Very Bad Things (33 page)

She was only eight years old when she watched the youngest
of her older siblings happily pack the last of his belongings into his beat-up
station wagon. Her mother had been in the kitchen, drunk and screaming about
all the sacrifices she had made for her “ungrateful excuses for children” and
how they could all just go to hell. Janie had followed Evan around, watching
him load up his odds and ends.

“Please, Evan, don’t leave me here with her. She’s so mean,”
Janie had begged him; but Evan ignored her pleas, just like the three siblings
before him.

As he was leaving the house for the last time, he’d looked
at her—not in the eyes, never in the eyes, “Sorry kid, you’re on your own. Take
care.” Then he left.

Janie had watched him drive away until she could no longer
see his car. When she heard her mother’s voice, she reached up and wiped the
tears from her eyes.

“Kid,” her mother had said, “get your shit and get out. I’m
having company for at least a couple of hours. When the door is unlocked, you
can come back in, but not before. You understand?”

Janie nodded, grabbed a blanket and her favorite book, and
left the house.
At least it’s a hot day and it won’t be too cold once the
sun goes down
, Janie remembered thinking.

“I don’t wanna see you too soon, kid,” her mother had
shouted as she slammed the door.

“Why did they even bother giving me a name?” She’d whispered
to herself as she headed toward the park.

Janie had sat on a park bench with her legs pulled up to her
chest as she allowed herself to escape into the fairy tales she was reading. On
that day, like every day before, and all the days after, she promised herself
that she would find someone who would love her someday. She would find someone
who, unlike her father and her siblings, wouldn’t abandon her, and unlike her
mother, would actually make her feel special and treasured.
Someday.

“Janie? Earth to Janie. You in there?”

Janie gasped at the sound of her best friend’s voice and
took in a deep breath.

“Where were you just now, Jane?” Lyla asked.

“I was right here, Ly. Right here.”

Words,
Janie, I Need Words

“HEY, JANIE, THE girls are lookin’
hot tonight,” Lyla announced as she leaned over to give a playful squeeze to
Janie’s breasts.

“I know, right?” Janie laughed; the silliness familiar and
comfortable. Janie could feel four pairs of lust-filled eyes glued to the
breasts in question, as a group of men stared at her and Lyla from across the
bar. Then, as if by magic, another round of drinks appeared at their table,
being carried by two of the leering men.

It was Thursday night. And just like every Thursday night,
Lyla and Janie were at Danny’s on Main, sipping cocktails and entertaining
themselves—and their mostly male audience—by telling silly, sexy stories and
sometimes-embellished tales. They found it funny, and maybe a little pathetic,
how little it took to get a man’s attention. Just the mere mention of words
like
tits
,
breasts
, or
vagina
and men would get pie-eyed.
If the word
pussy
came out of either woman’s mouth, it was an all-out
drool fest. Janie and Lyla couldn’t help themselves; it was a way to let loose
toward the end of a crazy workweek. Plus, the responses were always priceless,
and the free drinks certainly didn’t hurt.

Behind the bar, Max served up shots and poured beers while
Janie recounted the details of her latest date with the
douche de jour
.

“So, let me get this straight,” Lyla said as she seductively
moved her thick, espresso-colored hair off her narrow shoulders, “That cheap
loser actually told you to leave the tip?”

Janie nodded, her demure, teal eyes sparkling with the
uncontainable mischief that always seemed to bubble to the surface when she was
around Lyla. The two women knew they had a captive audience but refused to
engage anyone but each other.

“So…what did you do?” Lyla lifted her glass to her lips,
tipped it back, and then replaced it on its coaster, “Please tell me you didn’t
put any money on the table!”

Janie winked and took a long sip of her cocktail. “Ly, of
course I put money on the table. It wasn’t the waiter’s fault my date was a
cheap-ass jerk. But”—Janie sipped her drink again—“when he walked me to my door
and leaned in for a kiss…I told him that neither his tongue nor his
tip
were
going anywhere near me.”

Janie and Lyla broke into a fit of laughter, the men who’d
been listening seemed equal parts aroused and ashamed. Their expressions only
caused more hysterics from the two women.

Max, on the other hand, felt his protective instincts flare.
He wanted to find that guy and teach him a thing or two about how to treat a
woman. Since meeting and befriending Janie, he had thought she was
attractive—no…not attractive, more than attractive...fucking gorgeous—and over
the past month or two, he’d been finding himself wanting to protect her from
everything, specifically men, that could hurt her. He had to remind himself to
back off, to let go of the urge.

You’re no one’s hero
, he thought.
You don’t do
relationships. It’s fuck and release. You get in, you get out, no one gets
hurt.
Max gave himself a mental shake and tuned back into the conversation.

But Janie and Lyla weren’t at their overcrowded table
anymore; they now sat, perched on barstools, directly in front of him at the
long, scarred, mahogany bar. Here, Max could look his fill without being too
obvious.

“Girls, you’ve gotta stop torturing my customers. My
insurance doesn’t cover heart attacks caused by
Danny’s Dolls
.” The joke
came from Danny, the bar’s owner and namesake.

“Don’t you mean
Danny’s Domme’s
?” Max added, with a
tightness in his chest that didn’t match his normally calm voice.

“Po-tay-to, pa-tah-to,” Danny retorted with an easy smile.

Janie’s eyes sparkled with mischief again, “Ly, do you get
the feeling that Mr. Owner and Mr. Bartender are making fun of us?”

Lyla picked up the proverbial ball and ran with it, “Why,
yes. Yes, Jane, I do. And I’m not sure what they’re talking about. Just because
the
boys
who drink here get all goofy over a mild conversation about
whether they like their women to have ‘hardwood’ or ‘carpet’ has
nothing
to do with us.” Lyla smirked as Max’s Adam’s apple bobbed down the thick column
of his throat.

“You’re right, Lyla,” Janie giggled. “And what real man
can’t discuss whether or not he likes anal play?”

At the desperate look on Danny’s face and the lustful look
on Max’s, both women burst out laughing again.

“You are all the same,” Janie said, shaking her head.

“Eeeaasy,” the women said in unison.

Janie and Lyla had been coming to Danny’s on Main, for six
months. It started out as just a Thursday night thing, but as the women got to
know Danny and his wife, Julie, as well as the rest of the bar’s staff, they
all started spending time together in a social capacity. The two young women
were more than customers now; they were more like family…or as close to family
as Janie and Lyla had ever had. Over the past couple of months, the two women
had even starting cooking dinner for the whole crew on Sunday nights. Since
neither woman was close to her family, either by choice or circumstance, they
had made Sunday night dinner their “family time” and invited Danny and Julie,
Max, and the other bartenders—Ryan, Kyle, and Ashley—to join them—it was the
one night of the week that Danny’s on Main is closed. That’s how close they’d
become.

“All I’m saying is, I know you’re both grown women, but I
worry about you,” Danny continued. “And I’m not sexist, but it’s more dangerous
for a woman to take home random guys from a bar.” Danny wore his paternal face,
the one that said
all joking stops now
. Looking directly at Lyla, he
added
,
“I can’t keep up with all of the guys you take home any more than
I would any of my boys, but I hope you’re at least being safe.”

Lyla’s cheeks flushed slightly, and Janie watched her
closely. She saw the flash of pain sweep across her best friend’s gorgeous,
heart-shaped face, before being neatly tucked away in the iron-clad box where
her emotions choked and suffered, but stayed put.

“I’m safe, Danny. Thanks for pointing out that I’m a slut
though.” Lyla winked to imply that she was joking, even though Janie knew that
she had taken Danny’s caring comment personally. Lyla was always the first to
recognize the bad in herself; even if she didn’t publicly acknowledge it. Janie
inserted herself into the conversation to take the attention off her friend.

“Ok, Danny, and my lecture is where?” Janie raised her
eyebrows, her gaze focused on the man leaning comfortably on the end of the
bar. Lyla reached over to Janie’s lap and squeezed her hand in thanks.

“Janie…” Danny paused, looking at her thoughtfully, “Janie,
you deserve much better than fucking losers like Richard.”

“You mean Dick,” Lyla chimed in.

Danny chuckled, “Whatever his name, that guy was an ass. He
had no respect for you. Since then, all I’ve heard about are the assholes and
douche bags you dated before him and the pussies you’ve gone out with since.”
With a softened glance, he said, “Wise up, girl.”

Janie nodded, properly scolded.

In that moment, Max’s brain finally lost the battle his body
had been waging. Watching Janie step into the line of fire to protect Lyla and
take on the unwanted attention herself, broke the dam that had been holding
back the want and need he’d so carefully secured. He could no longer deny the
desire he felt for the kind, sexy woman who sat in front of him. She had no
idea how gorgeous she was and that naïveté just made her even hotter.

Staring at her thick, dark, shining hair, his eyes grazed
over her every feature. The thought of tangling his fingers through all that
silk and pulling it as he stared into her big, bright eyes made his hands itch.
His gaze traveled to the plump, pink lips that tilted up in a small smile every
time she looked at him. Oh, how he wanted to kiss and nibble those lips. There
were so many things he wanted to do with her.

As his focus traveled down the column of her long neck, to
the creamy, smooth skin of her chest and amply showing cleavage, his mouth
began to water. Lyla was right; they looked delicious. His dick was as hard as
granite. Thank God he was standing behind the bar. She was becoming a
distraction he could no longer ignore. If he could have her just one
night…maybe then he could finally get her out of his system. Then they could go
back to being friends. He just had to mute the little voice in his head that
screamed, “
Yeah…good luck with that!
”

Max didn’t realize he’d missed the end of Danny’s fatherly
“talking to” until he was jarred out of his fantasy by his boss’s voice, “Max,
get these girls a drink, on me.”

Max placed the unordered Cosmos in front of each woman. He
knew exactly what each of them wanted to drink based on their moods. It was definitely
Cosmo time.

Lyla smirked. “Which girls, Danny?”

Janie shimmied her breasts together. “Maybe he means these
girls, Ly.”

A peal of laughter escaped the two women while Danny rolled
his eyes, “They’re impossible, Max…impossible, I say.”

Max lifted one, dirty-blond eyebrow in response while trying
his best to avoid the perfect globes on display in front of him. The gruff
sound of Danny’s chuckle couldn’t be missed, but Max swore he heard Danny
mumble into his beer, “Keepin’ your eye on the prize, I see.”

And with that, any seriousness that the moment had
evaporated, and the mood went back to being playful.

“SO, THAT’S WHY I refuse to serve
any one person more than eight shots of tequila!” Max grinned as he finished
his story. Janie and Lyla wiped the tears of laughter from their eyes before
they sipped their pink drinks again.

“And they really got
that
tattoo
there
and
blamed you?!” Lyla asked through her hysterics. Max nodded, and Janie watched
as he scrubbed his hand over his perpetual five o’clock shadow.

“My stomach actually hurts from laughing so hard!” Janie
said, running her hands over her flat belly.

Lyla raised a brow at Max as she noticed the desire flare in
his eyes when he watched her friend. He focused a trained gaze on Janie’s
hands.

“All right, I have to pee. I’ll be right back,” Janie
announced to everyone and no one. She slid off her bar stool and headed for the
bathroom. Max watched her slim hips sway as she walked away, his eyes slowly
drifting lower…

“Max! I totally saw that,” Lyla said, her voice husky, as
soon as Janie was out of earshot.

“What exactly do you think you saw?” Max slowly shifted his
green eyes from Janie’s retreating form to a very-interested Lyla.

“You were checking out Janie. I knew it! I knew you were
into her. Why haven’t you said anything?”

“Lyla, for someone who thinks she knows everything,
sometimes…you don’t have a clue.” Max’s smile and tone were laid back, just
like the man himself, but his self-control was beginning to fray. The rag he
was using to wipe down the bar was held tightly in his hand. Looking down as he
scrubbed the same spot over and over, he wondered if it was worth risking his
friendship with Janie for just one night. His gaze slowly lifted from the bar
as Janie strutted back to her seat.
It would be one smokin’ night
, his
libido shouted.

Janie’s face was pinched with disgust as she hopped back up
on the stool. “Danny, you may want to get someone into the bathroom. Uh, some
poor girl had too much to drink…”

“Great…” Danny sighed and excused himself to deal with the
mess. Obviously it wasn’t the first time he’d had to handle a messy bathroom,
but the job never got more pleasant.

Janie felt bad about anyone having to face the shitstorm she
had just seen, but it had to be done. “So….um…what were we talking about before
nature called?”