Jamie McGuire - Beautiful Oblivion

By noon I had dressed, jumped in the Smurf with minimal makeup and wet hair, driven to the closest fast-food restaurant to grab a couple of items off the value menu, scrounged up $2.70 in coins to pay for lunch, and then made my way to the Red Door. The entrance area was empty, but music was playing through the speakers. Classic rock. That meant Hank was already there.

When I sat down at the east bar, Hank came around from the other side and smiled. He was wearing a black button-up shirt with black slacks and a black belt. Typical for him during work hours, but he was usually dressed down on Sundays.

I straddled a barstool, and rested my chin on my fist. “Hey, Hank. You look nice.”

“Well, hello, good-lookin’,” Hank said with a wink. “I’m not going home before open tonight. Paperwork and all that fun shit. Did you enjoy your weekend off?”

“I did, under the circumstances.”

“Jorie said Trenton Maddox was hanging around your table Friday night. I must have missed it.”

“I’m surprised. Usually you’re watching the Maddoxes like a hawk.”

Hank made a face. “I have to. They’re either starting a fight or finishing one.”

“Yeah, they almost finished one with Coby, the jackass. Even when I told him who they were, he still didn’t back down.”

“Sounds about right.”

“I already need a drink!” Jorie called from the other side of the room. She was walking in with Blia. They both took a stool on each side of me and put their purses on the bar.

“Rough night?” Hank said, amused.

Jorie lifted an eyebrow. If it was possible to flirtatiously chomp on a piece of gum, she was doing it. “You tell me.”

“I’d say you had a pretty good night,” he said with a smirk.

“Ew,” I said, my entire face compressing. Hank’s dark, curly hair, light-blue eyes, five o’clock shadow, and tan skin made him attractive to nearly every female between the ages of fifteen and eighty, but Hank was twelve years older than us, and I’d witnessed so many of his shenanigans that he was more like a cute but ornery uncle to me. The only thing I wanted to visualize him doing was paperwork and counting money at the end of the night. “No one needs to hear that.”

Hank was responsible for the end of at least a dozen marriages in our little town, and he was notorious for paying attention to barely legal young women just long enough to dip his stick. But when Jorie began working at the Red last year, he was obsessed. Jorie, an army brat with nine cities under her belt and unimpressed by most things, was definitely not falling for Hank’s charms. It wasn’t until there was a major turnaround in his behavior and reputation that she gave him the time of day. They’d had a couple of setbacks, but they were good for each other.

Jorie elbowed me and gave Hank a playful glare.

Tuffy walked in, looking tired and depressed as usual. He was a bouncer at the Red until he was fired. Hank had a soft spot for him, though, and rehired him six months later as a DJ. After his third divorce and third bout with depression, he missed work too many times and got fired again. Now, on his fourth wife and fourth chance at the Red, he was reduced to working the entrance and checking IDs at half pay.

Just a few seconds later, Rafe Montez followed behind Tuffy. He took over for Tuffy as DJ, and frankly was far better. He was quiet and kept to himself, and even though he’d worked at the Red for nearly a year, I didn’t know much about him other than that he never missed a night of work.

“Holy shit the bed, Cami! Debra Tillman told my mom that you were at Chicken Joe’s with Trenton Maddox!” Blia said.

Jorie’s bleached curls flipped from one shoulder to the other when she looked over at me. “Seriously?”

“I was coerced. He showed up at my apartment with a little girl. He told her she could go to Chicken Joe’s as soon as I got ready.”

“That’s kind of sweet.” Blia brushed her long black hair off her shoulder and smiled, making her beautiful almond-shaped eyes turn into thin slits. She was barely five foot two and always wore sky-high shoes to make up for being vertically challenged. Today she wore inches-thick wedges with white skinny jeans and a floral top that scrunched at her midriff and fell off one shoulder. With her beauty-queen smile and flawless saffron skin, I always thought she was destined to be famous rather than waste her time behind the front beer kiosk, but she didn’t seem interested.

Jorie frowned. “Does T.J. know?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that . . . awkward?” Jorie asked.

I shrugged. “T.J. didn’t seem fazed.”

Hank looked past me and smiled, and I turned around to see Raegan and Kody walk in. Raegan was walking quickly, searching in her purse for something, and Kody was a few steps behind, trying to keep up.

Raegan sat down on a stool, and Kody stood next to her. “I can’t find my damn keys. I’ve looked for them everywhere!”

I leaned forward. “Seriously?” Our apartment keys were on that key ring.

“I’ll find them,” Raegan assured me. She lost her keys at least twice a month, so I wasn’t going to stress over it too much, but I always wondered if the next time would be the time that we would have to pay to change the locks.

“I’m going to glue those damn things to your hand, Ray,” I said.

Kody gave Raegan’s shoulder a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “She had them last night. They’re either in my truck or in the apartment. We’ll look again later.”

The side door shut, and we all watched the door at the end of the hall to see the last of us, Chase Gruber, stroll in through the employee entrance in his typical attire. The six-foot-six college junior wore shorts year-round. In the winter he wore an ESU Bulldogs hoodie over the random T-shirt, but his short, curly hair was always covered by either a helmet or his favorite red baseball cap. His laces were untied, and he looked like he just rolled out of bed.

Blia’s face lit up. “Radtastic, it’s Gruber!”

Gruber didn’t crack a smile or remove his sunglasses.

“Rough day, Booby?” Kody said with a smirk.

All of the football guys called each other by their last names. To be honest, I wasn’t convinced they knew each other’s first names. Gruber was quickly nicknamed Gruby during practice, and sometime after Gruber started at the Red, Kody began calling him Booby. It was funny last year, but the name had lost its shine, for Gruber and for everyone else but Kody.

Gruber sat on the empty stool next to Blia with his elbows on the bar and his fingers intertwined. “Fuck off, Kody. Coach ran our asses off today because we lost last night.”

“Then don’t lose,” Tuffy said.

Kody chuckled.

“Eat my dick, quitter.”

Kody laughed once and shook his head. It was true. Kody did quit the football team before the season started, but that was because he blew out his knee at the end of the last game of his sophomore year. He suffered multiple ligament tears, one was shredded, and his kneecap was dislocated. I didn’t even know the kneecap could be dislocated, but the orthopedic surgeon said he would never play again. Raegan said he didn’t talk about it, but he seemed to be dealing with it well. As a true freshman, Kody had helped our little university win the national championship. Without him, the team was struggling.

The door shut again, and we all froze. It was too early for patrons, and unless someone followed Gruber, only employees knew to come in through the side entrance. We all sucked in a collective gasp when T.J. appeared. He was holding up a set of shiny keys.

“I went by the apartment. These were lying on the stairs.”

I jumped up from my stool and walked quickly over to him. T.J. took me into his arms and gave me a tight squeeze.