Fall to Pieces - Shari J. Ryan Page 0,1
little water to it if you’d like,” he offers to her.
“Water?” She reacts like he offered to add something vile. “Charming, but I don’t need water.”
“Whiskey lovers sometimes add a bit of water to bring out the taste. I wasn’t sure what kind of whiskey drinker you are, but one should never presume, right?” Luke isn’t one to beat around the bush with his patrons.
The girl lifts a brow at Luke, seeming to question his facts.
I should stop staring before I become the weak idiot who approaches this chick tonight. She could be meeting someone; a tough guy and needs to look the part. That might make more sense than a pretty little thing walking in here like she isn’t concerned about being in a bar full of rowdy, drunken assholes.
“One more, please. Something different this time,” she says along with the sound of her glass clinking against the bar.
Again, I tell myself to stop looking over, but I’m curious why she’s asking for more when she still has a full glass sitting in front of her. My head falls to the side for a moment as I notice that the glass is empty. It’s hardly been a minute since Luke placed the contents down in front of her. Damn. There is no way she inhaled that—not with the look I saw on her face after she took the first sip.
“Are you sure about that, miss?” Luke asks.
I wince on behalf of Luke because in the few minutes I’ve studied this girl, I can assume she won’t take kindly to someone second-guessing a decision she made.
“Yes, I’m certain,” she says, gritting through her perky peach lips.
Stress lines cut into Luke’s forehead as he tends to a bottle of Swift Texas Whiskey and pours the girl another glass. Luke will hold a tab if he feels a patron has had too much to drink, but after knowing the man as long as I have, I’m presuming he wants to know why this girl is sitting here, drinking whiskey like it’s a glass of water she just found in the middle of a desert.
“What’s your story?” Luke asks her. I wonder how Luke keeps track of the information he inherits. He’s a good man, always asking people about their troubles, taking them in, digesting the long drawn out stories that could be shortened to a few sentences. He’s good at giving them a listening ear they often need. I’m not sure I could do what he does. He’s obviously going for sainthood.
“I don’t have a story,” the girl says.
Luke directs his attention to the glass he’s drying, giving the girl a minute in case she changes her mind. “I see, but everyone’s got a story, don’t they?”
“No,” she says. “Not everyone. In fact, I just finished a story. It was a horrible, miserable plot in the worst book I’ve ever read. In fact, the story was so bad, no one else should ever read it.”
“Okay then. I can respect that. Do you at least have a name?” he asks.
She glares at him for a minute in between her long drawn out sip of the remaining whiskey in her glass. “Do you ask the name of every woman who sits down at your bar?”
“Well, yes I do. And the fellas too,” he argues. “Let me introduce you to a few of the regulars. That’s Dill.” He points to the guy sitting two seats down from me. “That’s Phillip.” He nods toward the guy on the opposite end of the bar. “And that there is Chance.” Luke gestures to me, and I drop my head, avoiding eye contact. I don’t want her to think I’ve been tuning in to the conversation this whole time. “Oh, and I’m Luke.”
The girl pulls in a sharp breath and presses her lips together into a hint of a smile. “Okay, Luke,” she drones. “Well, I’m August, but we still aren’t friends.”
Luke lifts his palms up in defense. I know he meant nothing bad by his attempt at small talk. “Understood. I’ll just carry on over here, and you—” Luke twists his lips to the side and nods his head in a circle, “just do whatever it is you’re doing over there.”
No one ever turns down a friendly smile like Luke’s. The guy makes more in tips than the techies in the high-rise buildings downtown. I’ve told him a time or two he should take it up a notch and get his behind over to a bar that is