There was a long pause before he spoke.
“Fine,” he finally growled. “Are you drinking at the bar right now? Do you need me to drive you over?”
“I’ve had one drink, I’ll be fine,” I said, and then something clicked. “How did you know I was here?”
“I can hear the background noise,” he said.
“Oh.”
“Give me ten minutes. I’ll text you when I’m outside.”
“I have my car.”
“I’ll drive. I’ll text you when I’m outside.”
“I can drive.”
“Not an option the way the snow is piling up on these roads. See you soon.”
He hung up, and I stayed staring at my phone for a moment.
He’d been unusually headstrong about not driving after even one drink. My friends back home definitely weren’t like that. I was fine to drive. But he had a point about the roads, and I had next-to-no experience driving through a snow storm.
A weight had been lifted off my shoulders though. At least I wasn’t going to freeze to death tonight. Well, I probably wouldn’t have frozen to death. I would have tested the strength of my covers, though.
As I glanced around the bar, I felt happy just to be out of my father’s house. Being in the same place without a change of scenery was wearing on me, even though it had been less than a week at this point.
A close death was a strange feeling, I thought. You were in no physical pain, and it wasn’t as though you were wronged in some way, or someone cheated on you. Another person’s death wasn’t your fault. It was a natural occurrence. In fact, it was something that happened to every single person who lived. Yet death seemed to eat away at your soul more than physical pain. I was feeling the pain of my father’s permanent absence greatly tonight.
Relief set in that I would be in someone else’s presence tonight. Forget the broken heater. I needed to not be alone with my thoughts.
I pondered what Shane and I would do tonight, and something coiled in my stomach. Was I crazy for asking the same man who’d tried to seduce me yesterday if I could stay at his place?
How much was my need to know why he’d seduced me at one-hundred miles per hour and then slammed on the brakes affecting my judgment?
My train of thought was interrupted when I caught two men who were playing pool staring at me from the other side of the room.
I tried to stare at them without staring, but that was impossible in this small bar. I wanted to see if I could remember them from back when.
Just then, a woman next to me who appeared to be around the same age struck up a conversation.
“Hey, where are you from?” she smiled.
“Uh, I’m from here,” I said, trying to make my accent sound as Michigan as possible.
She squinted, tossing her brown hair. “I haven’t seen you around here. And I’ve been here a long time.”
“I moved away when I was twelve to Florida,” I explained.
“Oh, okay. That makes sense. That was what, ten years ago?”
I shrugged. “Nine or so, yeah.”
She nodded and took a sip of her beer. “So you missed the big mining accident.”
My insides flipped. My father had never told me anything about a mining accident. I decided to play dumb and not tell her I was the daughter of Bruce Toft.
“What happened, exactly?”
“I don’t remember all the details. I just remember my dad saying something about an accident.” She shrugged, and tipped her beer bottle in the direction of my black knit hat that was hanging off my chair. “You had that Toft Mining hat. Figured your dad mighta worked there.”
“Yeah, he did.” I nodded, but didn’t elaborate. What was this accident?
And why wouldn’t my dad have told me about it?
The two men who had been playing pool were standing at the bar now, and chills racked through me when one of them caught my eyes. He was gaunt, and a little too pale for how young he seemed.
Suddenly, I felt my heart pumping with adrenaline and I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if I was attracted to either of them in the slightest. They made me uncomfortable. I checked my phone to see what time it was. It had been seven minutes since I got off the phone with Shane. I wished it had been ten.
“So, what do you do?” I asked the young woman, making small talk and trying to pretend I didn’t mind that two shady-looking guys were staring at me like cyclops. “Oh, and what’s your name? How rude of me not to ask.”
“I’m Elaine,” she said. “You?”
“Natalie.” We shook hands.
“I work waiting tables at Vixens. Yeah it’s a few blocks down the street from here.”
I pinched my face. “Vixens? I’ve not heard of that. What kind of food do you serve?”
She smiled. “Bless your little heart. It’s okay, you don’t have to play dumb.”
“Play...dumb?”
She leaned over to me, putting her hand on my arm.
“It’s a strip club, honey. I’m not ashamed of what I do.”
“Oh,” I nodded.
Vixens. Of course.
She shrugged playfully. “Lotta bored guys around here. I don’t mind it. I’m saving up to move out of here.”
“You make good money?”
She nodded. “Oh yes. What do you do by the way? You’re pretty. I could get you a job if you want.”
I blushed. “Oh, I’m not living here.”
“No? Then why on earth are you passing through here on a Sunday night in the middle of a blizzard?”
Before I could answer, we noticed the two guys had now inched their way closer to us at the bar, and seemed to be inches from Elaine. The taller one stared me down and my fight or flight mechanism dinged like crazy. I wasn’t about to fight these two scary looking guys.
She didn’t seem to notice, or care, until one of them touched her.
“Jared, Bob, will you give us some goddamn space! I’m trying to have a conversation with my friend here.”
Whirling her head around, she seared her eyes into them fearlessly. One of them scowled, then they grabbed their drinks off the bar and went back to play another game of pool.
Their eyes looked so empty as they walked away, it sent a shiver down my spine.
Damn. This woman was tiny but fierce, but I decided right then and there I wanted to be her friend. I needed to cultivate the way she was able to confront those guys so easily. I was the worst at confrontation.
“Though she be but little, she is fierce,” I mumbled under my breath.
“I’m sorry?”
“Oh. Just a Shakespeare quote. I read it in one of my dad’s books today. Who are those guys?”
“I like the quote. They’re a couple of the local hooligans. I’ve grown up with them since I was little. Unfortunately, they’ve gotten into some things lately...do you know about the drug problem here?”
“I’ve heard a little about it.”
“We’ve had a lot of people fall into addiction. People you wouldn’t expect. During the summer, it’s not as bad. There’s more to do, and the economy picks up with the tourist season, and people going to the lake. In the winter though, everyone’s on something.”