“I went to the bar, and I saw Lindsey there looking really pissed off.” I paused for effect, and Frankie looked at me. “I know. Lindsey looking angry. That’s not like her. And when I saw it, I got really upset. I was all of a sudden all knotted up and wanted to go over and stop whatever was happening. It was a really strange instinct. Like I felt protective of her.”
It seemed I’d landed on what the feeling was, but that didn’t actually help me any. Why would I suddenly be feeling so protective over Lindsey? Especially when there wasn’t any imminent danger to her as far as I could see. It wasn’t like I saw some guy hitting on her or touching her. I didn’t hear her shouting or see someone threatening her. She just looked angry, and I felt the need to protect her.
For the first time, I wondered about her life. She grew up around us in Charlotte, but there was a while there when she wasn’t in town. I never really thought about where she might have gone or what went on in her life during that time. Now, I was curious.
The next couple days were an exercise in restraint. Now that I had put my finger on the feeling, I struggled. Not with the fact that I was feeling it, but with not doing anything about it. It took just about everything in me not to go back to that bar and try to fix it. I was a fixer by nature. Hell, I built my career around it. It’s what I wanted to do, but something held me back and said I couldn’t go swoop in and try to make it all better. It wasn’t my place.
That realization made my weekend a special kind of hell.2LindseySomething about that phone call had ruined my entire night at work Friday. I couldn’t get my mind away from it, and it loomed over my head threw me off for the entire shift. My customers could tell. Not that it was all that difficult to notice the change in me. These were people who came in a couple of times a week, some even more than that. I knew their favorite drink order like I knew the color of their eyes or their tell when they had a particularly shitty day at work or home.
Kevin Barnes sighed like he had giant bellows in his belly, and he kept getting squeezed.
Martin Conroy drummed his fingers against the bar, then pretended he wasn’t doing anything if he got called out for it.
Melissa Aker wore eye makeup that corresponded with her mood and level of stress. The brighter the colors and longer the false lashes, the worse her mood and more desperate she was for attention.
Then there were the ones from my daddy’s time. Rollovers from when he was alive and running the place, the often grizzled old men took up the corners of the bar. They lurked there, hovering over their beers, and grumbled to whoever would listen. Sometimes that was also their beer.
I knew them and how to read their moods and what they needed. They just weren’t used to having to do the same for me. They came into the bar anticipating a bright smile and happy greeting. Even when they were dealing with aggravation from work, a fight with their partner, or any other of life’s little frustrations, I was there to try to perk them up. Last night they showed up to a distinct lack of perk. For the first time since I took over the bar, I could honestly say I didn’t want to be there.
The thing was, I loved the bar. It was a part of me from the time I was a little girl when my grandpa owned it. Sometimes I would go to visit him there before opening. He’d pick me up and sit me on the bar, so my feet dangled down. A Shirley Temple with three cherries skewered on a pink swizzle stick made me feel grown-up and special. After he died and my father took over, it somehow meant even more.
The bar was where I had my first job. It’s where I soaked in the gossip of the town. It was also what I knew was my future. As an only child, I was my father’s only option for passing on his legacy. Eventually, the bar would be mine. Knowing that’s what was going to happen and that I would most likely end up back in Charlotte, I wanted a break. I wanted to experience something else of the world before my path led me back here.
That was how I ended up furious and on edge the night before, not wanting to deal with the customers or the job that I usually adored because of how fractured my brain felt. It was also why I was sitting on my bed staring at the phone I clutched in my hand, trying to will myself to dial. I had been sitting that way for more than two hours. Ever since getting the voicemail that he left at five that morning.