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“No,” I say, hesitantly.
When my stomach rumbles loudly, he raises a brow but doesn’t say anything, instead nudging a menu towards me.
I look down at it and sigh at the prices. “It’s okay. I have food at home. I really shouldn’t spend more money.”
He leans on his elbows on the bar, his forearms resting on the wood, and winks. “How about I give you the employee discount?”
I chew on my lower lip.
I am very hungry.
But then I sigh. “I’ll take the cheapest burger, but no discount. It’s not fair to the owner after all the work he’s probably put in. I can pay.”
He gives me a strange look but says nothing.
I watch his attention get diverted by a new customer, and he asks me to wait.
I don’t have anywhere to go.
So I watch him.
He is very handsome, I muse. His hair is styled back but it is a lovely dark color, and his light blue eyes are very distracting. And when he smiles, the dimple in the right cheek makes my abdomen clench.
I saw him roll up his sleeves yesterday, and I saw the tattoos on his arms. I am not a huge fan of tattoos. God knows Bryan has enough of them. But on this sexy bartender, the tattoos seem to belong.
His hands are big, his fingers long, and as I watch him mix a drink, my cheeks turn red imagining him doing something else with those fingers.
He catches my eye while I am grinning like a loon and he chuckles, making me blush again and divert my gaze.
I hope he doesn’t figure out what I am thinking.
However, he doesn’t approach me.
When I look up a few moments later, I blink when I find myself staring at an entirely different guy.
He sees me looking and comes over to ask if I want anything, his accent thick.
I look around curiously. “Uh, where’s the other guy? The one who was here before you.”
The man has a German accent, and he gestures with his shoulder towards the kitchen. “Gone to do something.”
He returns to dealing with some new customers, and I sip at my apple juice and glance at the newcomers.
I don’t know any of them.
My eyes go to their wrists, looking for the tattoos that would help me identify them. However, one of the men has his sleeves buttoned, hiding his wrists from sight, while the other two are shrugging off their jackets and I glimpse their bare wrists.
Disappointed, I return to my drink.
Bryan once showed me his snake tattoo on his wrist when completely drunk. He told me that it symbolized that he was a man. I never thought much about his words till the day I found out that he joined one of the local gangs.
The young boy that I raised by myself after our parents’ deaths ultimately had joined a gang. I never knew what pushed him or how this happened. I thought he was content and happy. It ate at me that while he lived with me, I never once realized this.
I move the straw in my drink in small swirls, my thoughts dark. I always wanted a better life for him. I helped him get a scholarship to a medical school. He is still enrolled there. His grades were falling recently, but I chalked it up to his situation with Ruby, his girlfriend, and our neighbor.
Nobody anticipated that Bryan would get her pregnant.
However, he had, and a week after he expressed his desire to be a good father to his child, he had up and disappeared.
