Perfecting the Odds (6 page)

“
Hmm, let’s see. You’re pregnant, and the guy you’re prosecuting fathered the bastard child,” Karis asked, ending with a loud snort.

“Very funny
. Except I don’t sleep with criminals…maybe the judge, though…definitely the baliff. I bet that studly bar of chocolate carries around his dick like a third leg. He’d be a fun ride for a night.”

Karis chuckled as she walked into the living room and flopped down on her cushy brown sofa, eyeing the rug in dire need of a shampoo. “You have heard my ringtone for you, right?”

“Yeah,
‘Maneater’. Your comedic brilliance rivals Ellen,” she said wryly, and Karis snorted another laugh, but cut off quickly.

“
Wait,
idea
doesn’t mean you’ve found the perfect guy for me. For the millionth time, I’m not ready for that sh-crap.” In fact, Karis had declined all ten of Eve’s attempts at matchmaker. The last year and a half, the bitch-cupid dangled attorneys, police officers, and doctors in front of Karis’s face. And by the last prospect, a retired male stripper, Karis had had enough. Nope, not ready to date, and no where near ready for a romp with anything that dangled.

“
I’m not calling about a date. Although a good screw would help that shitty mood of yours.”

“I’m not in a shitty mood
,” Karis shot back.

“Whatever. Back to my
original idea. It’s...er...a Halloween party.” The line went dead. Karis could almost hear Eve holding her breath, awaiting the rejection.

“
Like the get-dressed-up-and-bob-for-apples kind of Halloween party? What are you, fifteen?” Karis shut her eyes and chanted a silent prayer —a standard when interacting with Eve.

“
Well call me jailbait and smack my ass because we’re going to a Halloween party! It’s at a bar, and I hear it’s a blast every year. And you haven’t heard the best part yet. We get to wear costumes.”

Get
to wear. “Costumes. That’s your most persuasive argument? It’s a wonder you win cases.”

“
Come on, Karis. Dancing, drinking games, and prizes. I know
you’re
not, but I’m hoping to bob for more than apples.”

“
That’s because you’re a slut-for-life.” Karis was getting too old for Eve’s partying and wished she would just find a good man and get married already. But that “good” man was nearly impossible considering Eve’s one-night stand rule. According to Eve, being a prominent prosecuting attorney extinguished any chance of a long term, or even committed relationship. In fact, she would engage in no more than two “stands”, and only if the man had an elite
stand
between his legs and the sexual prowess of a god, said Eve.

“
I wear the badge proudly. It’s Saturday night at ten. You think Diane would watch the rug rats?”

“MA! I need some help, please
,” Robby interrupted Karis’s response.

Karis
held her hand over the mouth piece. “Okay, Robby, I’ll be right there.”

“I don’t
even have a costume. What would I go as? A wife in mourning?” Karis snorted, imagining a cross between a nun and June Cleaver.

“Damn it,
Karis. I’m not trying to get you to forget him. I just want you to …I don’t know… live a little, have some fun.” Fun. There was that word again. Karis gave up trying to convince Eve that widows usually stayed that way for years, maybe even forever. And she could have argued that Robert would never again
live a little
because she knew that ship had sailed as well. It was just recently, in fact, that she convinced Karis to take off her wedding ring. According to Eve, Karis was way too young to settle into the eternal widow role, and she needed to exude single even if she wasn’t ready for partnership.

But it
wasn’t necessarily that Karis didn’t want to date. She just couldn’t imagine
being
with another man. After some behind the high school bleacher mistakes, she’d only been with Robert, and for nearly seventeen years. She wouldn’t know how to date if it was scripted for her. Besides, there was only one other man who entered her thoughts and fantasies besides her late husband. But that’s all he was, a fantasy.

“Fine,
Eve. You win. But
you
have to find me a costume. I have zero time this week. And I swear, if you get me some goddamn Playboy Bunny costume, I won’t go.” Karis could hear Eve’s stifled chuckle.

“Yes, Sister
Karis, I will buy thee a modest garb to wear to our engagement.”

“
Thank you, your bitchiness. I have to go help Robby. You’re the DD on Saturday. I plan to get at least buzzed since you’re the one dragging me to this godforsaken thing.”

“Se
e you Saturday about 8:30.” With a click, Eve was gone.

A Halloween Party.

Just what Karis needed.

That
, and a frickin’ hole in the head.

Sixty essays graded, one Boy Scout meeting, a gymnastics class, and an impromptu living room viola performance staring Grace later, the weekend arrived. An hour and a half later, Karis and Eve walked through the all too familiar door of the Underground Tavern, inundated by loud chamber music, fake spider webs, crepe paper and (yip-ee) smoke...at least it was fake this time.

“We meet again, you son-of-a-bitch,”
Karis muttered to the staircase leading down to the club. She glanced down at her two-inch heels, quite high for her, and growled.

“
Lighten up. Think fun,” Eve nagged, easily making the decent in her size six stilettos.

“
Right. It’s going to be a blast as I roll head over ass exposing my, in your words, ‘neglected vijay-jay’, to everyone in the bar,” Karis said, palming the walls for support as she eased down a few more steps.

Eve
turned and shrugged. “It’ll be good advertising.” Karis couldn’t help but laugh loudly at Eve’s crude humor. She never ceased to lighten Karis’s mood.

The bouncer requested Karis’s ID, and arrogant pride welled within her. Damn right, she thought. Thirty-four and still carded. Probably protocol, but she’d take it and lock it away for one of those days she felt like an old hag.

Her license safely tucked back into her wristlet, Karis scanned the room vomiting orange and black from every possible crevice. Dry ice billowed from the corners of the dance floor, pulsing with giggly twenty somethings wearing every naughty costume possible from fairy tale heroine to teacher.

Well, that’s just wrong
, she thought. Is a teacher even a fantasy? If those girls knew how many hours I worked in a given week, they’d probably agree it could be a nightmare. She snorted at her thought. Yeah, she was too old, too nerdy, and far too bitter for this place.

And when did Halloween morph into a mainstream celebration of fetish wear? She looked down out herself and groaned.
Hypocrite. With a bitter sigh, she pushed down the small hope that she could ever compete with younger, much sexier women and turned to Eve.

“I need a drink. A very strong drink.”

“Is it okay if I go and dance,” Eve asked, already shimmying her ass backward toward the dance floor.

“Go find yourself an erection rub up against. I’ll be at the bar.” Karis found an empty stool close to the dance floor and ordered her standard drink. Same little prick bartender. She sipped the liquid confidence as she absently tapped her nails against the bar top. Same shitty bar. And then
, like a slap to the face, it hit her and she sputtered her drink. So distracted by Eve’s costume choice and those godforsaken stairs, Karis hadn’t considered the last time she was here.

Robert was alive—barely.

Wiping the vodka from her chin, Karis glanced over her shoulder, and for half a second, considered making a run for the exit. She peeked again and this time swore she could see
him
standing there with that same desperate look, thereby compounding her sadness and loneliness.

You need a distraction
…much, much more vodka.

With a final gulp, she ordered a second then headed to the dance floor. Karis sipped slowly, watching in awe as Zorro, a cowboy, a doctor, and then a guy in camo scooted behind Eve, gyrating in a way that made Karis blush. She knew that look on Eve’s face. Military men puddled Eve’s panties as much as they did Karis. Stupid soldiers looking all sexy and p
rotective. Nauseated by the dry-humping and potent smells radiating from the masses, Karis returned to the bar for her third knock-her-on-her-ass drink.

Despite the slight buzz, when she was alone with her thoughts, it was difficult not to remember how Robert made her feel safe in places like this. He didn’t like to dance, but his constant gaze felt like a security bubble. Without him, strong drinks would now be her refuge. The third drink empty and a buzz humming through her body, Karis turned her attention to the dance floor again. Lip-locked with the guy in camo, Eve was groping his ass with one hand and her other was MIA.
My best friend is a grade-A slut
, she mused with a smirk.
Jealous much
, her conscience muttered.
Shut it
, Karis snarked inwardly. Plummeting over the precipice of buzzed straight into wasted, she ordered her fourth and final drink. A fifth and she’d wrap herself in an orange crepe paper blanket and fall asleep in a dark smoky corner. She sipped in long drags and moved her eyes around her drunken world, swaying on her barstool like she didn’t give a rat’s ass who was watching.

Finally, some peace.

That was until the little hairs on the back of her neck prickled, surfing a tingle to her feet… someone was watching her. Discretion was for the sober. Still, Karis did her best to attempt subtlety as she scurried her eyes around the room in search of her admirer. And then she saw them, like blurry little harvest moons in a murky night sky. His eyes doubled and tripled between her liquor-fogged blinks. She couldn’t explain how she could tell because she was…well, completely plastered, but the eyes observed with what almost seemed like knowing concern and familiarity.

Trying desperately not to break eye contact with the mystery man, she bumbled off her bar stool. According to her friends—specifically Eve—she was a funny, carefree drunk, completely unlike her normal self. Insulting, right? Yes, alcohol made her feel weightless, but more importantly, she now felt not even one twinge of anger or goddamn loneliness. Peace.

She leaned her hip against the bar—more to steady the damn floor that kept moving-- and narrowed in her admirer. Masculine and without the gaudiness of sequins or feathers, his bronze wolf mask highlighted his eyes, but covered his nose and ran just above his full upper lip, which was no short of kissable. She sighed heavily.

How long had it been since she’d kissed a man, devoured a man’s mouth? Clearly mass quantities of vodka had Ms. Libido rearing her neglected head. And Ms. Neglected was the equivalent to the great aunt who lived across country. Yeah, Karis enjoyed time with her, maybe missed her every now and then, but a visit was more work that it was worth. Besides, beyond a few orgasmic dreams, Karis had no desire to seek out sexual refuge in the “real world.” She never considered, however, that instead it would find her.

Jaw tightly set, the wolf man now stared down at his drink, his muscular forearm flexing as his finger circled the top of his glass. Decorated with rips and tears, the tattered white shirt stretched over his broad shoulders and allowed for little peeks of a tanned, wide chest. Karis felt the stirring low in her belly, and sighed at the beginnings of things she hadn’t felt since
him
.

Karis distracted herself by glancing down at the Red Riding Hood garb and muffled a snort with her hand. “Hmm, a big, bad wolf. Lucky for me. Shit, did I just say that out loud?”

“Uh, yeah, ya did,” snapped the naughty nurse to her right, eyeing Karis like she’d made it a slutty habit to pick up guys in a bar.  Karis stole a moment to consider who was sluttier. Surely, any real nurse would be insulted by this girl’s ass hanging out. And her claw-like nails looked anything but sanitary. All sorts of germs hung out beneath fingernails. The girl stared at her, clearly annoyed by Karis’s intense scrutiny.

Boy, everyone in this godforsaken bar needs a good screw.

“Here’s the deal, naughty nurse.  I’ll buy you a drink if you look at that wolf guy over there and tell me if he really is as hot as I think he is. I haven’t hit on a guy in, well…ever, and it would really suck if I had a case of vodka goggles.”

Not amused in the least, the girl glared at her for a few seconds, tapping her claws on the bar top, then smiled knowingly.  “Deal.” She glanced at Mr. Wolf then scanned the rest of the bar. “Yeah, he’s pretty much the hottest guy in the room. Good luck with that.”

“Super,” Karis puffed out. “Thanks.”

She ordered the girl’s drink. Then with her own drink in-hand, Karis shoved off from the bar and sauntered toward his seat, sloshing her drink in the process.

“Sloppy drunk,” she muttered to herself then giggled, admittedly horny as hell and on a flirting mission. As if she was familiar with the concept. She’d never picked up a guy, period. Besides her husband, most of her sexual experiences consisted of the perfect ingredients for a high school cliché: some bad 90s techno, bleachers, peer pressure, a little weed, and boys, not men. Not traumatic per say, but easily forgettable. Hell, the only man she’d ever actually dated was Robert and by the third date, she discovered she was pregnant with Robby. By the legal drinking age, Karis was a wife of a deployed husband and a three-year-old fastened to her leg.