So this biker walks into a bar…
Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, doesn’t it? Well, he wasn’t a biker. I found that out later.
So this guy who looks like a biker walks into a bar. My bar. The bar I work at. I don’t own it. Harry owns it. He’s not the bartender. He’s just the owner. I never see him at night. He’s like a reverse vampire. Is there such a thing? I wonder if he twinkles at night, and that’s why he doesn’t come out.
Well, anyway, this guy walks in. He’s got the leather jacket, the boots, the jeans, and blond hair down past his shoulders. Not even pulled back, but it’s pulled back on its own. Like he put hairspray in it or something. He didn’t. I found that out later, too.
He’s a big guy, bigger than Buckethead, and that’s saying a lot. Buckethead is all gut, no muscle, but this guy is muscle, you can see it with through the t-shirt. He’s got abs. I’m not turned on by abs. I like eyes. This guy’s got weird eyes, like they’re gray, almost – how do you put it? – you can see right through them. Translucent, that’s the word. He sits down at my bar, and I have to serve him. Not that I don’t want to. I would love to stay and talk to him all night. But it’s Easter night, and the guys who are here are running away from their wives and families and whatnot, to get a few moments of peace after the big Easter dinner and before going to bed. We’re closing early tonight – Harry thinks there’s going to be no business, but he hasn’t owned this place as long as I’ve been here. I know that after holidays, the guys want to be here.
I go up to him, and he’s staring at the mirror for a minute before he focuses on me. “Jack and Sam,” he says. A man after my own heart. I pour him a shot, give him a Sam Adams Lager on tap, and before I put the Sam in front of him, he’s already downed the Jack. I smile at him. I haven’t seen him here before, so I know he’s out of town, but I ask the same question of him I asked the other guys: “Getting away from the family?”
“No, goin’ to it,” he says. I don’t know what he means, and I think he’s being stealthy on purpose. So I shut up, figuring he doesn’t want to talk. Too bad, I figure.
And then, miracles of miracles, the other guys start drifting out, saying they have to get up early for work, and/or their wife is probably going to shit kittens since they’ve been gone so long, and/or motherfucking in-law cousins are probably destroying the house as they sit there. Well, not really, but I’ll bet that’s what they’re thinking. I’m no Sookie, but I know these things.
I know that the big blond guy is alone. He drinks the beer and watches the tube, not really looking at what he’s watching. I turn the volume down when most everyone leaves (except for Kevin and Danny, who nurse their drinks all night and just come here to play pool), and I look at Mr. Biker Guy and say, “Penny for your thoughts?”
He looks directly at me. “I’m just lonely.”
I felt heat rise. I know I was blushing. I mean, he was hot. He was big, and probably strong, and he had such beautiful eyes.
“Missing someone back home?” I ask. I don’t need to know about his girlfriend/wife/significant other. But why did I ask a stupid question like that?
“Yeah,” he says, and something happens to his eyes. I don’t know, they got like cloudy, darker gray with I could swear were gold specks. He was looking at me so intensely, I shivered. I did!
“When do you close up?” he asks me.
I turned around to look at the clock above the bar. I had a half-hour to go. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Cheryl, don’t do this. It’s a one night stand and you could get preggo. Look, I’m a smart girl, and I carry condoms in my purse along with the maxi-pads, just for these kinds of emergencies. I think the condoms are still good. I mean, they’re not perishable and they don’t expire, right?
In an hour, I was standing outside the bar after locking up and setting the alarm. He waited for me, under the lights. He didn’t smoke, but he would have looked so cool if he did (I’m glad he didn’t, because that stuff’s just ugh). He reached down and took my hand, and lifted it to his lips, and kissed my hand, like they do in the movies. Like they do in the movies!
I swear, it was all a dream from that moment on. Somehow we ended up in his hotel room. Somehow we ended up naked. It was like a movie, it really was. He said he name was Knight and he was from the Kingdom of Ethelmark. I don’t know where that is, and I think he was full of shit, but if he wanted to play that he was a knight and I was a princess, all the better. He treated me like a queen, going slow and…it was really a movie. Not a porn flick, but a nice, pretty, romantic movie, with kisses and touches and all that other stuff that I’m not going to tell you about here because that kind of stuff isn’t meant to be written down, but meant to go to my grave with, as a pleasant memory.
And just like in the movies, he was gone with the dawn, leaving a flower on the pillow next to me that he must have gotten from outside. But I’m a smart girl, and I went and got a Plan B pill, just in case (even though he used a condom, I saw him put it on and take it off), because I don’t want a real permanent reminder of that night.