tumblers from the stack near the taps and pouring bourbon into each one.
“Honey, no…” He waved her off, his long fingers moving in an elegant flourish Gia knew she couldn’t manage. He was tall and thin, his body cut, but the man was pretty, not handsome, elegant, and sported painted long nails and fake, black lashes to go with the trimmed stubble on his face. Drunk as she was, Gia had noticed how he tended to direct most of his attention to the male patrons, staunchly avoiding the female customers, leaving them to the other servers as he spent most of his time flirting, not serving. “Give me back the bottle…” His concern for the bottle dropped when one of the men at the end of the bar called him over. The man abandoned Cat and Gia in his mad dash to wait on the linebacker-looking guy motioning to him with his empty glass.
“Right,” Cat said, pushing the tumbler to Gia before she picked her own drink and downed a sip, refilling both.
“That was…impressive,” Gia said, nodding to Cat when she refilled her tumbler and led her away from the bar and down the steps to a mostly empty section of plush seating with a small table.
“Don’t be impressed. I’ve been here before when that one is managing the bar. He might appear to be distracted by all the pretty boys,” she said, taking another sip from her drink, “but he’ll remember to add it to our tab, don’t worry.”
There were couples converged around the cushions, most making out, some just talking, and Gia and Cat chose to stand rather than sit, with the now half empty bottle of bourbon between them as they leaned on the table. “Still, you moved fast and retained your calm. You have skills you’ve been hiding.”
“Not hiding a thing,” she told Gia, grinning as the music got louder and she moved her body in time with it. “I’m good at my job, you know that. We both are.”
“Hey, no shop top. We pinky promised.”
“We did.” Cat tapped the rim of her tumbler to Gia’s, and the women drank.
They’d made the promise at Gia’s apartment, downing the absinthe Cat had brought from her cousin’s store. “It’s hella old,” she’d explained to Gia. “And I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to drink and then go out in public, especially not during Mardi Gras. But, what the hell, right?”
“Okay, we’ll do this. Just promise me if I do anything stupid, you won’t mention it later.” They’d stood across from each other at Gia’s island staring at the green liquid in the bottle, watching it like it was going to explode. There was a lot of mystery tied up in this drink, most of it bullshit Gia had only read about in vampire novels or seen in Gary Oldman movies.
Cat had offered her pinky to her new boss, her expression solemn. “I promise not to mention a damn thing, if you promise not to fire me for getting you into anything you might be embarrassed over later.”
Gia had taken Cat’s pinky with her own, giving it a shake. “How about we just say tonight we’re friends. We’re only friends and we don’t even mention work even a little bit?”
“Deal.”
The club had been the last stop, Gia was sure. Cat had brought her to her uncle’s apartment right on Bourbon and Gia had experienced her first ever parade from the balcony of a hundred years old building. She’d never seen anything like it. She hoped she never would again. It amazed her what people would do for fifty cents worth of plastic beads and how quickly thousands of inhibitions got lowered when the right song hit their ears and the right stimulant ran through their system.
As the room heated and the crowd thickened around her, Gia started to understand that herself. The high she’d gotten from the absinthe wasn’t as potent as it had been fifteen minutes before, but the bourbon was warming her and the music was making her feel a little less ridged. Those wings were starting to stretch. They wanted to reach out and take flight.
Then, the baseline dipped low and Gia took what remained of the last shot of bourbon, downing it in a long swig that burned when it hit her stomach. That dulling high returned, and she felt her skin humming and the hairs on the back of her neck bristle and stand as the memory raced forward, brought to the forefront by