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I FELT INCREDIBLY AWKWARD as I programmed my phone to call forwarding and headed down to the lobby with Eric. We walked right past Tom—who was staring at me in utter shock, right past Jamie—who gave us a casual wave before returning to his call, and right past Rose—who looked with wide eyes between Tom and Eric before giving me a huge approving grin.
We rode the elevator in silence—a silence punctuated with him throwing me little looks out of the corner of his eye—and headed out onto the street without having a clue as to where we were going to go.
“Uh...do you like sushi?” I asked hesitantly, grasping for something familiar.
He chuckled. “I have a place in mind.” His eyes swept me appraisingly before they lit up with a huge grin. “How well do you know Brooklyn...?”
About forty minutes later, we stepped onto a curb on the wrong side of the bridge. I stared around in wonder as the taxi hightailed it back to the upper echelons of society, probably wondering what we were doing here. Don’t get me wrong—I liked Brooklyn. But this was about as sketchy as I thought Brooklyn could possibly get.
Finally, I turned to Eric with a sigh. “Are you going to mug me?”
His eyes widened in surprise. “What?”
“Look, if you took me here to mug me, or kill me, or something—just get it over with, okay? I’ve had a long day already, and it’s not even halfway through—”
“Whoa—that guy really did a number on you, didn’t he?”
I tried to suck in a breath, but it felt as though my lungs suddenly weren’t working properly. “What? Uh—what guy? What are you talking about?”
He shook back his shaggy hair and laughed, taking me by the hand and half-pulling me across the street. “The guy by the elevator? The guy who made you cry? The guy I decided I was going to hit in the face if he tried to stop you from leaving with me?”
He said each phrase like a question, and although they chilled my blood to hear, there was something lighthearted about the way he said them. Something that made me want to trust.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said quickly, pulling my coat tighter around me as we hurried down the street.
However friendly and trustworthy he might seem, that was a fire-able offense he was talking about. And I wasn’t entertaining even the slightest delusion that he didn’t know exactly who ‘the guy’ by the elevator was.
He laughed again, taking my hand in such a natural way that I honestly didn’t think anything of it until we were already two blocks over. “I’m sure.”
His eyes scanned down the seemingly identical-looking store fronts. Each one was chained up tight—each one looked like it had been the host of several unspeakable crimes.
“What are we doing here?” I finally asked, pulling us to a stop and staring around.
“Hang on...” his eyes were unfocused, “I’m just trying to remember... Aha! Here it is!”
He knocked rhythmically on a side door I hadn’t noticed before, and the next second, it was swinging open to allow us inside.
I know what you’re thinking: smart city girls like me didn’t go to Brooklyn and walk willingly into actual holes in the wall with people they didn’t know. But this guy worked at Larchwood. He was Jamie’s best man. And furthermore, however intentional it might have been, he’d gotten me out of a rather sticky situation back at the office.
I followed him inside.
The second I ducked my head under the door, I was hit with both a wave of music and the unmistakable stench of day old beer and stale peanuts. My eyes grew wide as I followed close behind him inside, adjusting to the dim lighting at the same time that I saw all the people.
It didn’t seem to matter what time of the day it was outside, in here, it was full on happy hour. There were a dozen different sports games playing from a dozen different televisions mounted all over the walls. A gnarled bartender stationed in the center of the room was firing out drinks with the speed of an Olympian. And well over a hundred people at all walks and stages of life were drunkenly falling all over each other—laughing, dancing, and playing darts and pool.
And drinking—always drinking.
“I’m going to get us some seats.” Eric cocked his head over to the busy booths lining the side of the wall. He slipped a twenty into my hand. “Why don’t you get us the first round?”
“Um, okay,” I said tentatively, glancing around, “what do you like?”
He shrugged. “Alcohol. I’ll see you in a few.”
Without another word, he headed off to the other side of the circus, leaving me standing in the middle, clutching my twenty, in my new dress.
I jumped out of the way as a pair of what looked like sumo-wrestlers went crashing down beside me, holding up my purse protectively to stop any splashes of beer from staining the silk. The two men were tangled up—half play-wrestling, half real-fighting—both completely wasted.
“Um...Eric?” My head whirled around to find him.
Shouldn’t someone be stopping these two before they did any real damage? I looked around at the cheerful, oblivious faces. Okay, I’d set my sights lower—shouldn’t someone be at least noticing what was going on?
But the next second, one man pulled the other to his feet, clapping him roughly on the back before they both returned to the bar to order another round. Shaking my head incredulously, I followed them at a safe distance, keeping my head down as people began to look my way.
“What can I get for you, sweetheart?” the barkeep barked at me when it was finally my turn. Up close, his face looked even more contorted than before, and I struggled to maintain a neutral expression as I ordered.
“Do you by chance have any Chardonnay?”
He looked at me like he both thought I was joking and had never heard an actual joke in his life. I quickly adjusted.
“Two whiskey sours, please.”
A second later, I was tiptoeing my way across the battlefield, balancing the two drinks, as I went to find Eric. He was posted up in the one remaining booth, gazing rather peacefully out the window considering the chaos that was going on behind him.
“Hey,” I said as I sat down, sliding a drink his way. “This place is...really something.”
He laughed, then laughed again as he saw what I’d come back with. “Oh honey, you only got two.”
I paused. “Are we expecting more people?”
“No—” he downed his in a fraction of a second, “but we’re expecting to get drunk.” He lifted the empty glass and shouted across the noisy bar. “Billy!” The barkeep looked up and waved as Eric grinned. “A lot more please, keep them coming.”
As ‘Billy’ turned to do what he asked, Eric shifted back to me seriously.
“Whatever you were thinking when you saw him—you weren’t imagining it. Rumor has it he was once attacked by an ostrich outside Sydney. That’s why his face looks like that...”
This time, it was me who threw back my head with a laugh.
“Who are you? What is this place? And what are we doing here?”
He chuckled, taking one of the six more drinks that suddenly appeared on the table. “I told you...we’re getting drunk. You down with that?”
My eyes strayed once more around the rowdy bar before circling around to land on my partner in crime. I picked up another whiskey and clinked it against his. “I am now.”