The Debt 4 (11 page)

But her memories of its clientele were
from years past, she had no idea what the place was like now.

When they walked inside, the bar was
relatively empty, with a few older men playing darts, a woman drinking a beer
as she looked through the jukebox, and a couple of barflies sitting at the bar
heckling the bartender drunkenly.

The bartender was a woman that looked
vaguely familiar, but at first Raven thought it was just her imagination.
 
Except, when the bartender saw Raven,
her eyes immediately widened in recognition.

“Raven Hartley?” she said, sporting a
strong Boston accent.

“Yeah,” Raven said.
 
“Hey.”
 
And then she remembered the
bartender.
 
Her name was Lola Price
and she’d been in the popular crowd a grade below Raven in high school.
 

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Lola, of course I do.
 
How are you?”

Lola’s eyes flickered to Jake and her
cheeks went red.
 
“Please tell me
that’s not who I think it is.”

“Jake,” he said easily.
 
“Pleased to meet you Lola.”
 
He approached the bar and Raven uncomfortably
followed suit, as everyone in the place seemed to turn and stare at them.

At least Lola hadn’t been one of the
truly mean girls.
 
She’d hung out
with that crowd, but had never personally insulted Raven during the bad time at
school.

“What are you guys doing here?” Lola
said.
 
She still looked pretty good,
although she’d gained some weight and her eyes looked tired somehow.

“Came home to see the
fam
,”
Jake said, winking at Raven.
 

“Oh, I get it.”
 
Lola laughed, giggled actually.
 
“Can I get you two something to drink?”

Raven ordered a beer and Jake ordered a
Jack and Coke.
 
He seemed oddly at
home, not at all concerned with the people looking at him, or the general
grunginess of the bar.
 
He slung one
muscular arm over Raven’s shoulder, rubbing her upper arm very lightly with his
fingertips, watching as Lola made their drinks.

It was a very intimate gesture, and it
made it hard for her to think.
 
 
 

Lola brought their drinks and Jake
dropped a fifty dollar bill on the bar, thanking her.

She picked it up and examined it like it
was an alien artifact.
 
“You want
change?”

“No, keep it,” he said, raising his
beer.
 
“Actually, how about a round
for the house, on me.”

The few people in the bar clapped,
hooting and hollering, and then Lola was kept busy getting their drinks for
them.
 
“Come on,” Jake said, pulling
Raven off the stool and bringing her across the floor and over to a more
private booth.

She slid in and Jake slid in beside her,
but they were both facing the door.

Raven took a sip of beer and looked appraisingly
at him as he took a deep swig from his glass, grimacing a little.

“I have to admit something right now,”
she told him.

He glanced over at her.
 
“Oh, yeah?”

She nodded.
 
“I like having you here, Jake.
 
I like being together.”

“I do too,” he said, and in that moment,
his eyes softened.
 
“The thing is…”
he started to speak, but then the door opened and some people came in.

Jake must have instantly seen the look on
Raven’s face, because he stopped talking.

She couldn’t believe her eyes, couldn’t
believe what she was witnessing.
 
It
was like something out of her nightmares.

Four guys walked in as a group, and she
knew them all.
 
Worse yet, one of
them was Caleb, her ex-boyfriend, and the other was Caleb’s best friend
Andre.
 
They looked a little different
from four years ago, but other than being slightly filled out and more
muscular, not a lot had changed.

Raven put a hand over her eyes and tilted
her head down.
 
“Fuck,” she
whispered.
 
“I think they saw me.”

“Who saw you?” Jake asked her.

She couldn’t answer.
 
All she could hear was their loud,
raucous voices, and it was bringing her back to the party—back to the
time when she was seventeen and in love with Caleb and too stupid for words.

The four friends laughed in the bar and
it was as though she heard them laughing back then instead, like some bizarrely
twisted time warp.

Raven suddenly saw Caleb in her mind’s
eye, holding her hand and bringing her into a dimly lit bedroom, kissing her
deeply, touching her breasts, exciting her.
 
“I
love you, Raven,” he said, pulling her down onto the bed next to him.

“I
love you too,” she told him, and it felt real.
 
She thought that he was the most amazing
thing that had ever happened to her.

She
was drunk, giddy, impulsively getting off the bed and doing a silly little
dance for him, trying to be sexy.

“Oh,
I have to capture this,” Caleb laughed, pulling out his cell phone and holding
it up toward her.

“Don’t
record me!
 
Caleb!”

“Come
on, just for a second.
 
I promise to
erase it after.
 
I just want to
record you a little.
 
You’re so
fucking sexy,
Raven
.”

And
he told her he loved her—she so wanted to please him, and it felt just
dangerous enough, just bad enough to be hot.
 
Already, she was worried because as a
virgin she wasn’t giving Caleb sex like a lot of girls were giving their
boyfriends at that time.

A
little dancing and showing some skin was harmless, right?

“Hey, Raven.
 
RAVEN.”
 
Jake’s voice was concerned as he shook
her shoulder gently.
 

“Sorry,” she said, snapping back to
reality, still trying to hide her face from the group of guys that were now
over at the bar talking to Lola.

“I know those guys,” Raven whispered,
turning away from the bar as much as humanly possible.

Jake glanced over at the group and then
back
to her.
 
“Okay.
 
Were they jerks to
you or something?”

“Yeah, you could say that.
 
I need to leave.
 
Now.”

And that’s when she heard Lola loudly
exclaiming to the group.
 
“Oh my
God, you guys—you’ll never guess who just came in.
 
Raven Hartley and
she’s
with Jake freaking Novak!”

“Really,” one of them said, in an almost
too bored to care voice.
 
That was
Andre.
 
Raven would have known his
voice even if she hadn’t seen him in a million years.

“Raven’s here?
 
Seriously?”
 

And that was Caleb.

“Oh my God,” Raven moaned.

“Take it easy,” Jake said.
 
“You’re not alone, you’re with me
now.
 
Remember?”

“I know,” she said, “but I really don’t
want to stay in here with them.
 
I
hate them.
 
Those people tried to
ruin my life.”

Jake’s eyes grew hard.
 
“Which ones?”

“No Jake.
 
Don’t say anything
,
don’t do anything
.
 
Let’s just go.”

“Hey, Raven, what a surprise—you’re
slumming in Southbridge,” Andre said, walking toward the booth now.
 
“And I see you brought the coolest man
on the planet to keep you company.”

Jake glanced up at him.
 
“Who are you?”

“I’m Andre,” he replied, and put out his
hand.

Jake shook it for a little longer than
what seemed normal.
 
“Cool,” Jake
said.

Andre pulled his hand away.
 
“What’s that, the kung fu grip?
 
Dude’s hand is like a freaking
vice.”
 
He turned to his friends and
they all laughed uneasily.

Caleb was being quiet, but he seemed to
be trying to catch Raven’s eye.
 
She
wanted no part of him or Andre or any of these people, and just kept focused on
Jake.
 
He was like a life preserver
and she hung onto him for dear life.

“Nice to meet you and all,” Jake said,
“but Raven and I were hoping to just sit quietly and talk if you don’t mind.”

“What’s that—celebrity code for get
the fuck away from you?” Andre laughed.

The others laughed with him.

“Pretty much,” Jake said.
 
His voice was changing, and Raven didn’t
like it.
 
He’d already decided not
to like them because of what Raven had told him, and she knew his patience was
thin.

“Well, it’s a free country dude, and
you’re not in fucking Hollywood now,” one of Andre’s friends said.

Great,
Raven thought. Andre’
s friends are just as stupid and shitty as
he is.

“Ease off,” Caleb told them.

“Relax man, we’re just playing,” Andre
said.

Raven was still watching Jake.
 
His body language had changed
completely.
 
He was no longer loose
and relaxed.
 
“Wherever we are,” he
said, “most decent people go away when someone asks nicely.”

“Nobody ever accused Andre of being
decent,” someone yelled out.

“Yeah,” Andre said, “I’m not that
decent.
 
And maybe you should chill
out before me and my friends kick the shit out of you and ruin your image.”

Jake nodded, seeming to smile a little at
the threat.
 
“I’m only going to say
this one more time.
 
Raven and I
just want to sit and have a nice quiet night together.
 
Alone.”

“Alone?” Andre laughed, scoffing.
 
“That chick doesn’t do anything unless
it’s a group situation, bro.
 
Or
didn’t she tell you about that yet?”
 
He turned and got a high-five from one of his dirt bag buddies, while
Caleb seemed to be trying to pull them away.

Raven froze.
 
She couldn’t believe he’d actually said
it—said the same horrible lie he’d told four years ago.
 
She wanted to be sick.

“I need to go—“ she started to tell
Jake.

But Jake had jumped up and was now
staring at the group who’d been hovering over their table.
 

“Listen, I don’t give a shit what you
think you know about her,” Jake said.
 
“But I promise you that if one more person makes a joke or even so much
as giggles in her direction, you’ll be picking your teeth up off the floor.”

The bar grew suddenly quiet.

“There’s four of us, dipshit,” one of the
guys said, “and only one of you.”

Raven looked and saw that they were all
pretty big guys, too.
 
Caleb,
however, didn’t seem interested in the fight.
 
“Come on, Andre, let’s just go, man.
 
This is stupid.”

“Fuck that,” Andre said, staring at
Jake.
 
“I say you sit your ass back
in your seat, tough guy.
 
Sit down
and I won’t make you look like a bitch.
 
Because then you’ll just be nothing but a bitch who bagged a ho.”

And that’s when Jake punched him.
 
He punched him hard in the stomach, and
Andre dropped like he’d been shot.
 
Jake looked down at him.
 
“Is
that all you got?” He snorted.
 
“Fucking pathetic.”

From out of nowhere, one of Andre’s
friends threw a punch and hit Jake in the face, and then one of the others
tried to grab Jake too.

“No!” Raven shouted, trying to get up to
help Jake.
 
But the scene quickly
devolved into pandemonium, as Jake tossed one of the guys halfway across the
room, where he upended a table and some glasses shattered.

And then there were more punches being
thrown and Andre was getting up off the floor, slowly.

“Stop it!” Raven screamed.

“Get back,” Caleb said, pulling her out
of the way just in time, as a chair flew backwards and nearly hit her in the
face.