Spiked Lemonade: A Bad Boy Sailor and a Good Girl Romantic Comedy Standalone (2 page)

“They’re in London for my dad’s business meeting.”

“Grandparents?”

“They’re dead.”
Christ.

“If I tell you to close your eyes, will you?” I ask her, not knowing if whatever she says will be the truth.

“No,” she responds. “It will make it hard to find them, and you don’t know what they look like.” Wow, this kid is brave and despite my resolve to shut off my feelings, for some reason, I feel an affinity for her. Something about her reminds me of myself. She has a good point about looking for her aunt and her brother but there are only thirty-five people in there, and I don’t know if they are among the fatalities. Whether they are alive or dead, there’s a good chance they are in no condition for Ella to see right now. “I can only take you inside if you promise to close your eyes when I tell you to,” I tell her, kindly but firmly.

Ella looks down toward her pink running shoes that are covered in thick dust. “Okay,” she mumbles.

I head toward the doors of the grocery store, and at the same time the screams from inside grow louder. I shouldn’t be taking this little girl in there. I know it’s wrong, I just don’t know what else to do, and I need to help her, as well as whoever else needs it.

Once inside, the air becomes thick and there is smoky dust falling from parts of the ceiling. I do my best to avoid those areas as I turn around and pull the collar of Ella’s shirt up over her nose. “Hold this here,” I tell her, firmly.

Starting from the first aisle, which looks to be clear, we zigzag down each consecutive one. Everything continues to look clear until we hit the fourth aisle. We turn a corner to find everything throughout the whole area is in pieces. There’s nothing left but ashes lining the linoleum. There are paramedics and cops scattered around, but I don’t see any children here, so thankfully, I don’t think Ella’s brother and aunt are down this aisle. We continue down the next three aisles, again finding nothing. But as the smokiness increases, we head down the next aisle, where there are no paramedics or cops yet, and I hear a woman screaming for help. I can hardly see halfway down this row, so I place Ella up against a rack of food that is still partially intact. “I’m going to be just a few feet down there. Wait right here so I can see if there is anyone down here. How old is your brother? And what is his name?”

“He’s eleven and his name is Danny.”

“Okay, wait here.”

Ella grabs the sleeve of my coat and pulls me toward her. “He’s the best big brother in the whole world. You have to find him for me. I need him. He told me he’d always be there for me, and he’s not right now.”

“I will find him,” I assure her. I shouldn’t assure her.
Please don’t be one of the dead, kid
.

I dig my way through the shit blocking me from getting down the aisle. The screams from the woman are closer and it makes me move faster
while turning to look for Ella every few seconds. She’s watching me intently.

I see others digging from the other side now, but I get to her first—the woman screaming. Her hand is pressed against the side of her face and blood is pooling out
between her fingers. I tug at her hand to pull it away from the damage, finding more than damage. It looks like the side of her face took a lot of shrapnel from the explosion. The flesh is burned off,
and there are minuscule pieces of metal lodged over several spots across her cheek. I drop my bag to the ground and reach in for supplies. The left side of her face was barely impacted at all, and her eye that isn’t swollen shut is staring at me. She can’t be older than twenty-two or twenty-three, not that age matters in this situation. Her gaze is filled with shock, so I offer her what I hope is a reassuring smile and say, “You are going to be okay.”

“Danny,” she croaks out in a hoarse voice, her throat undoubtedly raw from the explosion. “Where’s Danny?”
Shit
.

“Auntie!” I hear Ella yell from the other end of the aisle.

“Don’t come over here, Ella,” I shout back. “Stay right there. I’m helping your aunt.”

“Where is Danny?” the woman cries.

I wrap the woman’s face up with thick gauze. “What is your name?” I ask her.

“I need Danny,” she cries faintly.

I begin to dig around more of the fallen debris and the charcoaled boxes of what looks like cereal. I push my way around, creating more dust and smoke, but my hand sweeps across a limb, and I push everything out of the way as I uncover a body.
Danny
. With each part of him that is unveiled from the masses of dirt, I see that he must have taken the direct impact of the explosion.

I find his small neck, and place my fingers over the spot where his carotid artery would be pumping blood if he were still alive—if he were to defy all odds of surviving an explosion this close by.
He’s gone
. I look back at his aunt, who isn’t looking at me. She appears like she might be going into a state of shock, her frozen gaze set on the devastation on the other side of the aisle. Then I see Ella walking toward me slowly, with a fearful question in her eyes. “Stop, Ella!” I yell. “Go back to where I told you to wait for me!”

But she doesn’t stop. She keeps walking, and I desperately want to cover her brother back up so she doesn’t have to live with this image burned into her mind for the rest of her life.
I should not have brought her in here. What was I thinking?

“Auntie,” Ella shouts as she drops by the woman’s side, gently shaking her shoulders to pull her out of the haze she is lost inside of.

“Ella, your aunt is going to be okay,” I say, hoping I’m not lying.
God, I hope she’s going to be okay.

“Auntie!” she screams. She drops into her aunt’s lap and wraps her arms around her neck. “What happened to your face?”

I scoot back toward the woman and check her pulse now too, afraid what I initially thought was shock might be something worse.

“Is she going to be okay?” Ella asks. “Is she? Where’s Danny? Is he okay? Is he outside with the policemen now?”

With my fingers still pressed against her aunt’s neck, I look up at Ella and the tears filling her eyes. I know how to say everything I need to say to her, but my tongue feels lodged in my throat. She’s screaming her questions at me in English, rather than a language I hardly understand. Over in Afghanistan, this didn’t feel as hard as this situation. I know what she’s asking me, and I don’t know why I can’t answer her.

“Sir, please tell me where Danny is,” she yells louder.

I take a seat next to her aunt and lift Ella away from her, sitting her down with me. I wrap my arms around her and try to soothe her cries. “It’s going to be okay,” I say, gently rocking her back and forth.

But I know that after today, nothing will ever be okay for Ella or her aunt again.

SIX YEARS LATER

JAGS

EENY MEENY MINY
moe, I think I’ll choose this pretty hoe
. I squint my eye through my thick beer goggles and imagine what she might look like in the morning. Hmm.
Is that a wedding ring, or nah, it’s on the wrong finger. I may not want to go home alone but I don’t go after the married ones, which proves I have some standards, I guess
. I’m not interested in other men’s property.

This run-down, hole in the ground whisky bar is starting to empty out from its abundance of cowboys and rednecks, probably because it’s past midnight, and I’m off the beaten path on some side street in Shitsville, Texas, but there’s still time to make my move, buy her a drink, and invite her back to my very empty hotel room that I haven’t checked into yet. I do a sniff check because this place was hopping with country music just an hour ago and there were one too many half-naked chicks rubbing up against me as they danced their liquor off, which is part of the reason I’m not in the mood to go home alone. In any case, if I smell, it’s because of someone else’s stank.

I’m good. I’m good.
I rub my hands together a few times before diving in for the kill. I amble across the beer-covered floor and slide down onto the stool next to Bambi. That’s her name for the night; she just doesn’t know it yet.

Dropping the side of my face down onto my fist, I tilt my head in Bambi’s direction and let out a loud sigh.
Nothing
. No reaction from her.
How odd
. She holds her finger up to the bartender, and I notice her nails are painted a dead-rose color. That’s hot.

“So,” I say loudly through another sigh.

Bambi finally turns her head toward me, looking me up and down, sort of the way I look at women. “Let me guess,” she says, sounding exhausted by my mere presence. “You sat down on that stool so you could attempt to buy me a drink and then,” she looks down at her watch, “make the big leap into getting me to go home with you?”

“Wow, woman. Egotistical much? To be honest, you aren’t my type. And I was actually just saying ‘So’ because the bartender has walked past us three times and there’s no one even in this joint anymore. But if you really wanted my attention that badly, you could have just asked me,” I say through a tight-lipped grin. Holy shit, I’m thinking on my toes even at six beers deep.
Impressive, Jags, impressive.

She groans and curls her lip with disgust. “You’re a bad liar,” she says.
Okay, maybe not so impressive.

“And you’re kind of hot. So go ahead and call me a liar now.” I grin again at her because she’s blushing.
You tried to put me down; take that
.

“You think you’re wicked smooth, don’t you?” Bambi quips.

“Totally wicked. You from Boston?”

“How the hell did you know?” she asks, putting her hand up in my face for a brief second as she orders herself another beer. “He’ll have one too. I’m treating this pretty princess tonight.” Is she for real? She just called me a fucking princess?

“Thanks, Bambi.” Take that.

She rolls her eyes as she takes the overfilled glass from the bartender chick and downs a quick swig before placing it down over the cardboard coaster sponsoring some weirdly named beer. “So? How did you know I’m from Boston?” she asks.

“You’re kind of a bitch, and you said ‘wicked.’”

A smile threatens to form over her lips as she takes another swig. “I take it you’re either from Boston yourself, or you’ve lived there for a period of time.”

“Yep,” I respond. “Just moved from there a few weeks ago but I only lived there for a little while. I’m originally from the Austin area, moved around Texas a bit while I was in the Navy, then took off to find a better place.”

“And you ended up back here? Figures,” she laughs

“And why does that figure?”

She looks me up and down before letting out a soft condescending chuckle. “Well, besides the fact that you don’t look like a cowboy, I haven’t met a Texan who can stay away forever.”

“Clearly, you need to get out more. I’m here, doing my buddy a favor. If it weren’t for him, I’d probably never step foot back in this state again.” I take a straw from the condiments holder on the other side of the bar, the part I’m not supposed to reach over to, and place it between my teeth, needing something to grind down on before this chick pisses me off any more. That’ll teach me to rely on my own judgment after that many beers again.

“Aren’t you going to drink your beer? Or are you more of a fruity cocktail kind of guy?”

“I’m pacing myself,” I tell her. “If I get too drunk, I do inappropriate things.”

“Like pick up random women at a bar with just a sigh?”

“I’m not that drunk.”

“No, but you’re that lame.”

“Lame?” I snort.
Am I lame?
“You don’t even know me.”

“Thankfully,” she says with raised brows.

“Oh pah-lease, you wish you knew me.” Bambi slips her hand into her little wallet purse, pulls out a fifty-dollar bill and slams it down right in a splattering of beer. “Crap!” I respond. “How much did you drink tonight?”

She stands up, and I hate that I’m even more attracted to her now than I was twenty minutes ago. Are those leather pants? Hot damn, I think they are, and I’m pretty sure they were painted onto her legs, which look like they could cut me in half. “I wanted to make sure the princess’s beer was covered too,” she says with a wink.

“Funny,” I say. I’ve run out of words for this witty fawn who is more like a cheetah. Bambi was not the right choice of name for her.

I rest my elbows down on the bar and take a pull on my beer, refocusing my attention on the TV above the strategically aligned bottles of liquor. I’ll assume Bambi is long gone by now since it’s been a good five seconds, more than enough time to walk from the stool to the front door, but if that were the case, I’m not sure whose hand would be resting on my shoulder. Oh God. She probably pulled the bouncer in to remove me. Though, I didn’t actually do anything. This time.

Glancing over my shoulder toward the hand, I find the now familiar, dead-rose-colored nails and an ink vine sprouting out from beneath her black, long-sleeved tee. “Bambi. Is that your hand on my shoulder?”

“Thank you for getting my mind off of things…even if that was the most ridiculous conversation I’ve ever had.”