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“Maybe you should take the night off.”
“I just started working there. I can’t take off.”
She sighed. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Okay. Bye.” I gulped down the rest of my water, and pulled the covers over my head. I needed to sleep the headache away before work.
When I awoke, the sun was already setting. My hand was still throbbing, so I popped two more aspirin into my mouth and tried not to get the bandage wet in the shower. All the practice with one arm in a sling was finally good for something.
Chapter Eight
A Hole in the Chest
“Hey, Captain Hook,” Dave called as I walked behind the bar at eight o’clock.
I smirked. “Have you been dying to say that all day?”
“Oh, I came up with a couple one-liners for your one-hander. In the end, it was a toss-up between Luke Skywalker, and Hook.”
“I’d rather be Skywalker than Hook!”
“Skywalker wouldn’t have let those guys knock him to the ground like you did.”
“Dude, he let Vader chop his hand off.”
“Did you just dude me?” he asked with a wry smile. “My little New Yorker is turning into a Cali girl!”
I laughed. “Okay, one: no, I’m not. Two: don’t ever try to do a New York accent again.”
Dave grinned. “Does it hurt?” he motioned to my hand.
“It does. The aspirin isn’t doing much to help the pain.”
“You know what will help with that?” He reached for a bottle of whiskey, and set it down on the bar in front of us.
I shook my head. “Not tonight.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Suit yourself.”
I watched as he poured himself a shot glass full of amber liquid. My mouth salivated at the thought. I quickly uncapped a water bottle and took several swigs, though it did not quench the kind of thirst I was experiencing.
“What happened to your hand, New York?” Jake appeared on the stool in front of me.
I stuck a Heineken bottle in between my knees, flipped the cap off with my good hand, and slid the bottle to him “I got cut with a piece of glass.”
“At least you’re resourceful.”
“Just call me MacGyver.”
The pain got worse the more I tried to use my hand. I gave up trying to stay away from alcohol. I needed something to take the edge off. Once my hand healed, I told myself, then I would stop. I poured Dave a shot along with mine. One turned into two, as it usually did, and by the end of the night, I had lost count. My hand felt great, though, and the battle wound earned me more tips than usual. Three hundred dollars richer, I stumbled into my apartment after closing.
I kicked my shoes off in my nightly ritual, and tried to navigate in the darkness. Halfway to the kitchen, I tripped over something on the floor, and crashed into one of the bar stools, letting out an involuntary yelp. I was sitting on the floor holding my foot in my hands when Chase came out of the bedroom, flipping on the kitchen lights.
“Are you okay?” His eyes were half opened, and his hair was smooshed up on one side.
“I stubbed my toe.”
“Let me take a look.” He crouched down and took my foot into his hands. He pushed gingerly on my second toe to see if it would move.
