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Bridget blows the whistle. “DRINK!”
I open my jaw wide. Put my head down, suck up my shot, knock it back. My eyes don’t sting anymore. My lips are sticky and sweet, my hands cold from being out of my pockets so long. Scott gets his shot down, too, and pulls another ten from his wallet.
“I’m supposed to do this again now?” he asks.
“You’re allowed. ”
“Oh, it’s a privilege. ”
I beam at him. “It’s definitely a privilege. And it’s for a good cause. ”
This time, he tucks the money in my coat. It’s zipped up to my scarf, so when he wraps his fingers around the collar, just for a second, he’s touching a perfectly innocent bit of chest real estate about five inches north of my boobs. And even that through a couple of layers of clothing.
But our eyes meet, and I know what he did, and so does he.
Whistle. “DRINK!”
This one goes down funny. I start to choke, and I have to grip the train track for a second, cold iron through brown leather, sucking air into my nose. In my peripheral vision, I notice a disturbance. Movement. A ripple of aggression.
“Not your turn, dude,” I hear Krishna say.
“I get to go again. ” Scott.
“I don’t care. ”
I know that voice.
I look up and see West, down on one knee across from me.
He must have shoved to the front of the line. Barged right in and removed Scott, which is totally not allowed. If anyone else had done it, Krishna would have had them kicked out, but West is West, and they’re friends.
West is West, and he’s got some kind of point he wants to make. God knows what it is.
His jaw is tight. There’s a line between his eyebrows, a hardness to his mouth. I wonder how long he’s been watching and what kind of right he thinks he has here, anyway.
The muscle in his jaw flexes, his teeth grinding together.
“You’re here for a blow job?”
“No. ”
I cross my arms, pouting. “Well, blow jobs are what’s on offer. Are you in or are you out?”
Someone slides a shot down the tracks to the space in front of him. Bridget shouts, “Pay up!”
West frowns, opens his wallet, takes out a bill.
He extends it to me.
“You’re supposed to put it on me. ”
“I’m not doing that. ”
“Everybody’s doing that. ”
He hesitates, and I think he won’t. He seems troubled by all this, not sure if I’m being exploited, exploiting myself.
I’m not sure, either, but I want to tell him that sometimes you just have to trust the way it feels. You have to believe that happy things can make you happy and wrong things feel wrong.
