Honey

Chapter Four

"Is anybody serving drinks tonight?" A loud male voice boomed down the corridor. I shot out from under Tom's pinned arms and tried not to run toward the bar. What was I doing? Tom was my best friend and mostly my only friend. I definitely didn't want to ruin this relationship with him. I was so close to letting him kiss me and I didn't back away. I mean I couldn't with my back up against the wall and his eyes on my mouth and his body heat seeping in to me. I shook my head and started pouring the drinks for the shouty man.

"Can I get you a drink for when you finish? You and your boyfriend over there?" The shouty man offered. I turned around to face him and placed his drinks on the bar.

"One large house white wine and a pint of Fosters for you. I will never say no to free alcohol.  He isn't my boyfriend but he will have a drink he always does.  Thank you!" I forced a smile and added two drinks to his total and pushed the card machine towards him. 

 "A pretty girl like you should be with man. What a shame to waste yourself being single." He leered, picking his drinks up. One drink I knew was for his wife. His wedding band was hard to miss jammed on his short stubby fingers next to a big gold pinky ring. It looked like it had a crest on it but I couldn't make it out in the low lighting. 

 "I will try my best to get myself a man, don't you worry." I added a little giggle to go with the forced smile. I knew not to turn down free alcohol even if it did come with a side of asshole man.

The rest of the shift ended pretty quickly and somehow we had manage to keep apart, working on different ends of the bar.  We had finished the clean down and I had put the mop bucket back in the cleaning cupboard so it was time for our drinks. We had tallied up a few each and it was our usual end of the late shift ritual. I knew we had to talk about earlier but I didn't want to do it sober. There was the potential that it could sour our friendship even having this conversation and I needed to have that warm fuzzy feeling from the pint of cider he was pouring for me.

"Honey, did you want to split the tips out from the tips?" Tom pushed the jar and the pint over to me. I made quick work of downing the pint. Desperate to have some liquid courage in my system. Tom raised his eyebrows but made no comment as I slid my glass back over to him for a refill. I turned the tip jar upside down onto the bar top and counted the change out into two piles. There was a piece of paper with a number and a note for Tom. I put it onto his pile of change and handed it to him as he passed my now full pint back. 

 "Thank you. Oh it's that girl from earlier trying again to give me her number. Honey, we need to talk about what happened in the cellar corridor." He turned around with his rum and coke for himself and looked straight at me.