What does bother me is when I see Hunter talking to another woman on the other side of the bar. I think I recognize her; she’s an actress or singer or something. No one who has made it big, but the fact that he’s willing to stand there in the middle of the club and chat with her right in front of me has my blood starting to boil. Granted, he isn’t touching her. His arms are folded, and there’s at least a foot between them. She looks like she’s having to shout for him to hear her above the music, but she’s gorgeous, and him being so close to her makes me want to go ram a drink tray up her ass.
“You all right, Meghan?” Carter asks me as I come back for another round of beers.
“I have never been better,” I tell him, forcing a smile I know he’ll be able to see right through. Behind him, I see Leah working on something that looks like a ledger. She turns and looks over her shoulder, smiling at me, but then she’s back to her work.
Carter raises an eyebrow at me, but he doesn’t ask me anything more, only pours the beers I need, runs a hand through his hair, and sends me off. He’s very busy, so it’s not like we’d have time to chat about all of the ways my life has been a fuck-up lately.
As I carry the tray across the dance floor, back to my table, I begin to wonder about the nature of Leah and Hunter’s relationship. They seem very close, almost like a couple sometimes, though I never see them do anything intimate. Still… I wonder… has she ever dated him?
“Here you boys go!” I say in a flirty voice as I set the drinks down in front of a table of men.
“Well, thank you kindly,” one of them says in a thick Southern accent that makes me smile. “You sure are purty.”
“Why, thank you!” I purr at him. “It’s nice of you to notice.”
“He flirts with everyone,” one of the other guys says, and then the guy sitting next to him punches him in the arm. “Ouch! I mean…not that you’re not pretty. You are. You’re gorgeous. I was just saying—”
“Drink your beer, Kenny!” the guy who punched him says, and they all laugh. I collect my generous tip of $30 and head to another table, where the women are finishing up and all I need to do is gather the empties, which I do. Dancing to the music Audio Anarchy is playing, I head back to the bar.
Pushing through the half-door, I put my empties away just as Leah seems to finish up what she was doing in the ledger. Perhaps it’s the flirting that the boys at my beer table have been doing all night making me feel bold, but I find myself asking Leah a burning question. Even if she’s never dated Hunter, they’re close. She’ll know the answer.
“Leah?” I call to her, yelling a bit above the music.
“Hey, Meghan,” she says with a friendly smile. “What’s up?”
“Can I ask you a quick question?” I say to her.
“Sure,” she answers immediately, walking a bit closer to me, the ledger in her hands. “I may not have the answer, but I will do my best to help.”
A loud laugh escapes my lips. “I think you’ll have the answer. You and Hunter are pretty close, right?” I ask. She nods. “Cool. So I guess you’d know—is it just me, or does he fuck all of the waitresses and then leaves them hanging afterward?”
Leah’s eyes widen to almost twice their normal size as she stares at me, dumbfounded, and I suddenly feel very silly for having blurted that out. I know Carter heard me because his ears are red, and he’s glancing over his shoulder at us every few seconds. I think the patrons seated at the bar probably wouldn’t know what I was talking about enough to have pieced it together unless they heard every word, and judging by their expressions, they didn’t.
But Leah did, and she is still gasping for air when I say, “Never mind. I guess that answers my question,” even though it really doesn’t. I start to walk away, oddly proud of making her form that expression, thinking that I should just get back to work. She’ll probably say something to him. They’re super close.
Her hand clamps down on my arm, and she gently pulls me toward her. “Come with me, Meghan. Please?”
My eyes go back to my tables, but everyone looks like they’re pretty good for the moment. “Fine,” I say, setting my tray down behind the bar. She pulls me into the employee lounge area.
At the moment, there’s no one else around, but Leah keeps her voice down anyway. I can hear her over the thumping of the bass from the dance floor, but it’s not particularly loud. “Did the two of you… sleep together?” she asks me, still trying to process.
“You didn’t know?” I ask. “I figured you had to. Everyone else knows.”
She shakes her head. “No, I had no idea. When did—you know what? Never mind. It’s not my business.” She is flustered and presses a hand to her forehead.
I don’t mind answering the question she almost asked me, though. “The night that we had that birthday party for me. I know you weren’t here, but you have to know he shut the club down early so we could dance and drink, right?”
She nods. “Yes, I heard about that. So…the two of you slept together that night?” she asks me.
“We did more than sleep together, Leah,” I point out bluntly. “We fucked. A couple of times. And then…the next morning, he freaked out.”
“Shit,” she says, dragging a hand down her face. “Meghan, I am so sorry that this happened. I wish I would’ve known. I would’ve…said something earlier.”
“What is there to say?” I ask with a shrug. “It’s not like you can go back and make it so I have more common sense than to sleep with my boss, and it’s not like you can go back and make it so that he’s not an asshole, right?”
“No, I definitely can’t go back in time and change any of that,” she says, holding the ledger against her chest with both arms now. “But I can tell you there’s a reason why he’s acting that way. It might not matter to you under the circumstances, but I think you need to hear it.”
It’s my turn to be surprised. I feel my eyebrows shoot up and wonder if she is actually going to try to justify the way he’s treated me. “What in the world could that possibly be? His mother never loved him when he was a child, so he grew up to be a cold-hearted asshole?”