Elle spent the rest of the week unpacking all of her belongings and setting up her room the way she liked it. On Tuesday, her parents took her younger brother to a private prep school a few miles away from their house to register for his senior year; He didn't even start classes until September, but he somehow managed to become one of the most popular kids in school. She was right in assuming that she wouldn't be accepted into this community. A few neighbors dropped by to give her family food that their chefs had made, but also to brag about themselves.
Her brother made friends with the neighborhood kids easily, but anyone who was Elle's age looked down on her because she was not in college, despite how she tried to explain how she was saving money for it. Elle could honestly say it didn't bother her to not fit in with her family or their new friends and neighbors. She didn't spend a lot of time outside of her bedroom unless she was working. On Wednesday, Elle found employment in a small, seedy bar in downtown Philadelphia as a bartender and waitress. Her parents were left very much in the dark about her new job; Elle was positive that working in a seedy little bar would definitely count as embarrassing her father.
Her first day was Friday at five o'clock. Apparently the owner wanted Elle to be trained during a time when the bar was busy, so she would be used to the fast pass environment when she was the only bartender on shift. Although she only worked for three hours, Elle was exhausted by the time the other bartender told her that she could leave. Three hours of mixing drinks, of being jeered at and groped, of standing in four inch high heeled pumps without sitting down once. The pay wasn't the greatest, but she did get a discount on food and beverages and she made a lot of money in tips, despite the fact that she messed up drink orders often; the perks of being a female bartender, she supposed. Until she found a better job, this one would have to do.
As she got onto a bus that would take her close enough to her house so she could walk, Elle decided that the first thing she would save up money for was a car. There was a lot of creepy people of the bus that stared at her and made dirty jokes. When the bus stopped, she got up and off quickly before she began walking briskly in the direction of her new house. Although it was only the end of June, the air in Philadelphia was crisp and cool at night, reminding Elle just how much she missed Georgia. She rubbed her arms to create friction for warmth as goosebumps began appearing across her exposed flesh.
Thankfully, the familiar red brick, two story house quickly came into view. Elle punched in the four digit code for the security system and walked up to the front porch without noticing all the cars parked on the street. However, she did notice all the people standing around, drinking and talking when she opened the front door; her father's company party must have already started. As soon as Elle shut the front door behind her, the talking stopped and all eyes seemed to be on her. At first, she didn't really understand why until her father charged at her from the middle of the small crowd in the living room with her face and ears burning bright red. "Elisabelle Alexandria Anders, what the hell do you think you're wearing?!"
Elle looked down at herself, only just realizing that she was still wearing what was considered a uniform for the female bartenders; a tight black skirt or shorts, a skirt in Elle's case, a crop top with the restaurant's logo emblazoned on the front, and the high heeled pumps. She didn't even get a minute to explain before her father began to scream himself hoarse about her embarrassing him. Elle privately thought that he was making this situation so much worse, if he didn't say anything or react this badly, she could have gone to change upstairs without much people noticing her.
Not that she would have said this out loud, of course. Her mother had enough sense to keep calm as she weaved in and out of the sea of people. "Go upstairs and change your clothes. I've laid out a dress for you." She smiled pleasantly, but her green eyes were practically spitting acid.
Eager to get away from her father and his scary looking angry face, Elle did as her mother instructed and walked up the staircase as slowly as she dared. She didn't want to make her father any angrier than he already was, but she also didn't want to trip in her high heels and give the guests standing in the foyer a view of her yellow lace panties. Elle didn't want to turn around when she got to the top of the stares because she could still feel stares on her back. Some were judging, some were amused and some were… lustful? Against her better judgement, Elle glanced down the stairs and her eyes locked with a guy who was standing in the foyer. Although she had caught him staring, he didn't avert his gaze. Instead, he held her gaze and smirked as he brought a beer bottle to his lips, draining the contents in three large gulps.
He was dressed in a pair of ratty blue jeans, a slightly stained T-shirt that was covered by a leather jacket while his feet were encased in black boots with scuff marks around the toes. There was a cigarette behind his ear and his dirty blonde hair was a mess of curls that partly covered his eyes. For a reason that Elle could not explain, she felt her cheeks heat up under his scrutiny, but she only continued moving from her spot when her father walked around the corner and glared up at her.
As soon as Elle was out of the guests eye range, she took off her shoes and carried them by the backs as she walked up the flight of stairs to her bedroom, shutting and locking the door behind her.
"Well that was awkward." She mumbled to herself as she stripped out of her uniform. She was not thinking about the way she showed up to her father's company party dressed like a girl who worked on a street corner. That was a little awkward, but what she was thinking about was her father in general. Watching him nearly explode with anger because Elle unintentionally acted like she wasn't the perfect daughter they tried to make her felt so good. It was such a rush, like liquid fire flowing through her veins to know that she could get under her parents skin so easily.
Elle's mother and father has been punishing her since she was a child, simply because she didn't want to be the CEO of some international business that practically robbed its employees while she bought her third vacation home in Greece. As she pulled the dress up her thighs and hips, she decided that maybe it was time for her to punish her parents. When Elle returned to the party downstairs, the feeling of awkwardness returned with her as she shared another moment with the blonde haired stranger, if you could even call it a moment.
She had been stared at all night while she was working, eventually she got used to the feeling and learned to ignore it, although the eyes on her were very much unwelcome. And yet, under his watch, she discovered that she didn't mind it as much, which was crazy, she thought as she descended from the second floor. How was this guy who was staring at her with hooded bedroom eyes, any different than the freaks and perverts who were hitting on her at the bar?
Those freaks and perverts don't work for my father, Elle realized as she reached the last step. She knew her father all too well, she knew who would get his stamp of approval and who wouldn't; this guy was definitely the latter. The gears in her imagination began working overtime as she pictured her father's reaction to her bringing a guy like that home for dinner. The thought alone made her smile.
Elle grinned and winked at the blonde haired stranger as she eased past him and the black haired guy he was now flanked by to get a drink from the kitchen, loving the way her father's right eye twitched in an attempt to hold in his anger. He could try to control her life all he wanted, but she was going to have fun and enjoy her life, she was not going to make it easy for him. And as for the blonde haired stranger… well, she wasn't going to make it easy for him, either.
The rest of the night went by much slower than she had hoped. Elle could still feel her father's anger, but it was also added with the blonde's burning rage as she ignored him for most of the night, save for a few glances and smirks she shot him as she danced and flirted with his black haired friend, whose name she didn't even know. By the time the clock struck midnight, Elle's father has almost completely lost his voice from the sheer volume of his screaming. When her mother went to get to him a glass of whiskey, Elle left the room to go to bed.
"You said this party was going to be interesting and you were right!" Sami giggled in the front seat of Jon's Impala. His eyes were glazed over and he sat slumped over in his seat. The amount of beers and shots he consumed the entire night were finally starting to take effect. However, he was not too drunk to notice the way Jon's left hand was gripping the steering wheel tightly, while the right hand was fumbling around in search of a lighter.
Sami opened the glove compartment and grabbed the plastic yellow lighter that was inside before he lit Jon's cigarette for him. "What's wrong, Mox?" Sami asked, looking very much like the concerned little brother that Jon thought of him as. Normally Jon appreciated the concern Sami had for him due to the lack of concern his mother had for him as a child, but right now, he was too angry to care.
"Nothing's wrong." Jon said rather harshly as he took a deep drag of his cigarette and blew the inhaled smoke out of his nostrils, looking very much like an angry dragon. He was quiet after that for about five seconds, which Sami counted off on his fingers before Jon suddenly explored loud enough to scare a cat in an alley they were driving by. "How could that bitch just ignore me?!" And suddenly the pieces of the puzzle fell perfectly together as Sami understood what was making Jon so pissed. It was the same reason why Sami found the party so interesting, and it wasn't the free booze. It was Anders' daughter.
"Maybe you got it wrong," Sami tried to reason with him, although he did feel guilty, as her attention was mostly focused on him the entire night. "Maybe she is some little princess who wastes all her daddy's money and dresses like a hooker to get attention. You don't need something like that in your life."
No, Jon thought privately to himself as he pulled the Chevy Impala into the parking lot of their apartment building. I don't need it, but I want it. And Jon Moxley always got what he wanted.
Elle only remained on her father's bad side for a few weeks after the company party incident. Despite how badly she wanted her family to be punished, that wild energy seemed to frizzle away shortly after. There were only so many way to drive her parents absolutely insane by herself; dressing in clothes her parents hated, smoking cigarettes in the house, she even stole her father's credit card and took the Escalade for a joyride, returning four hours later with a dented front bumper and a brand new wardrobe. Her parents were angry, it was true, but their anger wasn't enough to send them over the top.
Elle knew one thing that would cause her parents to completely freak out, but she didn't see a way to make the situation happen. Her thoughts travelled back to her father's company party and, more specifically, to the blonde haired guy with the black leather jacket. She told herself that she wasn't going to make it easy for him, but she hadn't counted on him not making it easy for her, either. Elle hadn't seen that guy since her father's party, she knew that he was obviously his employee, but that was about it. Her father ran all the stores in the state of Pennsylvania and all employees from different stores attended the party that night, so it didn't really surprise her that she would not see him again.
Asking her father was out of the question, and without that information, Elle's plan dissolved rather rapidly. It seemed like she would just have to continue wrecking luxury SUVs and burning holes in her mother's linens with her cigarettes. With all this misbehavior, the only added thing that Elle could think of to annoy her parents was to continue mentioning the taboo words, "music school" in their presence, and to continue working at the bar.
Since she had started there almost a month ago, Elle had been scheduled to work afternoon shifts, something she was thankful for. The most costumers she got were businessmen who wanted a beer with their lunch. Elle got into an easy, comfortable routine by working during the day. She was able to take a university level English class at night, bringing her one step closer to her future in music school. The routine she established was drastically altered when Elle finished her shift at five o'clock towards the end July. As soon as Brody, a fellow bartender relieved her, Elle went into the back office to see the schedule for the next week, pinned to the cork board.
"Eight o'clock at night?" She asked in disbelief, turning to look at her boss as he sat down at his desk, doing paperwork to order food and alcohol for the next week.
"Is there a problem with that?" Her boss asked rhetorically, not bothering to look up from his work order, as though he did not expect Elle to actually complain.
"I thought I was scheduled for the afternoon shift, not the night shift." Elle said, trying not to look as stressed out as she felt. She knew she had to tread carefully when her boss finally looked up, with his dark, thick eyebrows raised; she stopped talking immediately under his stare.
"The flow of business changes all the time, which means that schedules change all the time. If you don't like it, I strongly suggest that you find another job." He looked back down at his paperwork before adding, "You are replaceable, Elisabelle. Don't think that you aren't."
Of course Elle knew she was replaceable; anyone could be a bartender and a waitress. On the following Saturday Elle showed up to work at eight o'clock, unhappy with the changes in the schedule, but grateful to still have a job that she desperately needed. A fake smile was sent to the bartender whose shift she would be relieving as she tied a small apron around her hips and walked behind the bar. For the next three hours, Elle mixed drinks and brought food to tables; she was in the middle of mixing a Long Island Iced Tea when a particularly loud group of individuals walked into the restaurant.
Elle kept her eyes on the glass in front of her, until the familiar feeling of being watched creeped upon her. She knew that people had been watching her all night long, but this gaze was one she had felt before. Almost instinctively, Elle glanced up and her eyes locked with the blonde haired stranger from her father's company party. He was surrounded by the shorter, dark haired guy that she danced with, as well as the group of rowdy guys.
From beside her, Brody heaved an exasperated sigh and picked up a tumbler to clean it. They both watched as the group settled into one of the large, half circle booths in what was designated Elle's side of the bar. Brody didn't even bother to hide his relief as he openly thanked God that they didn't sit on his side of the restaurant.
Asshole. But as Elle grabbed the notepad from her apron pocket and walked over to the rambunctious group, she thanked God too. She thought that her plan to piss off her father started and ended with her bratty behavior at his party, she had given up on the idea of using this dangerous looking stranger to torment her parents like they had been tormenting her. But as she continued to make her way over to the booth, her confidence grew when she realized his gaze hadn't left her since he walked into the bar with his friends. This didn't mean that he made any sort of attempt to help her as he watched her struggle to politely get the group's attention.
After a few minutes of this being ineffective, her patience reached a breaking point and any form of politeness went out the window as she shouted, "Hey!" and all chatter at the booth instantly ceased. She put on her nicest smile and held her notepad and pen tightly in her hand. "What can I get you guys?"
"We'll take a round of tequila shots, babe." The blonde haired stranger demanded with a smirk. His voice was low, rough and gravelly; it made her insides squirm and tingle. Elle wrote down the round of shots on her notepad as well as the individual beers they ordered, her mind barely comprehending the request as she tried to decide if maybe this guy was still as interested as he seemed at her father's party. As she turned her back to the group as she walked back to the bar, Elle casually dropped her pen, and glanced back out of the corner of her eye as she bent over to pick it up. She expected eyes to be glued to her ass, but she did not expect the wide, open palm swat that landed on her left cheek, nor the squeeze of flesh that followed. She barely bit back the surprised yelp that threatened to escape her parted lips. Well, she definitely knew he was interested. She picked up the pen and, with a grin on her lips and a swing in her hips, Elle sashayed back to the bar and dropped the notepad on the counter as she began pouring tequila into shot glasses and rounding up a different assortment of beers.
Sami's impossibly green eyes were drawn away from his boss's daughter to see how Jon was reacting to seeing her when she shouted to get their attention. The last time the two were around each other, Jon was very angry and annoyed by the fact that she had flirted with him and then ignored him like he wasn't any better than the dirt beneath her ridiculously high heels. To his surprise however, Jon was smirking as he, along with their other wrestling friends stared at her as she walked away, but not before Jon smacked her ass hard, groping for good measure.
"She's a little spitfire, isn't she?" Nick Cage chuckled as the group watched Elle swing her hips on the way back behind the bar. Every guy at the booth agreed and continued to watch as she worked to get their order put on a serving tray while her coworker just sat back and watched.
Douchbag.
Sami turned his attention back to their group, deciding that it was safe, he said in a slightly teasing voice, "Back off boys, Mox already called dibs."
"Not fair, bro." Drake Younger shook his head. "You can't call dibs until everyone's had a chance to see."
"Trust me, boys," Jon began cockily as he watched their boss's daughter make her way back to their table with a tray of drinks balancing on the flat palm of her hand, "None of you stand a chance with her." Silence fell over their table as she came back and began handing out shots of tequila as well as their beers.
"Can I get you guys anything else? Some pizza or maybe some wings? We have all you can eat wings on Saturday nights."
Jon smirked. "I'll take your fine ass wrapped up to go in my apartment later." While the guys all hollered and wolf-whistled at Jon's remark, Jon paid them no attention. Instead, he studied their boss's daughter. She froze for a second, but if you weren't observing her body language like he was, you probably wouldn't have noticed it. The pink tinge in her ears and cheeks, however, were not as hard to notice.
"Unfortunately, I'm not on the menu tonight." She said coolly.
Jon watched in disbelief as she sauntered away with a small grin. Drake chuckled lowly while their companions chortled loudly. "Looks like you don't stand a chance either, man."
