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"You must be new here," I told her, extending my hand across the bar to her. "I’m Avda. Good to meet you."
"Jo," She replied, taking my hand for the briefest moment. Jo – I was pretty sure I hadn’t known that before. We might have had sex, but that didn’t mean I’d actually picked up her name. I had a habit of doing shit like that, falling into bed with someone – or into a club bathroom with someone – while we remained totally anonymous to each other. Not that I minded. No, there was always something hot to me about just giving yourself over to the intensity of the moment, not letting anything get in the way of it, no matter how reckless it might have been.
"You remember me, Jo?" I asked her. Like I needed to hear her answer. I could tell from the look on her face that she remembered, in exquisite detail, exactly what had happened between us – glad to see I had made an impression.
"I – I think so," she replied, clearly flustered by my attention. I grinned.
"Good," I replied, leaning forward slightly. "Because I remember you. You want to get me a beer?”
"What kind do you drink?" she asked, seemingly snapping into professional mode as soon as I asked for that.
"You choose for me," I told her. "I seem to remember you had pretty good taste."
She grabbed a bottle of frosty beer from the fridge behind her and passed it across the table towards me. I took it from her, and our fingers touched for the barest, briefest moment – she drew her gaze away from me, doing her best not to let me see the expression on her face right now, but I had already clocked it. How could I not? She wasn’t exactly being subtle here.
"You just started at the Flood?" I asked her. The last time I had seen her, I was pretty sure she had been celebrating her birthday – I seemed to remember her wearing this tacky pink sash, and being surrounded by a group of her friends. She looked a little different now, older, more refined, her features sharper, but her green eyes were just as dazzling as they had been when they had caught my attention in the club.
"Yeah, a couple of months ago," she replied. "Don’t know why I haven’t seen you here before..."
"I was working at another of the Antonov’s properties, across the city," I explained smoothly. "But if I’d known you were here, I would have stopped in a little sooner..."
She bit her lip, eyeing me for a long moment. I had to admit, there was something cute about how flustered she got, not able to wrap her head around this level of flirtation. She drummed her fingers on the table in front of her, clearly trying to burn off some excess energy that was pulsing through her system right now.
"It’s fine," she replied. "I – I've been really busy anyway. Not like I’ve had time to talk to anyone."
"I guess we should fix that, then," I suggested, lifting the beer to my lips, and watching as her eyes flicked down to my mouth for a moment. I could tell she was attracted to me. I had a sixth sense for it, and right now, she wasn’t exactly playing it particularly cool. She swallowed hard.
"I’m busy tonight," she replied quickly. "I have to deal with shutting down the bar, and then-"
"Maybe another night, then," I shot back. I knew she was just being professional, but if she thought I was going to let the chance for another hook-up slip through my fingers, she had another thing coming.
"Maybe, I – I have a lot on," she blurted out. "With the job, and my daughter, and-"
"Your daughter?" I asked, and she stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes widened when she realized what she had just said to me.
That wasn’t the look of a woman who didn’t have anything to hide. I stared at her for a moment, and I noticed the way her jaw tensed, as though she knew she had just said something she should never have come out with.
"Yeah, my daughter," she replied, almost defensive. "I have a daughter."
A kid. A child. I had often wondered, idly, if I had any children out there, but I had never given much thought about the reality of it. But the way she was looking at me right now, I could tell it was basically an admittance. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
"How old is your daughter?" I asked her.
"Nearly six," she replied.
"And how are you?”
"Twenty-seven," she blurted out. "I’ve got to go, I have shit to take care of..."
And with that, she hurried off before I could say another word to her. Because she knew as well as I did what that had been – she had all but admitted to me, without any room for doubt, that I was the father of her child.
Fuck. Fuck! What did this mean? A kid, there was a kid out there with my blood in their veins? It was a matter of averages, I got that, especially since I hadn’t exactly been careful about the way I had gone about my sexual encounters when I had been younger, but this....
This was the last thing I had expected. I took another sip of my beer and waved down Freddie from the other side of the bar.
"You okay, man?" he asked. "You look like you’ve seen a ghost."
"I’m going to need something stronger," I muttered to him. "Vodka. A double. No ice."
