Winter Jacket (3 page)

Nikole
owned a small landscaping firm that mostly contracted with private residences, designing and planting flower gardens for some of the town’s wealthiest families.  Even though the ground was currently frozen and covered in at least a foot of snow, she was still busy with her small staff, planting seedlings in small pots and getting ready for Spring.  When the snow melted, she’d have her full staff back again during the growing seasons.  I often steered students her way who were looking for part-time or summer jobs. Troian made more than enough money from her writing to comfortably support them both, but Nikole wasn’t the “kept-woman” type, no matter how much her partner insisted on doting on her.

"So I hear Troi is trying to hook yo
u up with Peggy's new bartender," Nikole said as she sat down. 

I
returned to my seat and looked in the direction where Troian had literally skipped off to get her girlfriend something to drink. She was leaning against the bar and looked to be engaged in a serious conversation with the newest bar employee.  As if sensing my gaze, they both looked in our direction. Troian waved in an exaggerated manner while the dark-haired bartender simply smiled.

I quickly looked away before I got sucked into one of Troian's set-ups. "She may already be designing the wedding invites," I groaned.

Nikole smirked and shook her head. "You know she means well; she just wants to see you happy. And for Troi, happiness is a committed relationship."

I sighed, but nodded. "I know, I know." I took a quick sip from my pint glass. "I just always thought I'd get to choose my future wife.”

Nikole chuckled, deep and throaty. "Not if my girlfriend has her way."

“I’m really not into arranged marriages.  How do I distract Troi from this latest quest of hers?”

“You could always find yourself a new girlfriend before she does it for you,” Nikole pragmatically suggested.

"
Yeah.  That’s not happening.  But enough about my lack of dating life,” I deflected. “How is work these days?"

She took the bait.
"It's going well,” Nikole nodded. “Kind of the calm before the storm. Once the snow melts, things will pick up. I’ve got to hire some new staff before that happens though."

“I’ll look through my rosters and see if there’s any local kids who might do a good job,” I offered.

Nikole grinned. “Excellent.  I knew I could count on you.”

Troian took that moment to skip back to our table.
She grandly set a double shot of something ominously amber near my hand.  “What’s this?” I asked, looking down at the miniature drink. “You didn’t order this for me, did you?  You know I don’t do shots.”

The proud grin on Troian’s face was unmistakable. “It would appear you’ve attracted a fan.”  She nodded in the direction of the bar.

I swiveled in my chair to see who had bought me the drink. Our eyes met, and Peggy’s new bartender gave me a quick wave; apparently she was my not-so-secret admirer. She smiled and of course there were dimples – there were always dimples.

I turned back to Nikole and Troian, who had sat down beside her girlfriend.  “What do I do?” I hissed in a panic.

“Go talk to her,” Troian urged, grinning ear to ear.  She practically bounced in her seat with mildly contained energy.

“Or just drink up,” Nikole shrugged. “Free booze.”
  Whereas Troian typically behaved like she'd ingested one too many pixie sticks, Nikole had a calming energy about her. They seemed to balance each other out.

Taking Nikole’s more reasonable advice, I tossed back the shot and sputtered a bit when the liquid burned down my throat.  “Is she still looking over here?” I whispered.  I could feel the tears pricking at the corners of my eyes.  I fucking hated shots.

“Even better,” Troian whispered back.  “She’s walking over.”

Oh, no.

I stared hard at my hands, hoping for an exit strategy to be written on my palms.
Why
had I agreed to come to Peggy’s tonight?  I could be at home right now, in my pajamas, watching public access television, and drinking a nice glass of pinot noir. 
And slowly becoming a spinster
my brain unhelpfully supplied.

I could sense movement in the shape of a slender woman stopping near my elbow
, but I didn’t dare look up. “Hey,” a feminine voice greeted. “I’m Megan.”

I snapped my eyes up to her smiling, waiting face. Troian had been right – she
was
cute.  I gave her a thorough appraisal from my seat. Her porcelain skin was like a china doll. Her wiry arms were peppered with tattoos – not enough to call them sleeves, but enough to see she’d spent a good amount of time under a tattooist’s needle.  Her hair was long and dark with some of those trendy feather things woven into her wavy locks.  She was tall, but not too tall, with legs that went on for miles encased in black skinny jeans.  A black belt hung on a narrow waist, small breasts beneath a loose, maroon v-neck that looked touchably soft – the t-shirt, not her breasts.  Okay, so her breasts looked touchable, too. 

Yes, she was definitely cute.  The cuteness, in fact, was kind of startling.  Someone with so many tattoos shouldn’t have been able to be labeled as “cute.”

“She’s Elle,” Nikole supplied for me.  I felt someone, probably Troian, kick my shin beneath the table. 

“Do y
ou play pool, Elle?” Megan questioned.  I was surprised she was still talking to me.  I hadn’t said a word so far.  I’d only been staring, slack jawed, like a mouth-breather.

I glanced towards the back of the bar where I knew there were two pool tables and a dartboard. 
Two women played at one of the tables and the other remained unoccupied. Near the billiard tables was a misused jukebox that was filled mostly with Ani DiFranco and Indigo Girls albums. Peggy’s was a certified dive, but it was the only gay bar in this small town. 

I turned back to the new bartender
. “Not very well,” I admitted, finally finding my voice.  I knew how to play, but I wasn’t any good at the game.  I was much better at the international lesbian sport of foosball.

“That’s perfect,” she smiled broadly. Damn those dimples. “Now I can teach you something, and afterwards you won’t be able to resist my charms.  I read that somewhere
,” she added with a wink. She jerked her head toward the vacant pool table.  “So how about it?  Can I drag you away from your friends for a quick game? I’m on break.”

I hesitated, but felt Nikole’s elbow sharply pok
ing me in the small of my back. What was with these two and their need to poke me?  Oh, who was I kidding?  I hadn’t had a good poke in months.

“Go,”
Nikole whispered for only my ears. “It’ll be good for you.”

I
took a deep breath and gazed into Megan’s caramel-colored eyes.  “Okay,” I conceded.  “One game.”

+++++

Hello, hangover.  Nice to see you, too.             

I looked at my bleary reflection in the bathroom mirror and made a face at what I saw.  My mascara was smeared and my eyeliner was smudged, forming dark circles beneath my eyes.  I peered closer and tugged at my skin.  At
least those had better be makeup circles and not just the natural, sickly pallor of my skin.

I couldn’t believe I let Troi
an and Nikole keep me out so late the previous night.  I couldn’t even remember how or when I’d made it back to my house.  I was just thankful that I’d woken up safe in my bed – minus the throbbing in my head.

I rummaged around the medicine cabinet for the Excedrin I could have sworn I’d purchased a few weeks ago.  I thankfully found the white and green bottle after a little more searching and popped two pills into my mouth.  I turned the bathroom faucet on, leaned over, and with my hands, brought cool water to my mouth
. I drank greedily.  My thirst was insatiable; it was like I’d slept with cotton balls in my mouth.  To add insult to injury, my body ached all over like I’d been run over by a car.  Fuck.  I hated getting old.

L
uckily I didn’t teach on Fridays, so I could go back to bed and sleep off this hangover. Teaching the writing seminars four times a week gave me an unusual teaching schedule because most classes in the undergraduate catalogue met twice or three times a week. The university’s administrators wanted students to end the semester having the ability to write an academic paper.  I’m not sure how much one extra day a week helped with that goal though, but at least I had my Fridays off. 

When I wasn’t teaching, I typically worked on my
own personal writing.  I was fortunate that in my discipline tenure was determined not just by published works of nonfiction, but also the poems, short stories, and novels that you wrote.  So instead of publishing a close reading of Shakespeare or Chaucer or something similarly mundane, I could write fiction. 

These days I was assembling a collection of short stories – obtuse vignettes about people with
unusual powers.  It wasn’t the stuff comic books were made of though; my characters weren’t superheroes, and their special abilities weren’t necessarily helpful or a hindrance, they were just odd. 

I
thought about writing a story based on Hunter.  Lately she’d been on my mind so frequently, she’d become a kind of Muse.  But I couldn’t decide what her superhuman special power would be.  Eye contact that if left unchecked literally bored holes into solid surfaces?  Shoulder blades so delicate and sharp they could cut through anything, making her the perfect thief? The ability to make her English professor weak in the knees?

I was still thirsty, so I plundered
from the bathroom upstairs to the kitchen downstairs to get a proper glass of water.   I gulped down another pint-full before refilling my glass from the sink and padding back upstairs to return to my bedroom.

B
y this time it was close to 11 o’clock.  A few rays of early afternoon sunshine poked through the semi-closed blinds in my bedroom and fell on the body lying in my bed.

Wait a minute.

The body in my bed?             

“Oh shit.”

I froze in the doorway.  There was definitely a body in my bed.  I could just make out the shape beneath my duvet. How had I not noticed that before I went to the bathroom?  If I didn’t already have a hangover, I’d think I was still drunk.

I swallowed hard. There was an unruly mane of dark brown hair obscuring the face of my bedmate.
Well, at least it looked like girl hair.  That was some relief.  I was still going to kill Troian and Nikole though.  How could they let me bring someone home from the bar?  I didn’t do one-night-stands.  I was a serial monogamist with a tendency for infidelity, but even my indiscretions were with women I knew well.

The figure in my bed stirred.  The movement startled me
so much that I dropped my glass of water.  The pint glass fell to the hardwood floor, and while it didn’t shatter, the sound of impact echoed loudly in my bedroom.             

The noise jarred the woman in my bed awake, and she sat up abruptly. “What was that?” Her voice revealed her alarm, and her face showed that sleepy confusion that comes from being yanked out of a deep sleep.

“I dropped a glass of water,” I said in a calm, even tone that surprised my ears. Water puddled and crept at my bare toes.  I’d have to do something about that, but first I had to do something about the stranger in my bed.

Her sleepy face scrunched up.   “Oh.  You need help cleaning it up?”  She sat up a little higher in my bed, and I was relieved to see she was wearing a tank top.  Well, not relieved that I didn’t get to see her naked, but relieved because that probably meant I didn’t have blackout sex with her.

“Uh…Megan.” Points to me for having remembered her name. “Hi.  Um, morning.”

“Morning,” she grumbled, rubbing her eyes with her hands.

My brain lurched into overdrive, trying to piece together the hazy memories from the previous night out.  I remembered her buying me a shot of something gross. And then there was a game of pool, followed by more gross shots when I’d lost. And then there was dancing.  Lots of dancing with lots of faceless girls.  Not that they didn’t have faces, I just couldn’t quite remember them right now. And then had come even more drinks.  All of this I could somewhat remember. But one glaring and important hole remained.  Namely, why was Megan in my bed?

She pulled back the sheets a little to reveal more
of her lithe figure.  She wore black, lacy undergarments that made her pale skin look even more powder white. “Wanna come back to bed?”

I felt the blush creep up on my cheeks, and I averted my gaze from her half-naked form. “This might be a really stupid question, but what happened
last night?”

I
looked back up and saw something that resembled regret and guilt mirrored in her eyes. “Don’t remember much, huh?”

I sighed.
Stupid alcohol. Stupid lack of control. “I’m sorry. No.”

“Well firstly, we didn’t do anything,” she reassured me. “I mean, hell yeah I want to have a go with you, but not wh
en you’re blasted.  Call me old-fashioned,” she grinned.