Between a Bear and a Hard Place(4)

“Shirley” laughed. “Blood in, blood out,” he said, pushing out his lips in a snarl and shaking his ginger curls with laughter. “I’m actually Nick, but... yeah, Shirley for now. What can I get ya?”

“How long until quiz starts?” Alyssa, her lone coworker friend – this one a tall blonde with a close-cropped pixie cut that featured, this week, the colors pink, blue and orange, asked. “We need to know how fast he’s gotta drink so he can be warmed up.”

“Oh, should get kicking here in about twenty minutes. Our normal announcer is sick, or drunk, or God knows what, so that’s why we’re running behind.”

Nachos, beer, and an irresponsible number of chicken wings ordered, the three settled in for a few hours of pleasant bullshitting and welcome relaxation.

And then Andy said the words.

“You gotta find somebody, Claire.”

He had four beers in him by that point, so it wasn’t really his fault. And anyway, it was an innocuous enough thing to say, but if Claire knew exactly what “hackles” were, any mention of her ‘needing’ a mate was sure to get them up, whatever they were.

She stared at him for a moment, and then simply asked, “Why?”

Andy shrugged. “You just seem, I dunno,” he paused, both to consider his words for a moment and also to have another swig. His breath was starting to take on a little bit of a twinge. “Kinda pent up? I guess that’s the right word I’m looking for.”

Pursing her lips, Claire regarded him at length before deciding he didn’t actually mean anything by it, and probably thought he was actually trying to help. That’s the sort of guy Andy was – lovably clueless, never really malicious even when it seemed like it. She went with a scoff of laughter instead of an angry glare.

“Well then, what would you have me do? Whip up some magical creature who is fine with someone who they’ll never be in the same bed with since she works graveyards at a building with so many security guards you can’t even smuggle in a pizza?”

Andy was nodding, which meant he was thinking about his response. He always nodded when he thought, and when he drank, the nodding lasted a lot longer. “What’s the other building?” he finally asked.

“Area-51? Los Alamos?” Alyssa added, clearly getting a little bored of the conversation as she picked at another piece of deliciously fried chicken carcass. “Roswell?”

“Roswell’s a town,” Andy said, letting a vaguely smug grin spread across his face. “And those other two are bases, not buildings.”

“Right, anyway,” Claire urged him back on topic. “Where am I supposed to find a man? Listen, it’s not like I don’t want one, it’s that I have no clue in the world where to get one.”

“Ginger curls keeps looking at you,” Andy pronounced, a little louder than he probably meant to speak. “Seems like a nice guy.”

A Nice Guy. Yeah, just what I need. Someone to hang out and play Monopoly with on the weekends. She laughed, but no one else knew why. “I’m not so sure about that. I’m thinking I need someone maybe with a little more... I dunno, edge?”

Alyssa snorted at that, hitting the end of her nose with a chicken wing, which left a shameful red mark on the tip. Claire elected not to respond, possibly for a tiny taste of revenge at being the butt of a joke.

“What’s so funny?”

“Edge?” Alyssa asked, still chortling slightly. “You, Claire Redmon, want an edgy, dangerous, macho, alpha male type? What the hell would you do with him?”

Claire let her mind get away from the table, from the restaurant, from this almost-nothing town in Pennsylvania for just a second, and slip back to college. “Oh,” she said, with a wistful tone of nostalgia marking her voice. “Maybe let him tie me up, whip me a little. I like it when they twist the wrist bonds enough to hurt some, and then they choke me right as I—actually you know what? I’m probably boring you.”

Andy, however, was sitting up, noticeably closer to the edge of the table, and Nick – “Ginger Curls” – seemed to be extremely absorbed in picking up the half-empty glasses from the next table over. Turning her blue-almost-violet eyes in the waiter’s direction, Claire let her thoughts get away for another second. “You know, though, he might be into that after all. It’s always the quiet ones that’re the most willing to tie you down and spank you hard enough to get your ass all tingly and red.”

Poor Nick’s entire head had suddenly turned as red as the tips of his ears, and Andy seemed like he was about to jump on the table, if she kept going. His overly dramatic excitement meant that Claire was definitely going to keep going. That little dab of sauce on the end of Alyssa’s nose was pretty good revenge, but nothing – but nothing – beat unfortunate, ill-timed boners for sweet revenge.