Edison (The Henchmen MC 10)

He was clearly leading her, and Lenny was not the kind of woman who was going to play along just to please someone else.

"Actually, Meryl, this is totally news to me. But if you want to schmooze him because he is a Henchmen, and you want all his buddies to start drinking here instead of Chaz's, you go right ahead."

Blunt as fuck.

You had to respect that.

"No, Len," Meryl said, reaching up to pull at his collar, his face a little red. "This nice gentleman would like for you to join us."

"And I would like to keep earning a paycheck," she shot back.

His face was even redder at that. "We'll work something out."

To that, her brow raised, leaving me to wonder if she would say that she would rather earn it the honest way, or take him up on the offer for a drink. Or ten.

She looked at me. "I will literally fight you for the Jose," she informed me, making my lips curl upward.

"We can keep it amicable tonight. I drink vodka."

"Gross," she informed me, lip curled, as she moved out from behind the counter. "First time I got drunk it was on screwdrivers. I threw up for half a day. I could never look at vodka or orange juice the same way again," she informed me, walking toward the back, leaving me to follow, and leaving her boss to deal with locking up.

It was a little piece of information about her, but I could feel myself tucking it away as if it was of the utmost importance.

The back of the bar was, well, unimpressive. It was clear we were in a shitty area and that no one expected Meryl to pretend any different.

The bar itself had seen better days, back before the shine wore down to nothing and there weren't chunks missing and words carved into the surface. The stools were all mismatched, some sitting un-level. To the left, there was open space meant, I thought, to be a makeshift dance floor beside what seemed to be some kind of modern jukebox.

"That was all me," Lenny informed me as she tapped the bar, getting the attention of the bartender who was sixty-five if he was a day, hollow-cheeked, bushy-browed, but quick to grab the bottle of tequila and pass it to her. "The stereo system," she explained at my questioning look. "I saw you eye-fucking it. Meryl used to have this sad old-school giant boombox just sitting on the end of the bar with a pile of cassette tapes. And, let's face it, you are simply insulting AC/DC to listen to them on that thing. He had some extra cash laying around. I convinced him to invest in the music instead of the new stools. So we wobble," she went on, moving to sit on one of the uneven stools, "but we do it to crystal-clear music."

"Christ, Len," Gary from before said, brows low. "Think that was the most words you ever put together before."

"What can I say, Gar," she started, taking a second to tip back the bottle of tequila. "Edison here strikes me as the kind of man to appreciate good music whereas you think Toby Keith is God's gift to the world."

Gary gave me a once-over, coming back angrier than before. "Thinking with your pussy, I'd say."

Lenny opened her mouth to spit another of her perfectly pointed and somehow simultaneously unaffected insults, but I beat her to it.

"I'd recommend you start saying a fuck of a lot less from this point on," I told him. My tone was conversational, but my conversational tone was a lot like another man's growl.

He went even redder than Meryl had a moment before, but his with anger, not embarrassment, clearly not liking being told what to do, but with a Henchmen cut on my back, he knew to bite his tongue.

"What can I get you?" the bartender asked into the tense silence, having that perfect timing of a man who had been in the industry - and had seen more than his fair share of drunken assholes - for his entire career.

"Edison here drinks the evil stuff," Lenny informed him, drawing my attention back to her, seeing her cheeks already going a little pink. I'd been around a lot of liquor - and drunk women - in my life. And if there was one phrase that was true, as I had once heard in some ear-wig of a country song, tequila makes her clothes fall off. You couldn't be around a woman drinking tequila without seeing her stripping out of something.

"Is that right?" the bartender asked, producing vodka without having to ask, pouring it straight into a rocks glass, somehow knowing exactly how I drank it. You know, when I couldn't - as Lenny was currently doing - drink it straight from the bottle.