“Why’s that?”
“The girls want to go drinking there again,” he told me.
That gave me a deadline, didn’t it?
To figure out how to fix this.
I had a feeling that something furry was going to be involved.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Theo
“Theo, you good?” Toll asked, making me jolt and realize I’d been staring off at the wall and drying the same glass for several minutes.
“Sorry,” I said, exhaling hard. “It’s an off day,” I added.
“It’s been an off week,” he shot back. “I’m not judging you,” he added when my gaze shot over. “It’s just an observation. You’ve been in your head a lot.”
And it wasn’t the best place to be either.
“I’ll be better,” I told him. Because, if nothing else, I could usually always say that I was good at my job. But, clearly, that was even falling by the wayside. And I needed one single fucking thing to be going right in my life right about then.
“Don’t worry about it,” Toll said, shaking his head. “I was just mentioning it in a ‘I’m here if you need to talk’ sort of way. From one silent sufferer to another, I can tell you haven’t been sleeping. And you haven’t been here very long, but I swear to fuck you’ve lost weight already.”
He was not wrong on either of those points.
And both said points aggravated each other somehow. I wasn’t sleeping, so I was overly hungry. And my grumbling stomach was a factor keeping me up.
But, let’s face it, the real reason I was tossing and turning had nothing to do with my stomach. And everything to do with a certain part of my anatomy just below it. And the clawing, aching need for a man I did not need in my life right then. Or ever.
I had to make better choices, damnit.
As difficult as that was for me.
It had already gone far enough.
Besides, I hadn’t heard from him in a couple of days again, so I figured getting sucked off was his way of getting me out of his system.
It was for the best.
But it didn’t change the fact that my body wished we’d at least fucked once before it was over.
“I’ll be alright,” I assured him. “I’ve been through a lot worse,” I added, wiping the bar that hadn’t had a customer sitting at it in over an hour. It was the slowest of slow nights.
“Maybe viewing life as the amount of shit you have to take isn’t the healthiest way to go about it.” There was a pause, then, “What?” he asked, brows furrowing.
“You’re sounding a lot more like a bartender now than when I first started here,” I told him.
Bartenders served drinks, sure. But they were also a poor man’s therapist some nights, full of little nuggets of wisdom, ready to hand them out to anyone who needed to hear them.
“That’s a compliment coming from a lifer like you,” he said, giving me a small smile. “Why don’t you cut out? It’s been slow as fuck anyway. Go home. Get some food. Get some sleep. You’ll feel better for the rush tomorrow night.”
I didn’t want to take him up on the offer. Work was a distraction I needed. But he was right. It was too slow for both of us to be working. I might as well go zone out at home instead of on the clock.
“I think I will take you up on that,” I agreed. “Go on and clock out. I’ll divvy out the tips,” he said, waving me toward the back room.
I was pretty sure, given the crowd, that Toll ended up giving me more than half of the tips. But I also was getting to know his stubborn ass enough to know that he wasn’t going to hear me objecting to it.
So I took the cash, making a mental note to pay him back for it, and making my way out.
I even did the unthinkable. I stopped to grab a fry on my way home, knowing it was a waste of money that I could put toward, I don’t know, buying a couch, but sometimes grease and salt was good for the soul. And mine could sure use it.
I’d just finished them when I turned the bend that would bring me to the guest house.
And I almost stopped right there in the middle of the driveway. Because I was almost certain that I’d turned the lights off before I’d left.
It was a habit drilled into me from childhood.
I don’t own stock in the power company, Theodora.
It was a constant part of my childhood as a pounding on the bathroom door when I was taking a shower that took longer than five minutes.
You don’t have that many parts, Theodora.
Shaking away those memories, I tried to tell myself that there was always a possibility that I’d been so lost in my own head and the swirling thoughts within that I’d been careless about it.