Jane Lark - I Found You

“Think whatever you want to think, Lindy.” I kept my head down so my voice didn’t carry. “I know why she’s staying, and it isn’t to get money out of me. I like her, alright? She’s good company. I’m sorry you’re jealous, but I’m not making her homeless just ‘cause you’re jealous. This has to stop, understand. You can’t keep running her down every night.”

Lindy stayed silent for a minute. Then she said, “You know, Jason, if you were really trying at this, you wouldn’t even be in New York, you’d be here, where you belong, with me and your mom and dad. Bye.”

She hung up again.

I didn’t call back.

I slipped the cell into my inside pocket where my wallet was and went to sit back down opposite Rach again.

“How’s Lindy?” She gave me a sweet smile. I looked for sarcasm in her expression and found none. She understood. I could see it in her eyes. She knew I felt like trash because I could do nothing right for Lindy.

I smiled back as her smile turned sympathetic. “Fine.”

“It’s alright, tonight’s gonna cheer you up and put a smile back on your face, Jason Macinlay.”

I got up and shifted to the seat next to her and then started asking her about the club she was taking me to. I wanted to lighten the mood again. I’d felt good when we’d left the apartment, now I was feeling all small-town-guy-in-a-big-city.

She had me laughing by the time we got off the subway, although it wasn’t a belly laugh. I still felt a bit down over my argument with Lindy. I wasn’t sure Lindy and I would ever work out now, and yet we’d been together forever, and I’d thought it would just go on like that. I couldn’t see my future anymore. It was ridiculous, I’d been so sure of everything until I’d come to New York. Or perhaps Lindy had just been sure of everything and I’d fallen in line…

“Do you wanna go to a bar first?”

“You’re the party planner…” Lindy’s call was seriously flattening this for me.

“Then we’ll go to a bar, and I’m buying the first round, and you’re having a shot, not just beer.”

I smiled at her, my hands in my pockets again.

“Come on, cheer up,” she said. “A girlfriend who wants to take over the world won’t end your life.”

“Just limit it…” My gaze caught hers, and for the first time in days she gripped my arm.

“Come on, I’m on a mission now, I’m cheering you up whether you like it or not.”

Her touch felt reassuring and comforting. I really wasn’t a bastard, was I? Lindy made me feel like I was.

I picked a quieter bar to start with, to break Jason’s ill-mood. I thought a noisy bar straightaway may be annoying as he wasn’t in the right mind. It wasn’t empty though. Nowhere was empty in the middle of New York on a Friday night. I’d deliberately picked a place Declan wouldn’t go to, but even so, I scanned the place looking for him when we walked in. It was safe. I knew everywhere I’d chosen would be safe. They were too down-market for Declan.

We found space at the bar and I gestured for Jason to occupy a bar stool as I waved my hand at the guy who was serving. “Hey!” He was up the other end. He’d just finished serving someone else but he came straight over.

“What can I do for you, pretty lady?”

“Two of your best beers and two shots of tequila, with lemon and salt; we’re slamming them.”

“Coming right up.” He gave me a broad sidelong smile, flirting a little, but I wasn’t interested tonight. Tonight was all about giving my new friend, and official knight in shining armor, Jason, a good time.

When the bar tender set the tequila shots down in front of us, I picked one up and gave it to Jason.

He looked at it and then at the quartered lemon and salt pot. “What are they for?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never in your life slammed tequila?”

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head.

“Jason Macinlay, you seriously need to live a bit more.”

“That’s what I’m meant to be doing here isn’t it? That’s why you planned all this.”

“I planned all this so we could have some fun. I’ll pay for these and then I’m gonna teach you how to drink tequila slammers.” I handed the barman my money and he gave me a wink, obviously inwardly laughing over Jason’s naivety. I made a face at him. He laughed as I turned back to Jason.

“I guess I’m going to be the clown tonight.”

“You’re not. Okay, what you do is put some salt on the side of your hand first, like this…” I showed him and he copied, with a concentration frown marking his forehead.

I wanted to laugh. He did look funny, and puzzled, I seriously couldn’t believe he’d got to twenty-two and never drunk tequila shots. But then I’d been drinking long before the legal age.

“Then take a piece of lemon.”

He smiled, and copied me again.

“So now you lick the salt, drink the tequila and then suck the lemon; easy.”

I picked up my shot glass, licked the salt off with one sweep of my tongue, downed the tequila in one, and then sucked on the quarter lemon, grinning at him and meeting his questioning, smiling brown gaze, with the lemon still between my teeth.

His eyebrows lifted. “You’re mad.” But as he said it he picked up his shot glass then licking the salt, he drank the tequila and made a face a moment before sucking the lemon. His gorgeous face was all screwed up when he put the sour lemon down.

I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to kiss him and the night had only just begun. Sister… Sister… Sister…

“I’m not sure I liked it.”

I laughed. “It’s not a drink to like, it’s a drink to get drunk on and have fun with. Anyway now you can have your beer while the tequila starts running through your veins and making you relax.”

His smile lifted. He looked seriously sexy tonight. He’d worn a dark navy shirt with really thin white stripes breaking it up in places. The dark color set off his eyes and his long black eyelashes.

He’d had his hair cut too, and it was short and cut close to his nape and behind his ears and I really wanted to run my hands over it. I’d been itching to touch it ever since he’d picked me up from work.

He probably thought I hadn’t noticed, but I’d noticed.

He sipped from his bottle of beer, his legs splayed as he sat on the bar stool, with his feet on a rung and his elbow on the bar.

His facial features were as cleanly defined as his body, his jaw, his chin, his nose, all chiseled masculine definition and fresh, clean nice guy looks. Not marred by anger or bitterness, or obsession, as the faces of the older men I’d been with were. I wondered what he’d be like in ten-years-time, at thirty-two. That was the kind of age of the men I usually went for. He’d probably have kids with Lindy and look harrowed and beaten down by life.

I climbed up to sit on a bar stool, inelegantly, and picked up my beer.

He gave me another sweet smile. “You don’t drink the beer much back at my apartment. I thought you’d have picked something else.”

“Na, I just don’t drink much unless I go out, I’m an all or nothing kinda girl.” That was too true. I had a tendency toward addictions. It was all part of my nature.

He smiled again. “So, have you been here often?”

“Fishing again, Jason Macinlay…” I laughed. He was forever trying to draw out little snippets of my past. I rarely answered. I didn’t wanna talk about the past, only the here and now.

He moved his beer to clink against mine. “Cheers for this suggestion, and here’s to a great night.” I recognized his intent, to shove aside his conversation with Lindy and his worries about home and work. I think I heard him make some comment complaining about the asshole he worked for every day. I knew he didn’t really like his current life.