Bar Crawl Read online

  “But you called me a pig.” At this point I was spinning. I wanted to have more with Frankie, but seemed to keep bringing up all the shit she hated about me. I was fully Bar CJ and fully Writer CJ at the same time, and it was a mess. “You called me a pig without knowing how I treat those women who I leave the bar with. I respect women, Frankie. I respect the hell out of them. I’ve always been honest about my desire to remain single, and no one leaves my place wondering how I’m feeling.”

  Frankie’s shoulders fell as she sighed. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m the asshole. Frankly, if today was the only time I’d spent with you, I’d be the one pursuing you.”

  “So why do I scare you, then?”

  Frankie chewed on her lip for a moment before looking up at me through her eyelashes. “Because old habits die hard. I’m afraid you’ll end up hurting me. Sure, I believe it when you say you won’t go home with anyone else, but that’s not all that can hurt, you know. If I’m in a relationship with someone, I want their undivided attention. That’s different than constant attention—I’m not high maintenance.” Her cheeks took on a warm-looking flush and she looked back down.

  “I know what undivided means, Frankie.”

  “You’re also a flirt. Flirting itself, alone in a vacuum, isn’t harmful. But we don’t live in a vacuum. And, it’s a slippery-ass slope from flirting to innocent touches to not-so-innocent touches. Wait,” she looked up, seeming confused again, “why are you scared of me?”

  Shit.

  Frankie

  “Why are you scared…of me?” I asked again. “Enough to flee my house, even.” I chuckled softly, but it wasn’t funny.

  “The fleeing,” he teased, “was more about me than you. We talked about that.”

  “Okay, what’s the rest, then?”

  “I’m scared of your judgment. And I’m afraid I’m not good enough for you. Fuck that, I know I’m not good enough for you.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

  I mimicked his position, nudging my shoulder into his upper arm. “That’s an intense judgment to make, don’t you think? Either you think really shitty of yourself, or far too highly of me. Shouldn’t I be able to decide who is or isn’t good enough for me?”

  “You’re brilliant,” he said as he stared at the floor. “You’re kind and smart and focused and, to boot, I’ve never once seen you flinging yourself around the bar like you’re for sale. You have excellent self-esteem…” he trailed off as I started laughing. “What?”

  “My self-esteem is rather in question,” I admitted.

  CJ tilted his head, a movement that cause me to look him in the eye. “Trust me,” he asserted. “You have amazing self-esteem. I’m a bar person expert, remember?” He laughed a little before continuing. “I’ve seen how women with low self-esteem behave at a bar. It’s not always promiscuity. But of all the ways I know them to behave, you’ve never done any of those things. You’re always engaged in conversation, smiling, and you genuinely seem to have a good time.”

  “So, your fear, then…” I prompted, not sure he’d really said much on the topic.

  “Is that I won’t measure up. That, at the end of the day, I’ll still be the meathead sex freak who bangs the drums.” He lowered his head again and took a deep breath.

  Instinctively, I wrapped my arm around his back and rested my chin on his shoulder. “Sounds like that’s more you being scared of you rather than you being scared of me.” My chin bobbed against the slight shrug of his shoulders. “Hey,” I whispered, leaning back so he could lift his head.

  “Yeah?” When he looked up, I was shocked by the striking vulnerability in his eyes.

  I knew it had to be quiet in my house, since I owned no pets and we were the only two people there—and we weren’t talking—but the whooshing sound in my ears from my increased heart rate made it incredibly difficult to focus. “I’m not scared anymore.” My voice quivered slightly as I spoke.

  CJ leaned forward until our foreheads were touching. His was warm, threatening sweat but not quite there yet. His voice was rough like gravel again, but soft in a whisper. “I’m still terrified.”

  My hands rested flat against the tops of his thighs as I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened my eyes, CJ was still starting at me, perhaps even more intensely than before. I moved my hands up his sides and brushed my fingertips along his neck before resting them against the sides of his face. “Kiss me,” I said inside of my heavy exhale.

  Action was his only response, and he pressed his lips into mine. It was softer than our previous kisses. Testing. Tentative. We kissed in these soft, pillowy pecks for several seconds before I brought my hand to the back of his neck and made him stay on my lips a few moments longer. I wanted more and, for some reason, I was no longer afraid to ask for it.

  “Come upstairs with me,” I said between thick kisses.

  CJ pulled back, his breathing still heavy as he studied my face. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want you to think that you’re the same. Because you’re not. You’re important to me, even if I don’t fully understand all that means yet.”

  “But I want to, CJ. Don’t you want to?” I leaned forward and kissed his neck.

  “So, so, so badly. So badly.” He took a forced breath and gripped my shoulders. “I don’t want to make a mistake with you. Even without my knowing, I’ve made several. I’ve spent the last two years watching people at bars and writing their stories, and there you were over the past few months, writing mine.” There was a muted panic overtaking his voice.

  I shrugged. “Maybe we can write the next scene together.” I internally winced at how corny it sounded, even though I’d meant every word.

  “Damn, you’re making it hard to say no.” His thumb ran over my cheekbone excruciatingly slowly.

  I turned my head into his touch and kissed the palm of his hand. “So don’t say no, then.”

  I stood, grasping his hand and tugging him to standing. CJ and I had been unintentionally courting each other for months. I could no longer deny my role. Each time I’d seen him at one of the bars, I made longer eye contact with him than the time before. It’s as if I were begging him to be ready for what I wanted. I had no idea if he was fully there as we walked silently up my stairs, but we were ready for this.

  “Beautiful room,” he managed when I opened my door.

  I walked us over to my bed and stood with the backs of my legs against the mattress. Lifting his shirt up his body, I gasped at the sight. I externally, out loud, gasped. His skin looked as hard as it felt, and his chest was covered with a few large and ornate tattoos. I didn’t take much time to examine the tattoos that resided on his arms; it was his chest I chose to study.

  Running my fingers across a large and ornately illustrated drum set on his left pec, I grinned.

  “I know,” he said in a soft, mocking tone. “Obvious, right?”

  I shrugged. “Who cares? It’s awesome.” It calmed my nerves to see that CJ was clearly struggling with nerves and insecurities himself. “What’s this?” I asked, moving my fingers to script on the right side of his chest. It read, “And he finally loved her back.”

  CJ seemed to hesitate, chewing his words as he softly gripped my wrist. “I usually tell people they’re song lyrics from a song I wrote in high school.”

  “What is it, really?” I lifted his shirt up, and he pulled it over his head, casting it to the floor.

  “From a story I wrote in high school. A book, really. It was the longest thing I’d written at that point in my life. That was the last line of the story.” CJ slipped his hands up my shirt, taking his time to move over the indent of my waist and the curve of my breasts.

  Once my shirt was on the floor, I eyed him intensely. “You really haven’t told anyone about your writing, have you?”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “Why the fuck not? It’s so hot.” I kissed his chest and
brought my hands to the waistband of his pants.

  He shrugged, seeming to grow impatient as we pawed at each other’s clothes. “I’ve always been CJ, the drummer, the big dude everyone wanted to play football.”

  “Did you? Play football?”

  “Fuck no.” Slowly glided his hands up my sides. After a few more wordless kisses and touches, we were both left in our underwear, and I still had my bra on. Lace. Because even though I hadn’t intended on this day ending like this, it’s never a bad idea to wear kickass lingerie. “Haven’t you ever just…taken on your role? Not asked any questions?”

  CJ’s direct and astute question stopped me in my tracks. I sat on the edge of the bed, still tracing the ridges in his shoulders and back with the tips of my fingers.

  “That’s the story of my life, CJ,” I whispered as I kissed his shoulder, neck, and then his jaw. “The good girl,” I continued, pressing him back against the cool satin of my comforter, “always in step and doing it perfectly. No veering. No mistakes.”

  A flame seemed to ignite behind CJ’s eyes. “Yeah? And what is it that you want?”

  The words were out of my mouth before I could filter them. “I want to be bad.”

  Since the first night I’d noticed CJ in Finnegan’s a few months ago, I’d wanted him. On a deep, primal and biological level, I saw him and my body begged, please. That had been the exact reason I’d avoided him. I knew if a perfectly practical woman like myself found herself struggling to keep her panties on around him, then it was no wonder he was never low on options for the evening. I hadn’t wanted to give him what he’d clearly come to expect, all the while depriving myself of what I so desperately wanted from him. The exact thing he could give me.

  Evidently, though, my words were misplaced, or poorly timed, or simply completely wrong. I’d barely had time to take a breath after finishing my sentence before CJ had sat up, his large hands wrapped firmly around my shoulders.

  “I can’t do this,” he panted, squeezing his eyes shut.

  “What?” I was as breathless as he was, and my heart hadn’t found a normal rhythm since he’d kissed me on the sidewalk several hours prior.

  CJ edged his way off the bed and began redressing. I sat in stunned silence, not knowing what the hell had just happened.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, instinctively bringing my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around my legs. It was, perhaps, an unnecessarily protective stance, but I was emotionally overexposed. My worst fear was playing out in front of me: a man was leaving in the middle of fooling around. What the fucking hell?

  “I’m sorry,” CJ blurted out as he roughly tugged his t-shirt over his head and jammed his feet into his shoes. “We want different things from each other, clearly.”

  “Clearly?” I questioned, standing and redressing myself.

  He held out his hands as if he were exasperated. “I’ve spent the last several days telling you shit about me that no one else knows…telling you I feel different with you.”

  “I feel different with you, too, CJ.” I pulled my shirt on and rested my hands on my hips, swallowing back some rejection-flavored tears.

  “That’s just it,” he snapped. “We want to be different with each other, and it makes us still different from each other. And,” he pointed at me, seeming flustered and aggravated, “you said the reason you avoided me for so long was that you didn’t want to be just another girl in my bed. But, here, that’s exactly what you want. Only we’re in your bed.”

  My jaw swung loose as I watched him walk through my bedroom door. I followed him down the stairs. “So you’re mad at me for being attracted to you? What the fuck?”

  He reached the bottom of the stairs and paced to the living room, where he stuffed his laptop in his bag. Returning to the front door, he placed his hand on the knob. “I thought you were different, but you just want the same thing from me everyone else expects. I’m sorry,” his tone finally mellowed, “I’ve gotta go.”

  As he moved to shut the door behind him, I caught it and called after him, “And I thought you were different!” Through the window carved into the door, I watched his shoulders twitch as the slam echoed down the driveway.

  Frankie

  Two weeks had passed without sight of or call from CJ. Granted, we’d never actually exchanged phone numbers, and I hadn’t gone out in the two weekends following our…incident…but I still found myself thinking about him far too often.

  I told Bradley about the details of that night, sparing no adjectives, and he seemed rather Switzerland-like on the issue as we made dinner in my kitchen on a Wednesday evening.

  “I don’t know…” Bradley hesitated. “Don’t you think he kind of had a point?”

  I turned slowly from the counter and faced Bradley. “I know I have a point. On the end of this knife.” I arched my eyebrow and mockingly stabbed the air before returning to slicing vegetables.

  “That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?” He sighed and dug through my refrigerator for a bottle of wine. He didn’t have to dig far.

  “Me, dramatic? Coming from the guy who once took out an ad on Facebook apologizing to his boyfriend?” I tossed the sliced vegetables with olive oil then sprinkled them with salt and pepper before sliding them into the oven.

  Bradley’s face remained startlingly unapologetic. “It was a grand gesture. Besides, we were already in a relationship. I was trying to get him back.”

  I took the glass Bradley had poured for himself, causing him to chuckle and reach for another glass as I spoke. “So what does CJ have a point about…according to you?”

  With a deep sigh, and a glass full of white wine, Bradley eased onto the stool next to me. “I’m not saying either one of you were right in what you did or said, but, at least on his end, he pointed it out. I mean…you’ve spent all this time judging him for activities that you then encouraged him to engage in the first night he was at your house.”

  “That’s different,” I insisted. “We’d been talking all day. We’d already kissed a few times. And he didn’t pick me up at the bar.”

  “Didn’t he?” Bradley grinned with a mouth full of my favorite Riesling.

  “What?”

  Bradley set his glass down and folded his arms on the countertop, leaning forward. “You may not have walked out of a bar hand-in-hand, heading straight for the bedroom, but, I’d say he certainly picked you up there. Even if it was only the start of the pick up.”

  “You’re mental,” I spit out.

  “Keep in mind, I said neither of you were totally right. He also fucked up. He gave you a view of himself that, while apparently honest and true, wasn’t one he was ready to embrace fully. I think he’s confused, Frankie. I know he wanted you, but then he—”

  Before Bradley could finish his sentence, my doorbell rang.

  “Hold that thought.” I slid off my stool and walked to the door.

  Upon opening it, I was greeted with a bizarre sense of déjà vu. In front of me stood a woman who looked about my age—maybe a couple of years younger, if that. She was much shorter than I was, but was able to look me almost in the eye thanks to a pair of nosebleed platform high heels. They were cherry red. She wore a black, A-line dress that was cut to her knee. It had a cherry pattern and looked as though it had come from a ‘50s clothing catalogue. She was turned slightly to the side, as if checking for signs of life from my house, and that allowed me to see the menagerie of tattoos on her shoulders, neck, and back. The rocking horse fly on her shoulder held my attention the longest before I got to her deep chocolate brown hair—the kind of color I’d have to pay for—that was twisted up in a vintage style. If she wasn’t from the ‘50s, then she certainly made her living as a pin-up model.

  I’d never seen her before, but I was certain I knew her somehow. She turned her face to me and revealed a bright smile and a thin silver hoop nose ring that cuffed her nostril perfectly. She was stunning, but I immediately sensed that she didn’t care about it.


  “Hi, ah you Frankie?” Her effortless dismissal of the letter “r” in the word “are” allowed me to originate her in the eastern part of the state, though I still had no clue how I knew her. Or, more importantly, how she knew me.

  “I am…” I trailed off, hoping to signal to her that I didn’t have a clue as to who she was, though she seemed to know that.

  Her smile brightened, creasing the edges of her eyes as she stuck out her hand. “Thank God you’re real. I’m Georgia.”

  “G—” I started as I shook her hand, stopping myself as it all came tumbling together. “Oh…Georgia,” I emphasized, recalling the only person I’d ever heard of in “real life” with that name. CJ’s friend. The alleged girl that had been his best friend since high school. In the flesh. At my house. Unannounced. “It’s, uh, nice to… meet you.” I checked over her shoulder, where her car was parked next to mine in the driveway, but it seemed she had no passenger.

  “He’s not here,” Georgia answered my unasked question. “Mind if I come in?”

  “I… sure.” I stepped aside, holding the door open as Bradley walked down the hallway.

  “Everything okay, Frank—” He stopped when he spotted my unintended house guest. “Well, look at you,” he said to Georgia. “You’re fantastic.” His eyes lit up like I’d only seen in designer clothing stores as he took Georgia’s hand and led her into my entryway. She indulged him by spinning in a circle.

  After her Bradley-led twirl, Georgia ran her hands down the front of her dress. “You’re pretty incredible yourself.”

  “Bradley,” I interrupted, “this is Georgia, CJ’s best friend. Georgia, this is Bradley, my best friend.”

  After a second of awkward silence, which was a millennia longer than I could ever handle, I got ahold of myself. “So…we’re having some wine. Want some?” I had no idea why she was in my house, but I figured wine would be the best way to put both of us at ease. Or, me at ease, since Georgia seemed more comfortable in her curvy skin than I’d ever dreamed of being in mine.