“Picked up an admirer, huh?” I turned back to Scott to find him with a second beer in front of him, and his words were drifting a bit as he talked, slurring. I looked past him at Kat, who was shaking her head as if to keep awake, not paying much attention to us.
“I guess.” I looked back to the man to find he had turned back to the bar, nursing his drink, attention focused on a soccer game on the screen in front of him. “Or maybe he just figured I was the only unattached woman in the bar.” I swiveled on my stool to look around and confirmed my suspicion; most of the people in the bar were plainly coupled up.
I looked to Scott and frowned. “Why didn’t he assume I was your girlfriend and send a drink to Kat?” Scott got a blank look, then hemmed and hawed. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter,” I said. He took a breath and lifted his second beer, draining it.
“Take it easy.” Kat leaned over, crossing Scott’s body to weigh in over the blaring music that filled the bar, now a classic 80s rock tune that had more metal than an orthodontic patient’s mouth. “You’re not going for a third, are you?”
“I’ve been drinking beer and wine with my family since I was like…thirteen,” Scott said, his words curling as he answered, his tongue sounding like it was getting heavy. “I can handle it.”
“Uh huh.” Kat looked from him to me, her eyes narrowed slightly. “How much does your family usually let you have?”
“One.” He swayed on the stool. “We’re social drinkers, not alcoholics.” He laughed, as though it were the funniest thing in the world.
She rolled her eyes and then whispered something in his ear. He straightened on his stool and turned to me. “I think we’re gonna turn in for the night.” He pulled a wad of cash from his pocket and laid some on the bar. “You coming?”
I felt a flush of red as I imagined what Kat had said that got him to change direction so quickly. I didn’t want to be in the room next to them, certainly not for the next half-hour. “I think I’ll stay a little longer.”
He grinned, a goofy one. “Heh. Well, you might wanna stop after that one.” He pointed to my drink. “After all, if this is your first time drinking, you need to build up a tolerance.”
I felt a sway of my own in my head. “I’ll work on that.” I shot him a dazzling smile. “Have fun.”
Kat rolled her eyes at me but smiled, a weary look that I knew contained at least a grain of indulgence; her making an accommodation she normally might not have made when she was this tired, only for the purpose of getting him out of the bar before he became too trashed to walk.
As if to illustrate my point, Scott started to stand and his legs buckled. Kat caught him with an arm around his back and I could see her help him regain his balance, her meta strength enabling her to keep him upright. They walked to the door, her steering, him along for the ride. I chuckled under my breath and was dimly aware that the room had a gentle bob to it that could have been my head rocking back and forth. I knew that my best bet was to avoid drinking even one more drop of the suddenly much tastier drink in front of me.
When I turned back to the bar, I started because there was someone in the vacant seat to my left. He caught my eye, those intense blue eyes locked on mine, and he gave me a disarming smile that somehow got me to giggle, which came as a great shock to me. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I didn’t mean to be startled.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, shaking my head that I’d said that. “Sorry, I just didn’t expect—”
“Do you mind some company?” He caught my gaze and held it, and his smile went beyond the realm of disarming and into charming. He was wearing a button-up shirt that was unbuttoned at the top, giving me a glimpse of the beginning of some well-defined chest muscles.
I caught my breath and it held for a minute before I could squeeze out my answer. “I don’t mind.”
“My name’s James. James Fries.” He held up his drink, a tall, clear glass with some sort of garnish being the only hint it wasn’t water, and took a leisurely sip, not breaking eye contact the whole time he was drinking. “And you are?”
“Sienna.” I thought about it for a second, remembering that my identification had a drastically different name on it than the one I’d grown up with. “Sienna Clarke.”
“What brings you to the mighty town of Owatonna, Sienna Clarke?” He leaned against the bar, the angle of his body making him look very cool, his laid back attitude drawing my interest.
I took another breath and caught a whiff of a musk, something that left me wanting to take another breath so I could smell it again. “I’m here for work.” I blinked a couple times and the room swayed pleasantly. “You?”
“The same.” He took a sip and I admired his lips as they caressed the glass. “What do you do for work?”
“I’m…” It took me a second to remember my cover story. After all, I wouldn’t have wanted him to think I was some sort of person with super strength and powers that defied reasonable explanation. “I’m with the FBI. I’m doing some…investigating.”
“Investigating. How mysterious.”
My hand found its way to my glass, which found its way to my lips for another sip. “I do like to keep a certain mystique about me.” This time it didn’t taste too bad. In fact, it was almost good. “Do you live around here, James?”
“No.” I watched the sweat drip from his glass, leaving little blotches, like inkblots on the napkin as the dark wood of the bar bled through. His hand swirled his glass, slow. “I live in Minneapolis. I’m here for work.”
“I see. What do you do for work?”
He smiled. “Recruiting.”
I laughed, light, and I had no idea why. “That was vague.”
There was a glimmer in his eyes. “I have a mystique to keep up, too, you know.”
“Fair enough.” I put my empty whiskey down and watched as the bartender slid by and snaked it, replacing it with another. I started to protest but he had a wide grin on his fat face and nodded at James as he headed back to the other end of the bar where someone waited with a hand raised in the air. I looked at the new drink and felt a certain pressure in my chest at the realization that this could not end well. “I can’t drink this,” I said to James and watched him half-smile.
“Why not?”
“I’m a lightweight.” I said it with the air of someone making a confession. “And I have to work tomorrow morning, which means I kind of need to call it quits for tonight if I’m going to be at all able to think or drive tomorrow.”
“Acetaminophen and ibuprofen are your friends,” he said. “And lots of water.”
“I think moderation might also be a swell idea.”
“Much less fun.” His hand moved, very casually, across the bar and came to rest on my own. I could feel the gentle weight of it through the glove, the very slight warmth, and it caused me to redden, a heat rising in my cheeks that might not have been noticeable had I not been drinking. He watched my reaction. “Is that too much, too fast?”
“What?” I had been in a little bit of a daze, staring at his hand on mine. “No. Not really.”
“No?” He picked up my hand and cradled it in his, rubbing it. “Not this either?”
It felt strangely good, even through the glove. “No. That’s fine.” His eyes were on mine, staring, with a warmth that I found compelling, drawn to, and I couldn’t quite explain it. I found myself leaning closer to him.
He leaned in and kissed me. It was sudden, and caught me by surprise. My eyes widened when he did it, but it felt so good, the pressure, the warmth of his hand as it touched my cheek, and rested there, his lips on mine. I kissed him back, the haze in my mind so agreeable, and I felt his tongue part my lips and swirl. I let him hold my face in his hands and he kept them there, pressing his lips on mine so firmly—