“You probably fought them off,” she grumbled, and I didn’t argue because of the two who’d lingered after class. “Anyway, the city has descriptions for everyone in my mind, and they’re accurate whether you like it or not because it’s my mind. No one else’s.”
“You got that right.” As a biker sped by us, I yanked her to my side before he sideswiped her.
She gasped and grabbed one of my lapels. “I swear the description the city has for me is ‘Girl looking to get run over and splashed every day on campus this year.’”
I let my arm hang from her shoulders to keep her close and chuckled at her assessment. Zoey felt way too nice by my side, walking the campus. It made me wonder how’d I’d missed her all semester. “I think the city would describe you as the girl who wants to stay hidden even though she was born to shine.”
She peered up at me and tilted her head enough that a wave of her dark hair fell to her cheek. “How would you know?”
“Because I saw you really smile at Heathen’s Bar. I saw you out of your shell.” I squeezed her shoulder and pulled her closer to me when a breeze hit, and she let me as she walked silently in sync with my steps. We let the air fill our lungs and people pass by without continuing the conversation.
Her hair whipped around like the hat couldn’t contain it and I wondered how soft it was when she didn’t tie it all up and tuck under that thing. She hid a lot of herself under layers—both literally and emotionally—and I wanted to know more and more about what was underneath.
“I saw a lot of things at Heathen’s, too, Cole. Not all of them were rainbows and roses.” She stared hard at me. I hadn’t been sure she was going to bring it up. Though, I wasn’t exactly sure she was bringing it up now. Yet as the heat rose to her cheeks, I could only assume she’d been talking about my hookup in the back room.
“I didn’t ask you to come back there. You knew—”
“I didn’t know anything!” She tried to stop walking and shove my arm off her, but I kept it firmly planted around her shoulders and pushed her forward. I wasn’t letting her go now, not when she was finally breaking from her little shell. “I went back there to put the mops away.”
“You knew as well as I did that Vivica only came for one thing. And there’s no doubt in my mind you only came back there for one thing too. You just don’t know what it is yet.”
“Oh, and you do?” She rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, you wanted me to stop what I was doing with her so we could start doing what we’re supposed to be doing together.”
“I’m not even going to ask what you think that’s supposed to be,” she grumbled. Her cheeks weren’t red from the spring breeze, and she kept her gaze straight ahead like she couldn’t look me in the eye at the moment.
“It’s fine. I’m not asking for anything else except for you to come work with us.” I spewed bullshit because I knew my body was only interested in one thing at the moment, the woman up against my side.
“Look, Cole. I like bars. Honestly, I do,” she admitted when we came to a crosswalk and waited for the signal to get moving. “I like people. I like the crowds and the letting loose and the idea that people have a place to go to make them feel better when the world seems to have handed them a shit card.”
Her words rang true to me. When the owner of the bar gave me the opportunity to manage, my first priority had been making sure the customers felt safe and that my crew was just as secure too. Heathen’s was a place anyone could go and feel comfortable, like we were there to protect them from the judgment of anyplace else and give them a good time.
Heathens were a little messed up in the head, and I knew every one of my employees had their problems, but they protected each person who came into the bar like one of their own.
Once a heathen, always a heathen. It was our motto and every one of them lived by it.
“So, why aren’t you working in one now?” I asked the question I knew shaped her lifestyle. The way she’d looked at me when we first met, when I’d kept the lecture hall’s door closed, and the way she avoided certain interactions told me something big had happened in her life to keep her from what she already knew she loved.
“I just have a lot of responsibility that doesn’t allow me to go wild like most college students can. I don’t want to get lost in the nightlife and not be able to do well in school.”
“Mm-hmm.” I pulled her forward across the street, never taking my arm off her. The IT building was just up ahead and I found myself slowing my pace. I wanted more time to ask questions, more time to get to know her, to understand why the hell she was so much more guarded than any other woman I’d met. “You’re lying. But that’s fine. I’ve got all semester to figure it out.”
“Cole,” she sighed, “I just have a lot going on.”
“Great.” I pointed at the building up ahead. “I’m here to help. First, we’ll get your laptop fixed. Next, we’ll get you on the schedule for next week because you need the money and enjoy the job, and I need to figure you out.”
“There’s nothing to figure out.”
“Oh, there is. You’re hiding things. Girls don’t do that with me. They share all their secrets.”
“Yes, I’m aware.” She curled her lip. “Is your ego hurt?” She raised an eyebrow and snickered as I stepped in front of her to grab the door to the IT building.
“Nah. My ego’s too big for that.”
My old roommate, Weston, sat at the front of a stark-white tabletop that spread across the whole front of the building, separating customers from the workers. All of them were out tinkering with different parts of hardware, though. Not one of them tried to hide behind the barrier, but all four of the guys’ eyes zoomed in on us the moment we walked in.
One of them waddled quickly to the front before Weston’s head popped up. Weston shot his arm out to block the guy. Without looking over his shoulder at his colleague, he yelled, “He’s my friend. He brought his laptop for me to fix. It’s mine.”
One the employees actually groaned in back.
Weston pushed up his glasses and zeroed in on Zoey’s bag. “You got a laptop that needs fixing?”
She nodded and handed me the bag as if a bit frightened with how ravenous the guys were to get their hands on anything broken.
I pulled out the laptop and handed it over.
Weston opened it to see the shards of the screen falling everywhere. “Ah, a broken screen. Let’s hope that’s all it is.”
Zoey leaned in and whispered, “Doesn’t really sound like that’s his hope.”
When he pressed the start button, the computer flickered on for a second before dying. “Hm, it looks like your motherboard might be fried too!” He sounded like someone had just handed him his favorite candy. Without saying another word to us, he disappeared into the tech chaos behind him.
“How did you say you two know each other? You don’t seem like …”
She let her description trail off. We looked around and took two chairs in the waiting area before I answered. “He actually is my type of friend. I got here on scholarship. Straight A student, head of the chess club, and the apple of my mother’s eye.”