde. For what, I wasn’t sure. She was just a girl, reading a book and not drinking her beer.
Just a girl who looked up way too often to study the crowd.
She never once glanced at the TV, but she glanced toward the bar several times. Did she want to change her drink? Or maybe she was waiting for someone to arrive. Someone who worked here.
Someone like my girlfriend.
“Nah. She doesn’t seem familiar. But I don’t keep tabs on everyone who strolls in and out of this joint, ya know? I have work to do.” Constance served the frou frou drink to a balding man with a combover and gave the rag I was circling halfheartedly a pointed glance. “As do you.”
An hour later, spooky girl hadn’t moved and Mia was late. Mia was never late. I checked my phone about six times, looking for a text, and was so busy flicking through my messages in case I’d missed one that I almost didn’t see her come flying through the door and behind the bar.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fucking late. So sue me,” she called to our boss Carmine, and I grinned so hard that my eye throbbed.
Sometimes regular life was just fucking perfect.
My grin lasted until I glanced toward spooky girl’s table and discovered she was gone. That fast. In the throb of an eye.
I frowned and gripped my phone, torn between ripping off my stupid apron and heading out to see if I could track down where she went or saying hello to my girl.
Mia came out and took the choice out of my hands. “Your mother is hanging out in my apartment,” she muttered, passing me as she grabbed a pitcher for a customer who’d flagged her down the instant she entered the bar.
When I only stared at her, not understanding, she amended, “Our apartment.”
While I appreciated her attempt at showing joint ownership, my mother’s location was a much more immediate concern. I snagged my fingers in the belt loops of Mia’s jeans and pulled her into my chest, absorbing the crush of her breasts into my chest with a kind of distant pleasure. Okay, not that distant. I was distracted, not dead. “My mother?”
She nodded. “She’s camped out in the apartment, waiting for you.”
“Why is she there?”
“Ask her.”
When Mia tried to spin away, I dragged her right back, only partially to feel her nipples dig into my chest one more time. “I’m asking you. What did she say?”
“Not much. She had a box of your stuff with her, but she didn’t let me see what it was. She seemed upset, so I left her in Carly and Kizzy’s care.” Her throat moved and an unreadable emotion flashed in her eyes. “Tray, she had a bruise on her cheek.”
Inside, I went cold and still. Thoughts of the blonde who’d consumed me moments before vanished, replaced by the heaviness in Mia’s expression and the knowledge of what had caused it.
That bastard had hit my mother again.
I pulled off my apron, fisting it while my gaze wheeled around the bar without landing anywhere. What was I going to do? Storm out of there and play the hero for someone who didn’t want it?
You do it every day with Mia. Why is it any different to do it for the woman who gave birth to you?
Cursing, I flung my apron in the direction of the space under the bar and strode to the pass-through, shoving it up before I walked out of the bar and just kept going. Mia shouted after me, but I didn’t stop. I wasn’t mad at her. Why would I be? It wasn’t her fault she’d seen the big ol’ jagged edge in my parents’ relationship.
More like a crater-sized hole.
“Tray, wait.” At the corner, she grabbed my arm and pulled me to a halt. “Hang on. I can come back with you, if it would help.”
“You’re on shift right now.” I didn’t even know why I was so angry or why I was letting it spill all over her. The violence between my parents wasn’t a new thing.
But Mia hadn’t seen it. My mother hadn’t brought it right to our doorstep before. Mine and Mia’s.
/> “So are you, and you’re out here,” Mia said pointedly. “If you can go, I can too.”
“What could you possibly do?”
Her hesitation made me shove a hand through my hair. “Fuck, baby, I’m sorry. I really am not in the best shape for—”