Page 4 of Another Last Call
I was going to be sick.
Gritting my teeth, I glanced across the room. Mom was behind the bar, chatting with one of the regulars. It was a little surprising that she wasn’t even facing my direction, considering she’djustfinished lecturing me on providing better customer service.
Or at least not openly despising the tourists.
“Maggie,” I finally replied.
“Maggie,” the tourist—Peter—repeated, drawing my name out in a low rumble that made the other men laugh. “Miss Maggie. Have you been working here long?”
“A while,” I said, since he didn’t need to know I’d been working there almost my entire life.
He leaned a little closer to me. “Ever tire of the work, Maggie?”
“Are you going to order something?” I asked. As an afterthought, I tried to smile. “Sir?”
“Ah, in a minute. We’ve got time. How long have you worked here, Miss Maggie?”
I clenched my jaw again. “If you’re not going to order something—”
“Are you from around here?”
Sighing, I tapped my pen on my notepad. “My mom and I have lived here my whole life.”
That was a mistake. The men all glanced at each other before Peter spoke again.
“Just you and your mom?”
“Mm-hmm,” I said.
He lowered his voice, looking up at me with whiskey-glazed eyes. “Miss Maggie, do you mean to tell me you’ve never had a daddy?”
My face flushed. The man, mistaking it for embarrassment, laughed.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, sweetheart.” He leaned in, putting one of his disgusting hands on my forearm. “But you know, if you’re tired of being a waitress in this dump and want to find out what it’s like to have someone, ah… belikea daddy for you…”
I knew what I was supposed to do.
I mean, I knew what my mom wanted me to do.
She’d told me approximately a million times that when a tourist propositioned me—notif, butwhen, because she knew what these men were like—that I should walk away and tell her. Then she’d get Big Tim or Tiny Steve to come over and kick them out. Other customers didn’t like how I dealt with men like Peter, she’d say, and it wasn’t good for business.
But the kitchen was busy. Big Tim was flipping burgers and Tiny Steve was probably getting in the way or something. By the time I got one of them, this douchebag would have already walked out.
And besides. Where was the satisfaction in having them deal with him for me?
So instead, I glanced at my mom, then flipped the cover of my notepad closed. They were sitting at one of the high tops, so I leaned forward, resting my elbows against the table. I’d just brought four icy pints of beer to the table and there was one sitting in front of Peter. Biting my lip, I traced a finger down it, collecting the cold condensation on my fingertips.
He looked like he’d won the lottery, and the men he was sitting with looked like they would each want a turn with me before the end of the night. They were all the same breed of asshole: all middle-aged, all well-dressed, all able to afford a nice vacation property on the lake. They probably all had wives waiting for them back at their lake houses, kids at private schools, and enough money to buy my silence should anything unsavoury happen.
Looking him dead in the eye, I smiled sweetly.
“You’re a fucking pig, sir.”
With that, I picked up the glass of beer and dumped it over his head. Splashes of cold lager sloshed every which way and drenched his lap, splattering the men on either side of him.
“What the fuck!?” He shot out of his chair, drops of beer flying off his expensive golf shirt and landing on the tables in the splash zone.
“Oh, Jesus,” said Wanda, one of the locals who was sitting at a nearby table with her husband, Fred.
