It was right about then that it happened.
A duo of middle-aged men walked past. You knew the type when you passed them by with their out of fashion mustaches, beer bellies, and fragile egos attached to loose lips. They were always good for a little backwardness.
These ones did not disappoint.
"Fucking dykes taking all the hot young things."
I never turned on a heel so fast in my life.
"Peyton, don't," Jamie scolded, shaking her head at me. Maybe because Jamie came out when she was hardly even in middle school, had dealt with comments about being a tomboy as a little girl, then a butch lesbian as an adult, she took it all with a laid-back nonchalance.
I guess if you chose to actually fight those battles, you would be at war your whole life.
I got that.
I really did.
But that didn't mean I agreed with it.
It didn't mean I would stand by and let it happen.
No one would ever accuse me of being the 'turn the other cheek' sort.
I was more of an eye-for-an-eye kinda girl.
"What the fuck did you just say?" I asked, moving into the fuck's space, glad for the fact that I wore skyscrapers on my feet because it put me at his height.
"Wasn't talking to you, sweetheart," he said, eyes doing an up and down that made my skin feel slimy in the aftermath.
"No, you were talking about my best friend actually. What's the matter? Jealous that she knows how to eat a pussy, and you never learned?"
"That's no language for a lady to use," he chided in a way my father would have. The way he still would if I called.
"Well, I don't see any ladies present," I said, looking around. "But since we're on the topic of inappropriate language, it seems you have missed a software update. We don't use the 'd' word anymore. Or, in case this wasn't obvious, the 'f' one either."
"Look, girlie, fuck off. It's a free country," he said, taking a step closer, his voice going up a decibel. I could, at the very corner of my vision, see Jamie gently pushing Savvs away and moving to stand up straight, ready to step in. Though I couldn't see him, I knew Brodie was within arm's reach of the bat that Charlie had kept under the bar since he opened the joint.
But it wasn't Jamie or Brodie who spoke next.
No.
That was someone else.
Someone I had literally just managed to forget about. You know, after three stiff drinks to help with the memory loss.
"Got a problem?" Sugar's voice asked, calm, but there was an edge to it.
The man's head went over to him, eyes going down to his chest, gaze resting on the one-percent badge sitting there, letting him know exactly who he was looking at.
"With you? No, man. This bitch here-"
"This bitch?" Sugar asked, arm raising, then dropping down heavy across my shoulders. I actually went down an inch or two under the weight. "My bitch?" he asked, making the man literally shock backward, eyes going huge, lips opening and closing like a fish for a second, likely wondering if he was going to make it home to his incredibly unsatisfied wife and embarrassed-by-him kids.
"Look, man," he said, holding up his hands defensively. "I didn't know. I didn't mean no disrespect."
"Disrespect?" Sugar asked, that edge a little stronger in his voice as his head shifted, those brilliant gray eyes pinning me. "He disrespected you?" he asked pointedly.
"Actually," I said, dragging out the silence for a second, enjoying the hell out of the way the guy was going red, his upper lip sweating. Maybe that made me a terrible person, to enjoy his fear like I was, but I never claimed to be good. Or even decent. "He disrespected my friend," I said, jerking my chin to Jamie who was watching the interaction with a look that said she was going to have something to say to me later. "He called her a word that decent people would never think to use."
"Did he now?" he asked, glancing at Jamie, likely picking up on exactly what that word was before looking back at the man who looked like he needed a new pair of underwear. "Well, it sounds like you owe her an apology then, doesn't it?" he asked in a way that was no question at all. It was a demand actually.
And, ah, yeah, it was sexy as fuck, I won't lie.
Almost as sexy as the way his arm had tightened and curled me closer to his body until I had little choice put to press my cheek against his shoulder, my hand raising to rest on his stomach that absolutely did have incredible indentations between his muscles. Of course. Because he was a freaking monument to bad boy perfection.
This close, I could tell other things too. Like he had a nasty scar on his neck. And he smelled like leather and open air and sweat, and it was possibly the most erotic fragrance known to womankind.