Tell It Like It Is
Chapter 13
Lizzy gripped the familiar glass bottle in her left hand and pulled another shot glass from under the counter. The three slightly drunk men in front of her watched the bottle closely as she spun it between her thumb and index fingers, then were appropriately awed when they finally noticed their glasses that had been filled "as if by magic."
She grabbed the most sober of the three's twenty and flashed a sultry smile. "Are you ready to clear you tab?" she asked smiling and using her quick hands to discreetly shove the bill into her back pocket.
"Keep 'em coming," one of the three slurred as he waved his hand in a slightly circular motion and downed his shot without even a wince.
"Same stuff?" she asked as she reached for her bottle again.
"'Naw. Surprise us," one of them requested.
Lizzy smiled. This was where it got fun. She reached above the counter, to where they kept the really lethal stuff, and the three men drooled over the strip of skin that revealed itself as she stretched out. She pulled down the bottle and all three of the glasses and performed a new juggling routine, then poured.
After the three men took their shots they whooped, hollered and slapped hands to make their pain seem manly, Anya sidled over to Lizzy with the weary expression she always wore by the end of the night. Tonight had been tougher than usual. She'd been distracted by Lizzy the entire night, had messed up two separate routines and spilt an entire beer on her $150 jeans, and got stiffed on three tabs. She'd have to pick up another shift to pay the difference. Or get married within the next month.
"You almost done with these guys?" she asked, in a voice that only Lizzy could hear, as she bent down to pretend she was organizing the glasses beneath the counter.
Lizzy smiled down at her mischievously. "I just gave them The Blend."
Anya smiled back and seemed thoroughly excited. The Blend was the created by all the girls that worked at the bar and was a combination of Red Bull and all of their most potent alcohol. It tasted like crap, but that didn't matter because it'd burn a hole in your tongue before you even got it down. It was only to be used at closing time or dire situations, the former in this case, in hopes that the more intoxicated the customers got the sooner they'd leave.
"Lizzy," Vivian, their fellow bartender, sighed as she leaned against the counter and batted her eyelashes at the groaning men as they grabbed their coats and left Lizzy a hundred. "Hot Guy wants to know if you're almost done. I said that if you weren't I'd be glad to walk him home."
Anya scowled at her and Lizzy smiled. "Thanks Vee. But I think I'm done. I can walk him home all by myself."
Anya quickly turned her scowl on Lizzy. "Are you sure about that?"
Lizzy ignored her as she grabbed her light jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders then buttoned it up. "What would I have to do to make you stop asking me that?"
As Lizzy jumped over the counter, and walked to the corner where she knew "Hot Guy" had been hiding, all night she could hear Anya in the background saying, "Why do you talk about him like that? You know he's engaged."
"He needs to sow his wild oats!" she could hear Vee reply before she finally was close enough to Will to hear his conversation with the bouncer that she'd instructed to make sure he didn't leave. "So have you ever punched a guy so hard that he had to go to the hospital?" she heard him ask.
Marcus, the bouncer, who despite weighing a solid 260lbs and still being one of the nicest guys Lizzy's met, grunted and cracked his knuckles. "It really doesn't take that much to knock some people out."
Will scoffed. "Says you."
"No," Marcus grunted again in his deep voice. "Some people drop like flies. Here I'll show you," he added towering above Will and bearing his knuckles.
"What are you two doing?" Lizzy asked as she stood beside Marcus and stared at his balled fist. "Please don't punch Will."
"Lizzy didn't you know? For tonight I only respond to 'Hot Guy,'" Will chipped in, his face lighting up in her presence, as he stood and downed the last of his beer. "Ready?"
"I suppose," she said shrugging and saying goodbye to Marcus.
"No, no! Do not address me so," Will replied, feigning distress. "I shall only be referred to as 'Hot Guy,' 'His Royal Hotness,' or 'Hottie McHot-Hot.'"
Lizzy punched him on the arm as he held the door to the bar open. "You're such an egomaniac. Plus you forgot 'Mr. Hot.'"
Will turned his hands up and gave a fake sad smile. "How could I forget the most important one?"
Lizzy just rolled her eyes.
"So… that was cool," he said as he shoved his hands in his pockets and Lizzy noticed the little goose bumps on the part of his forearms at remained bare.
"Really? Most guys are miserable when I make them sit through that."
He smiled at her. "No. You're pretty amazing at that whole bartending thing."
"Thanks!" she smiled back and hailed a cab that just whizzed right by them. "I'm the three year winner of Miss. Bar Star."
"Bar Star?" He hailed a cab and it immediately pulled over. "That's like Miss. America, but better!"
She punched him again. "Don't mock me," she said smiling and punching him once more for good measure.
He winced and grabbed his shoulder. "Must you be good at everything you do?"
She cocked her head to the side and climbed in the cab as he held open the door for her. "Like what?" she asked as he told the cabbie of their next location.
"Like punching," he replied smiling at her so this time she knocked her elbow lightly into his abdomen. "And bartending. And radio hosting-"
"I'm not a good host." She replied as she watched his face fill with a reply. "I just host a crappy one-hour segment that I had to beg for after college."
"No, you host one of the most popular radio shows in all of L.A."
"It's the time slot. People sitting in their cars during rush hour and they just want to hear someone talk about how crap the world is because that's how they feel at that moment," she replied nodding her head and gesturing along with her point. She'd never realized that she does this while she's speaking, but Will loved the way she gestured despite his minor fear that she might accidentally poke him in the eye.
Will shook his head. "It's not the time slot. It's you. Your show is pretty amazing. You're pretty amazing," he added slowly as he tacked that final thought on without thinking.
She smiled. "I am pretty amazing, aren't I?"
Will grunted a small laugh in reply.
"If I were really as good as you say I am," she said her smile slipping and her voice suddenly serious and self conscience, "then I'd have a real show. Most slots for real hosts are about four hours. Mines one, and I'm basically limited to pop culture and current events. I want a real show where I can talk about whatever the hell I want and have high enough wages that I don't need to bartend anymore."
Will shrugged. "And you haven't been offered one?"
Lizzy's shoulders slumped and she looked up at him with big eyes. "I have. But the thing is, to get a really big show I'd have to go national and most of the ones I've been offered are based out of different cities. I would never move, but if I got an offer from New York. Maybe then I'd have to really make a decision."
"Decisions have never been your forte," Will pointed out and she scowled.
"Nor yours," she replied. "If you hadn't had a life plan that came with birth, who knows where you would have ended up."
"Hey!" Will waggled a finger at her. "I love my life."
"All of it?"
"Yes," he replied suddenly serious as she watched him with a blank expression. He couldn't help that his "yes" came out sounding more like a question.
"Now I know you're lying, because no one loves their entire life. If they did there'd be nothing to hope for. Nothing to live for," she replied matching his serious expression.
"I have hopes."
She cast her eyes up from where they'd been observing the carpet. "What does 'Mr. Hot' hope for?"
Will paused for a second and hesitated before her responded. "Do you remember when we first separated for college and we would send each other those stupid little tapes?"
She nodded slowly. She couldn't have forgotten.
He hesitated again as he watched her, weighing his options and his risks. "Why did you stop sending them?"
She practically choked. "You know why."
He shook his head. "No. You stopped way before that ever happened. Why did you cut me off?"
She starred him flat in the eye, with her eyes welling with repressed bad memories, and for once he though she might not be too proud to let him see her hurt. She didn't realize, that her pain was written all over her face. "You were the last to receive a tape. I sent you one and you never replied and there I was feeling like an idiot so I called one day and who answers the phone? A girl. A girl I never knew about."
Will cast his eyes away, this was the brutal part, as he shrunk into his side of the cab.
Lizzy continued trying not to notice. "But I tried not be jealous. I'd recently lost the only man I'd ever allow into my life and I wasn't going to let the second one go on a simple misunderstanding, so I called Eddie. Eddie can't lie." She shrugged as if it no longer mattered even though they both knew it did. "And Eddie didn't lie," she finished resolutely.
The cab suddenly stopped outside of her apartment building and she blinked at him a few times, crushed against his door, as far as he could get from her, then she climbed out of her side of the cab. By the time she'd rounded the car to reach the sidewalk side he was standing there with his door still open and a slightly confused look on his face as if he didn't know what had made him get out of that cab.
She paused and looked at him, her face asking him one last question. His body overthrew all of his sense of logic and, when brain function returned to him, he was pulling out of a deep kiss with his arms squeezing both of her hips. "I think maybe I should…" He didn't know the rest of his statement. If she'd asked him to stay with her, he would have.
But she didn't. "Go. I think maybe you should go," she completed for him as she took one step back away from his grasp then ran the rest of the way into her building.
Eventually he climbed back into the cab and eventually he came to grips with what he'd just done.
I'm sorry this took longer than usual, but it was a big one and I've been procrastinating. Anyway, this changes everything. You should be excited because I've been waiting forever for them to kiss. Although thats not the end. Halfway maybe.
Anywho. My awesome reviews were really slacking on that last chap. GAH! That will NOT do. Motivation is much harder without you... and I'm quite a procrastinator.
Ok us working girls hear the bell tolling.
R-E-V-I-E-W. There I spelled it out for you.