Between a Bear and a Hard Place(5)

“Maybe I will ask him out. What do you think, Aly? Do you think he’s the sort to get excited about a tight corset, a lot of pinching? Maybe some handcuffs?”

Nick had officially stopped bothering to shuffle glasses around, and was just staring, open-mouthed at Claire as she spoke. Andy had begun to sweat – not enough to be gross, just enough to be funny.

No hard-ons yet, she thought, shooting a quick glance at the waiter’s trousers.

“I dunno,” Alyssa was playing along by now, loving the torment. “Maybe he’d like those, oh what do you call them? Those things,” she started pointing to her nipples, pretending like she couldn’t remember. Absentmindedly, she brushed at her chest. “Oh! Nipple clamps. You know, the little alligator things where they clamp them on and—”

“Uh... buh, do you guys need anything?” Nick finally had to come the rest of the way to the table. He was blushing so furiously that he was just about as red as Rudolf’s the reindeer’s nose. Or, Claire thought, Uncle Rudolph’s nose, for that matter. “I, uh, more appe-drinks?”

Claire gave him a quick check. He was bending forward at the waist to make his pants flare out a little. Mission accomplished. “Appe-drinks? Is that like a martini made out of buffalo sauce?”

He was shaking his head.

Andy, for his part, stood up very quickly, knocking a half-full beer mug, and two cups of ice onto the table. The liquid pooled, and then dumped straight on his lap.

Mission two, accomplished. I even made one of them wet his pants. Bonus!

“Uh,” Andy sputtered. “I... napkin?”

Nick stuck a hand out, offering a handful of straws to his partner in being dumbfounded. “I... what?”

“You said appe-drinks,” Claire started, before Alyssa stopped her.

“Ten more wings. And, uh, leave your phone number so she can call you later.”

Shaking his head, the mortified waiter did as he was told, and even had a little bit of a grin when he departed to put in the chicken order.

“What the hell was that?” Claire asked, as soon as the two girls were alone.

“Honey, anyone who can put up with that much abuse and then just laugh it off? You gotta at least give a guy like that a chance.”

Claire sat back, pushing the front legs of her chair off the ground. “He is kinda cute, too, huh?”

Alyssa nodded. “And you really don’t ever know. He may be into all that kinky shit you were going on and on about.”

It was Claire’s turn to snort.

As the night wound on and finally down, the only thing on Claire’s mind was how much she needed the break.

And, how much she hoped Nick really did turn out to be at least a little bit crazy.

*

When Claire rolled out of bed about half past ten the next morning, her whole body tingled with a strange sensation that reminded her of a static shock.

“This... isn’t good,” she said to Cleo, who had somehow been courteous enough to not start barking until Claire was out of bed. “Am I going to have a seizure or something?”

It took until she had brushed her teeth, checked her email, and turned on the coffee pot before she realized that no, she was not having a seizure – that buzzing feeling? Energy. She hadn’t been rested in so long she had completely forgotten what it felt like to wake up after a half decent night of sleep.

When it hit though, it hit her like a Mack truck right in the chest. “Shit,” she said, slightly breathless. “I have got to figure out some way for Eckert to let me stop working graveyards.”

That’s when she realized she hadn’t so much as thought about work since she called in the night before. Aside from being honest-to-God rested, not thinking about work? That was probably the second rarest thing in the world.

Cleo flopped over on the ground, pawing at the air and writhing back and forth until her distracted master finally took the hint and crouched in front of her jowly friend, scratching here and there, up and down her chest. When her fingernails got to the white fur on Cleo’s belly, the massive pit-bull started drooling a little, and chuffing happily, which was so wonderfully relaxing that for a moment, she’d almost totally forgot that in about ten hours, she’d be going straight back to GlasCorp.

That’s life, I guess. One escape at a time. Living for the trips, surviving for the next chance at being happy, even when it always seems like there’s no path through the darkness.

“That’s, uh, profoundly dark,” she said to herself as she got up off the floor, and her left knee popped. “Not so sure why I have to be so angsty about working. Not like I do anything anyway.”

When it came down to it that is what she was so angsty about. There was no reason for her to exist, no point to her being there. Why the hell did some hot-shot researcher need to keep her under his thumb? Why was she – a Yale educated scientist – wandering around copying shit off of clipboards? She had credentials, she had legitimacy, and she was just squandering it all by sitting around and playing Sudoku for eight hours a night.