Page 5 of Ravaged From Fate

I am going to enjoy myself tonight. I am not going to allow myself to work myself to death.

I watch as Piper talks to Sam, the bartender in East Springs’ solitary bar. He spots me and shoots me a friendly wave. I wave back with a smile. Growing up in a small town means that you get to know everyone. You simply can’t choose to opt out of social interaction when you live in East Springs. It’s practically in our town’s constitution that you must stop and say hello to everyone you pass on the street, with no exception. Sam was actually my first ever kiss, believe it or not, back when we were ten years old before we exactly knew what a big deal that was. We’re purely platonic friends now.

As Piper orders a bottle of wine and two glasses with Sam, my eyes drift over to the door, and at the five strange men who swagger through the entrance to the bar. Yep, I’ve never seen them before, and that’s a big flag in a place like East Springs.

We don’t get many strangers.

Oh, but I do know them. It’s only when I see the alpha leader of the pack – a tall man with a glaring tattoo of a sword pointed diagonally across his face – that I can tell who they are. Well, I recognize him. The tattooed man as skinny as a starving coyote. Everyone in this small town would recognize such a man with such a tattoo and with such a reputation. He and his goons are local gang members who run drugs in the area. Living in the dense Californian woods, they rarely venture into town, but when they do, trouble always seems to have a knack for following them.

And today they’ve come into this bar.

Oh crap.

Their nasty attitude and the seething atmosphere they bring into the bar seem to suck the very air out of this place, and I pray to God nothing happens. That everyone merely sticks to their own business and that no trouble starts.

The tattooed leader spins his head, spotting me watching him. I immediately glance away from his piercing eye contact. He mutters something sharp to one of his little henchmen and they all head off like a pack of wolves to play darts in the opposite corner to my booth.

Thank God.

Once they’re safely on the other side of the bar, Piper returns with the wine.

“Thanks,” I say as she pours me a glass. “I might’ve been complaining before, but I’m glad you’ve forced me here with you. We don’t get enough time to catch up.”

“Tonight is not enough for you, Elsa,” my friend replies. “You need more nights like this and fewer nights working.”

“You’re really continuing on this whole thing about me needing to take time off?”

“You do, though. Come on, even you can see that you need to take a vacation at the very least.”

“I can’t.”

“Look at those bags under your eyes, Elsa. You’re overworked, overstressed, and certainly undersexed.”

“Gee, thanks for the compliment.”

“When was the last time you went somewhere?” she asks me in full earnestness.

I smile weakly at her. “A long, long time ago.”

“Yeah, you are in definite need of a vacation,” she says as she takes a sip of her wine. “Give yourself the time off. I can assure you that East Springs isn’t going to spontaneously combust just because you aren’t in it for a week.”

“Piper…”

“Right, if you’re going to argue with me about your need to have a break, let’s not even bother,” my friend butts in. “You need a vacation, and that’s that. Now let’s move on to a far more important subject… what’s the latest gossip you’ve heard?”

“Gossip?”

“Come on, your job practically lends itself to making you know more about people’s dirty little secrets more than anything else around.”

“I don’t usually go in for that kind of stuff,” I reply, and it’s the truth.

My friend rolls her eyes at me. “You do realize you live in a small town, right? Gossip is more valuable here than gold, Elsa. I need my dosage.”

“I would be breaking so many confidentiality laws by even talking…”

“Well, please tell me you’ve heard about the new guy in town,” Piper says. “Surely you won’t be breaking any state or federal confidentiality law by talking about him.”

“Even I can’t avoid that topic,” I reply. “His mere presence has sent shock waves through our little community here. But no, I haven’t even seen him yet. Have you?”