Seattle Girl (16 page)

I groaned. “Please, spare me your good feelings. I am so off of guys from now on. I’m going to concentrate on my show and that’s it.”

Both Seth and Diane rolled their eyes. “Yeah right,” they said in unison.

“No, really, I am,” I said with complete sincerity.

I couldn’t wait to prove them wrong.

After all, I didn’t need to be in a relationship with a guy to feel worthwhile.

Or did I?

I was brought up to believe that life came in neat little doses. The basic theory being that if I did X and then qualified for Y and then graduated from Z, not only would utter nirvana be the result, but I would be guaranteed absolute happiness.

Which, surprise, surprise, has turned out to be utter bullshit.

Over and over again I’ve learned that there aren’t many straight lines in life.

And what if it turns out that a life well lived is the one where we take as many alternate, or as my mother would put it, “wrong” forks in the road as we possibly can.

Now, I’m not saying that based on either of these theories I should have acted differently with Dillon. All I’m getting at is that, frankly, our relationship surprised me as much as I’m guessing it surprised him.

How is it that two people can work closely together and never once notice each other, until that split second when the earth tilts on its axis and all sorts of new unexamined worlds open up?
 

Worlds which, by the way, all revolve around someone that you have never even had one single erotic thought about before.

Not one.

What if absolutely everything you want can change in an instant?

Let’s say, hypothetically, that all the days of your life you have known that you want A. Not B. Never B. Frankly, you don’t even get the point of B, so B has never even come onto your radar screen. You know it deep within your soul that A is what you want, no doubt about it, that’s what you’re heading towards.

Then, Bam! Out of nowhere, from the corner of your eye you see B and you’re practically drowning in a flood of all that B is making you feel. Instantly, it’s crystal clear that you want, you need, oh god, you have to have B.

How could this have happened, you ask yourself when you finally come up for air?
 
After all, you didn’t plan for it and you sure as hell didn’t see it coming.

Welcome to an unexpected fork in the road.

Now, for the big question: Was I going to go after it with all of my heart, or was I going to stay stuck exactly where I was before?

* * *

We have to go back several weeks to my first day on the job at the casino. I was hiding in the back room and spent the better part of fifteen minutes trying to pull my damn skirt down lower and my bustier up higher.

Thank god I’d already had some experience wearing almost nothing at the exotic erotic party on campus, or I would have been really freaked out my uniform. At least with this one I got to wear something other than hair over my boobs.

That’s me, always looking on the bright side.

Anyway, a husky middle-aged woman in the corner noticed me and immediately took me under her wing. She motioned for me to come over.

“I’m Sandy,” she said, as we shook hands. “You’re Georgia, I take it?”

“That’s me.” I grinned, liking her already.

She had barely said two sentences to me, but she was a welcome breath of fresh compared to Lola. She patted the seat next to her and I sat down, alarmed by the way my outfit rode way up and way down when I was seated.

“You ever served drinks before sweetie?”

“Actually, no,” I admitted a little sheepishly.

She patted my knee. “You’ll do fine, a cute girl like you. Just remember, if you mess up on a drink, give them your prettiest smile, and they’ll happily choke down whatever you brought them.”

I laughed. “It can’t be that easy!”

She snorted. “Of course it can. The customers are the easy part of this job. It’s the bartenders you’ve got to watch out for.”

She glanced over at the two men behind the bar. One looked to be about sixty, balding, with a large pot belly. The other couldn’t have been too much older than me and he had tattoos snaking up and down both of his arms.

“Kirk is in charge around here.”

“Which one’s Kirk?” I asked.

“The old guy. His bark is worse than his bite. You’ll win him over eventually.”

I swallowed hard. Great, another person I had to win over. First Lola and now Kirk. Why couldn’t I have gotten that damn Public Policy job my mother had been pushing on me? A bunch of nerds would have likely been easier to deal with than a psycho talk radio bitch and a more-than-a-little crazy old bartender.

Just so I knew what else I was up against, I asked, “What about the other guy?”

She smiled and her eyes got misty. “I have a feeling you’ll find out soon enough about Dillon.” After that cryptic statement she eased up out of the booth and wiped her hands off on her apron. “You can shadow me for a couple of hours until you get the hang of things.” I nodded. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to the boys,” she said, walking towards the bar.

“Kirk, Dillon,” she called out across the room. “Come say hi to our new girl.”

Kirk turned around and looked me up and down for a very uncomfortable sixty seconds or so, while Dillon leaned against the back counter, wiping glasses with no expression on his face. “You know the difference between scotch and bourbon, girl?” Kirk asked.

I flushed and shook my head. “No sir,” I said, wondering where the sir had possibly come from. I couldn’t think of a single other time in my life that I had called someone sir.

He grunted, looking tired. “Come here then and get your education before you run us out of business.”

During the next half hour he must have pulled out a hundred different kinds of liquor, rattling off all of the different combinations and drinks that could be ordered with each one. My head was spinning.

While we played teacher-student, Dillon served the few customers that had already arrived for some early afternoon drinking and kept his distance.

Sensing that my input-to-understand ratio was diminishing, Kirk slapped his thick hand on the counter. “Go on and follow Sandy around for a while. I’ve got work to do.”

Somehow I kept the smile off of my face. I could tell that in his heart of hearts, Kirk had taken a liking to me. Maybe it was because I was such a quick drink study. Or maybe I reminded him of one of his kids or something. Whatever the reason, I was tremendously thankful. At least one of my jobs wouldn’t be fraught with constant drama. I would just take drink orders, serve customers, and pay my rent.

How much easier could things get?

* * *

For the next couple of weeks, heading off to the casino was a nice respite from being around Lola. At least when I was in the bar I didn’t feel like I was on the verge of being ambushed all of the time.

In some ways, waitressing was also a nice way to get my mind off of Steve. I couldn’t believe how much energy it took to be sexy and witty and clever during the three hours each day that I helped him with his show. Between Steve and Lola I was just plain exhausted by the time I got to the bar.

I usually perked up pretty fast, however, which might have been because, if I do say so myself, I was a pretty great cocktail waitress. I hardly ever got my orders wrong, and I must have looked pretty good in my outfit, because I often came home with outrageous tips. The money was so good, in fact, that Diane was seriously considering making the daily drive from Seattle to Harborside for some extra shopping cash.

I knew she’d never do it though, and thank god, because if the customers saw her, my tips would have dwindled down to dimes and nickels.

Diane hated anything that meant she’d actually have to work. At her current job, doing PR for a spa, she was the perfect advertisement to potential clients. Blond, shiny, and perfect. Plus, she got regular manicures and facials as part of her job.

In truth, she wasn’t looking for a career. She was looking for a lawyer, or doctor, or professional athlete to treat her in the manner to which she was accustomed. Namely, showering her with money and gifts and a lifetime of not having to go to some boring old nine to five job when she could have been shopping instead. No, I was certain Diane wouldn’t be joining me in the bar any time soon.

The day after my crazy night with Steve, Lola, and their secret love child, not to mention my awesome debut on XTRA, I was in another world. Off of my game in the bar, I narrowly missed spilling a rum and coke all over Dillon. I did, however, break the glass.

I looked up at him in alarm. Even after working with him for several weeks, I didn’t know one single thing about him. He was a complete and utter mystery.

“Oh my god. I’m so sorry.”

I was a little worried that this screw up might get me fired if he wasn’t the forgiving type. I started to reach for the shards of glass with my bare hands and lightning fast, he grabbed my hand and held it up in the air.

“Don’t touch that.”

He was squeezing my hand kind of hard, and I think I let out a cross between a whimper and gasp. I was reeling and not just because he had grabbed my hand without warning. There was something in his touch that was mesmerizing. Trying to swallow, I looked up at him and saw something in his eyes that I hadn’t expected to see.

He wanted me. As a woman.

Okay, first of all, I have to admit that I was pleased. Damn pleased. After the whole fiasco at the station with Steve and Lola and Max, and after how things had turned out with Kyle before that-or not turned out to be more exact, but let’s not get into that whole thing again-I was fighting off a bit of the “nobody loves me” blues.

Rather quickly, I was starting to realize that there was no better pick me up than being wanted by a member of the opposite sex.

But I was conflicted.

After all, hadn’t I just vowed that very morning to Diane and Seth that I was going to turn off all of my lustful urges?
 
Cross my heart and hope to die, that was what I had said, no more men. Period. End of subject.

But then again, that was before this very interesting development. And surely, they wouldn’t want me to miss out on something so tantalizing, would they?

Especially, since, as Diane had so deftly put it, I was the closest one to sloughing off my virginity. Not that I was thinking about having sex with Dillon, mind you. Well, not very much, anyway. But I figured it wouldn’t kill me to keep my options open.

Wrong again, but how was I to know it?

The rest of the night, I made it a point to learn more about Dillon. The physical stuff was obvious. He had shoulder length dread locks and was pretty aloof with most people most of the time.

He had never struck me as being my type. Okay, he just flat out wasn’t my type. How could a guy with tattoos and dreadlocks possibly be my type when I grew up smack dab in boring, short haired, leafy treed suburbia? In the back of my mind it suddenly occurred to me that my mom would die, just up and croak, if I brought Dillon home to meet her.

A devious, evil-daughter smile crept across my face at the thought. Oh yes, suddenly I was willing to look a little deeper if necessary. A whole lot deeper, if I had to.

After all, I didn’t want to miss out on a potentially excellent relationship just because of some pre-conceived ideas I had about what my ideal guy looked like.

Just because my mother would have had a heart attack at the sight of him.

So what if Dillon was the anti-Fabio? I could roll with that. After all, I sure hadn’t gotten very far with my Mr. Perfect’s so far.

Not that Kyle had been all that perfect.

Or Steve, for that matter.

In any case, I had quickly learned that everyone who worked in the bar adored Dillon. The men all wanted to be him. The women all wanted to screw him. He was kind of like the big dog, the head of the pack that everyone follows around. He didn’t need to say much or do much, as the things he wanted always materialized for him like magic.

The truth of the matter is I hadn’t understood Dillon’s powerful allure until the moment he touched me and pierced me with his gaze. As if a lightning bolt had hit me, now I did.

During a slow moment in the evening when several of the wait-staff were standing around the wait-station, I started to poke around in what I hoped was a charmingly inquisitive way.

Even though I know I have rarely, if ever, been thought of as charmingly inquisitive. More like the girl who asks the pain-in-the-ass questions.

“So, what’s Dillon’s deal?”

One of the girls chomped her gum really loud and snorted. “He’s got this fiancée and she is such a major bitch. I swear to god sometimes she comes in here and acts like she owns the place.”

I had never seen the fiancée before. I was definitely intrigued, but sadly to say for the content of my moral fiber, not the least put off by the fact that Dillon was already taken.

Sandy nodded. “Yeah. She’s pretty awful, that’s for sure.” She looked at me with more than a smidgen of surprise. “Why do you want to know?”

I shrugged. “He’s just such a mystery. I was wondering if he ever talks to anyone.”

Sandy laughed. “Get him high and he’ll talk. He’ll talk your ass off.”

This may sound really bad, but even though I had never done drugs before, and was, honestly, a little afraid of people who did them, all I knew is that the way he looked at me made me feel all tingly inside. I had never thought that tall, thin, and drugged out was my type, but I couldn’t deny there was something magical about Dillon.

If only I had known that “instant magic” is sorely over-rated.

If only.

* * *

That evening I was on the air at XTRA in the midst of a riveting, “Can a girl ever have too many handbags, dresses, shoes, or underwear?” discussion, when I punched the button for line three and heard a very familiar voice.

“My little juice-box, it took me a while but I have found you again.”

Frankly, I was stunned to hear the familiar, ever so creepy voice.

“Jerry?”