ROMANCE: PARANORMAL ROMANCE: Coveted by the Werewolves (Paranormal MMF Bisexual Menage Romance) (New Adult Shifter Romance Short Stories) (94 page)

              As the rest of the employees trickled down to the bar Jen decided the time was right to head down there herself. The bar was downstairs from them one floor, as the table they had all been eating at was on the second story of the restaurant. The place had a hard time giving the people eating and drinking there any kind of privacy and the dance floor was tiny. Jen wasn't sure what everyone was going to do when they got nice and drunk, but she was sure that the party wouldn't be leaving anytime soon considering that all the drinks were currently being comped by their super rich employers.

              “How are you doing?”

              At first Jen didn't register who the voice belonged to but then she realized it was Ben standing beside her at the bar.

              “I'm all right, I guess,” Jen said. “This whole thing has been a little bit awkward. I feel like the partners got roped into this place through some kind of bad suggestion or something.”

              “Yeah, I do as well,” Ben said. “It just doesn't seem like the kind of place they would be interested in hanging out in at all. You know what I mean? I guess I just don't see any of them willingly hanging out with the AARP crowd.”

              “My thoughts exactly,” Jen said. “But maybe they did pick this place out, who knows.”

              Ben started to say something but then the DJ put a record on and the wale of trumpets and saxophones came over the sound system.

              “Do you want to dance?” Ben said.

              “This isn't really my kind of music,” Jen said. “Maybe if better music comes on in a little bit.”

              “Oh, come on,” Ben said. “Life is too short to wait for the next song or whatever. Just come out here and dance with me!”
              “Can I get a couple of drinks in me first?” Jen asked.

              Ben finally relented. After a few drinks the music sounded a little better and Jen cared a lot less of what people thought of her dancing moves. She headed out onto the floor and with Ben and then the night got really hazy. Before she knew it Ben had his hands on her waist and was rocking both of them back and forth with the music. At first Jen tried to keep about six inches between the both of them but then she realized how ridiculous that was considering they weren't eighth graders. Jen slowly let Ben pull her into him, so that her cheek was resting on his chest as they slow danced around the room. Dance steps that she didn't realize she even remembered came back to her and she and Ben easily maneuvered around the floor like they had been dancing together for years. The lights dimmed and Jen realized that some of their peers were pairing up and leaving. She looked around for the partners but they were nowhere to be found. She thought to herself how pleased Jimmy must have been when he saw them slowly dancing together. After what seemed like a few songs of dancing Jen headed back to the bar to get both of them drinks.

              “What time is it? Do you know?” Ben asked when Jen handed him his drink.

              “No idea,” Jen said. “It doesn't feel that late. I think it might be around one.”

              Ben dug his cell phone out of his pocket and checked the time.

              “It's about closing time,” Ben said. “Fuck, where did the night go? It seems like just a few minutes ago we got here.”

              Jen was surprised that she found herself agreeing with Ben considering that she had spent most of the night slow dancing in circles around the room with him. The crowded bar was thinning out quickly and Jen wasn't sure how she should go about trying to go home with Ben. It was almost like she had never gone home with anyone from a bar before and didn't know what to do. But that couldn't have been further from the truth; Jen had gone home with plenty of people from the bar in her college days, it was just that Ben was someone she wasn't so sure about. Would it work out for the best, or would Ben get attached and the ensuing entanglement end up being fodder for office gossip? There was no way to really tell unless she just went home with Ben and saw how things went.

              “Do you have any plans for the rest of the evening,” Ben said he slung his jacket over his shoulders. “I've got beer at my place and a pretty decent record collection.”

              Jen couldn't help but chuckle at this. She hadn't heard a line about a record collection in a really long time. Ben was younger than her and she was surprised that he owned any records at all.

              “What kind of records do you own?” Jen asked. “What are your tastes in music?”

              “You'll just have to come home with me and find out,” Ben said. “Besides, what's the worst thing that could happen?”

              “Well, you could end up sending me flowers every day until you finally end up sending me a gas card and I switch jobs to get away from you,” Jen said with a wry smile.

              “Jesus Christ,” Ben said. “I try to date one front desk girl who can't just tell me to fuck off and I never hear the end of it. Did you know that Jimmy even talked to me about that?! I tried to explain to him that I would have left her alone if she just would have hinted that direction, but instead she kept acting like she was happy about the attention she was getting, at least to me.”

              “Sure, sure,” Jen said.

              “I'm being serious!” Ben said. “Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe the girl left because she wanted to? I mean, maybe, just maybe, she used me as a scapegoat and headed out into the wild blue to a different place that paid more, but she wanted to leave on good terms to get a good letter of recommendation so instead of putting in her two weeks like a normal person suddenly I'm the big bad wolf who goes out of his way to buy her flowers and candy and hell even a gas card. Fuck me, right?”
              Jen couldn't help but giggle at Ben's tangent as she followed the crowd out of the bar. Jen and Ben stood on the street watching cabs go by for a few minutes until Jen realized had a cabby’s card on her.

              “Wait a second, I bet I can get us a cab,” Jen said.
              “Right now? Forget about it. Downtown is way too busy right after bar close,” Ben said.

              “Normally I would agree with you but I got a ride from a cabbie today that is especially fond of my work as a lawyer,” she said. “I bet he'll come and give us a ride.”

              Jen heard the phone ring several times, and just when she was going to hang up the cabby answered.

              “Hello,” the man's voice on the other end sounded like the cabbie she had spoken with today on the ride to the firm from the courthouse.

              “Hello, Ted? This is Jen. Is there any way you could swing by the Americana and pick me and my friend up? I know you must be busy and I'm not trying to be a nuisance but you told me to give you a call if I ever needed a ride, and, well, I need a ride!”

              “It's no problem at all Jen,” Ted's voice sounded well rested and smooth as oil on the other end of the line. “I'll be over in a few minutes to pick both of you up.”

              Jen hung up her phone and put it in her pocket.

              “He's on his way here, should be here in a few minutes,” Jen said.

              “That's pretty cool that he answered and is making time for us,” Ben said. “I'll have to be sure to tip him well.”

              Jen glanced over at Ben and wondered where this departure from thinking of himself all the time had come from. Usually Ben only wanted to talk about him or things that directly related to him somehow, but for a moment he had considered that a taxi driver in the middle of downtown at bar close might be busy.

              “It is a Monday night, though,” Ben said. “I keep forgetting it's Monday and thinking it is the weekend. Did you know that Jimmy gave me the day off tomorrow? Out of nowhere! I didn't know what to say when he told me to make Tuesday a preemptive Saturday. At first I thought he was joking or something but then he got all serious and told me to enjoy myself tonight.”

              Jen shook her head and couldn't believe the lengths that Jimmy was willing to go for the people he cared about. It was cool that her boss was so understanding of her life, and the lives of the people that worked for him. Not all firms were like that, especially not firms in the Midwest. Jen felt lucky that Jimmy cared so much to gently meddle in the lives of his subordinates. He really was like a father figure to most of them. But from what Ben had just told her, if he was telling the truth, it wasn't exactly as it had seemed between him and the front desk girl. Jen wasn't really sure who to believe between the two of them. She realized, though, that she hadn't ever really inspected the story the front desk girl had told everyone; she'd just assumed that the girl was telling the truth because the story involved re-enforcing ideas that she already had about Ben. Maybe Ben wasn't such a bad guy after all, maybe this whole time she'd been selling him way short. She didn't like to think that maybe she had judged him wrongly because it reflected badly on her to do that to someone, but there was a very real possibility that she had.

              The same cab she had gotten a ride in earlier in the day pulled up the curb they got in.

              “This is a nice cab you've got here, mister,” Ben said. “Most cabs have stains and stuff all over them, but it looks like you keep this thing pretty clean.”

              “I've got a deal with one of the upholsterers in town. My name is Ted by the way.”

              Ted and Ben shook hands and smiled at each other.

              “You'd be surprised how much filth people track into cabs,” Ted said. “All kinds of stuff, from blood, to puke, to all sorts of other even worse things that I don't even want to mention they are so bad. I used to have a little hope in humanity but after being cabbie for the better part of a decade I'm not sure what happened to it. Every night I see people at their worst, their absolute worst. I've seen husbands beat their wives in public, heard girls talk about how they were cheating with the guy whose lap they sat in, picked up politicians and taken them to the areas of town where the hookers hang out so they could score some ass and drugs. I don't know. I guess I shouldn't even be talking about it since it kind of puts people off. I'm just saying that things are kind of hard in this business is all. People don't appreciate you, they don't even remember you.”

              Ted swerved suddenly, honked his horn and then yelled out of his window.

              “Come on you fucking asshole,” he said. “Give me a fucking break already!”

              Ben opened his mouth to say something but again Ted swerved and honked.

              “Fuck,” Ted said. “Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah. I keep the inside of cab clean because I have pride in my work, you know? This little box of sober transportation isn't much to look at but it's all I got, and it's my livelihood. How the heck am I going to give the Governor a lift from his mansion to the courthouse if there are weird stains all over the seat?”

              “That's a good question,” Ben answered, clearly out of his element but tongue too lubricated with booze not to give a response.

              “So are you a lawyer as well?” Ted asked. “Jen I know is, I've seen her on television and picked her up outside of the courthouse. She works a lot of long hard hours. I always see her standing outside of the courthouse at days end, sometimes real late.”

              “Really,” Ben said. “Do you pick up a lot of clients at the courthouse?”
              “Yes and no,” Ted said. “I mean, there is a lot of business there but a lot of it is the kind I don't want in my cab. You know what I mean, mean people who aren't going to tip and will treat me badly. People that just watched their dad or husband go to jail for the rest of their lives and don't give a good God damn how much I holler as they walk away from the cab without paying. But yeah, I pick up a good amount of people from the courthouse, just the way it goes I guess. Got to make a living.”

              “Do you keep an eye out for Jen?” Ben asked.

              Jen sat beside Ben looking at buildings flash by outside of her window. She was content listening to the two men talk.

              “It's not that I keep an eye out for her,” Ted said. “It's just that Jen is hard to miss. She is a fairly striking person, always well dressed and poised. And she smokes. Not many of the people that work in the courthouse smoke these days. It's like a switch flipped about fifteen years ago when everyone finally figured out how bad smoking is for you and people started to get away from it.”

              “This is my street,” Ben said as the cab turned down his street and started to slow down.

              “This is your place up here, right?” Ted asked.

              “Yeah, that's it,” Ben said. “What do I owe you?”

              “Just thirty bucks even,” Ted said. “And Jen if you need a ride home tomorrow feel free to give me a call.”

              Ben paid Ted and got out of the cab first, turning to help Jen.

              “Thanks, I've got it Ben,” Jen said. “And bye Ted! Thanks for the ride.”

              “Anytime,” Ted said.

              “This might sound strange,” Jen said. “But I'd like Ted to come up and hang out with us for a while.”