Sugar (The Henchmen MC 12)

And, I shit you not, Lenny burst the fuck out laughing.

"Whenever he is around, I can't get that fucking song out of my head," Lenny said, shaking her head as she looked at me.

And, well, that song had been following me around since the early 2000s. I had learned to roll with it, embrace it. I had yet to meet a woman who didn't make a Baby Bash reference. Unless they were too old or too young to know what that even meant.

"I still want a rematch, Len," Adler declared suddenly, signaling the dartboard.

"Why? So you can claim I cheated again, you sore ass loser," Lenny called back, but lightly. None of her usual barbed wire in her tone.

"Are you joining us?" Peyton asked, jumping off the counter.

Lenny looked at Meryl, knowing her shift wasn't over, but clearly not caring. "Yep."

"So... how do I turn on 'No Diggity?'" Peyton asked as we all made our way into the back. "Damn. It's like the cast of Cheers hung around. And aged. Badly," she told me, looking around. "Look, there's Norm!" she declared to a heavyset man with curly hair in the corner.

Christ.

She was a handful sober.

I couldn't imagine her shitfaced.

She'd been drinking at Chaz's last Saturday, but she'd been careful. Especially once her friends left. It was clear that she was on the prowl, and she was smart enough to know there was fun-drinking and then there was dangerous-drinking. So she toed that line carefully.

Now?

Now I think she was ready to striptease right over that line.

Why?

Well, honestly... because of me.

It shouldn't have, but it absolutely did, somehow make me stand up straighter, feel... I dunno... needed? And I liked the feeling.

Shit.

That was not good, right?

To want to be needed by a woman?

Especially a woman who out and out told me that if I caught feelings, she was gone.

"You look sick," Virgin said, moving in beside me. Already, the weight seemed off his shoulders. He had barely had a sip of his drink. It was just the fresh air, the new scenery - as buttfuck ugly as it was - that calmed him down. "That girl," he said, nodding his chin toward Peyton who was raising a shot glass to clink Adler's, "she got a hook in you."

"Yet I don't think she is even aware she is fishing," I said, reaching for my beer, already having decided that if she was going hard, I needed to go light, so I opted out of hard liquor.

"Not like you," he added casually, since it was true.

"I know," I agreed.

"If you were going to catch feelings, at least it is for a mermaid," he said, making me turn over my shoulder to look at him. "What?" he asked at whatever look I was sending him.

"A mermaid?" I asked, shaking my head. "That's sappy as fuck."

"Fuck off. I'm not the one giving puppy eyes to some girl I met a week ago."

Well, he had me there, didn't he?NINEPeyton"Your. Your," I said, knowing I was slurring slightly, and too happy to care. "Not yer. Yer... is not a word."

"Yer is a word. Ya just don't say it right."

I liked Adler.

I liked Adler as soon as he opened his mouth.

Because, well, he had an accent.

This town was crawling with them, apparently.

What was his accent, you might ask? That would be a good question. Because it wasn't one. It was a melting pot of them. I could make out something guttural under it all - German, Russian, Polish. Something a little rough. But then paired with something soft and lilting - Irish or Scottish. And then a strange American under it all, but undefinable. Not quite a New York, but not a Boston either. And certainly not a southern. It was just... something.

But on top of the accent, he was just... chill. And absurd. In equal turns.

"I'm just saying," Norm said behind Adler. His real name wasn't Norm, of course, but he would forever be Norm now. "They are changing the name of the school just because he owned slaves. It's wrong. That is our history."

"So are chamberpots," I said to him, making him shock back at the sound of my voice. "And yet we don't piss in buckets for nostalgia."

"You can't erase him because you don't like him," he insisted. I was hoping he was simply drunk, not just stupid.

"No one is erasing history. Trust me. I work in the library. I am... intimately acquainted," I said, giving Sugar a sly smile, "with the American History section. Jefferson is still there. Calm your tits."

"Fucking millennials," he grumbled into his drink.

I would have responded to that, but Sugar moved in behind me, curling an arm around my center, and, well, my brain went to mush. But... not because of him. Of course. That would be silly. It was totally just all the tequila catching up with me. That's all.