When I finish, flush, and wash my hands and can’t skulk in the bathroom any longer, I go back out and head to the pool table. Halfway there I stop. Three guys, maybe college age or a little older, are standing around Susannah, who is leaning over the pool table to make a shot. One of the guys, his red polo shirt untucked from his jeans and his two days’ growth of beard trimmed just so, is talking to her while staring down the front of her shirt. I can tell that Susannah is leaning over the table deliberately, hiking her ass in the air and showing her cleavage. Jesus.
“Come on,” Red Polo is saying. “Just one game. If I win, you tell me your name.”
“And if I win?” Susannah says, still focused on her shot.
“I tell you my name,” Red Polo says, flashing a high-wattage smile that would not look out of place on a red carpet.
Susannah shoots, the cue ball striking the racked balls with a crack that makes everyone blink, followed by a thok as she pockets the seven ball in the corner. She stands up, pulling her shoulders back, and gives Red Polo a sad smile that is just this side of a smirk. “You can’t sell me something that I don’t want,” she says.
One of Red Polo’s buddies, in a blue polo and glasses, smiles and shakes his head. The third guy, wearing a black T-shirt with the Jack Daniels logo on the front, actually snickers. Red Polo glances at Jack Daniels, his smile dimming, then turns his attention back to Susannah. “Trust me,” he says. “You want to know me.”
“Okay,” I say, stepping forward, and all three guys turn to stare at me. Susannah does, too, but with a grin that’s half welcoming, half irritated—I just interrupted her playing time. “Y’all go get a drink and let us get back to our game,” I tell the three guys.
Red Polo frowns. “Who the hell are you?” he says.
“Her brother,” I say, at the same time Susannah says, “My boyfriend.” I resist the urge to close my eyes and groan and instead watch Red Polo and his friends. I’m not big or intimidating, but Red Polo looks at his buddies, nonplussed, then back at me, and shrugs.
“Sorry, man,” he says, then turns toward the bar, the other two following his lead.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and start to say something to Susannah, but she’s already stalking after Red Polo. “Hey!” she says, and Red Polo stops and turns around, startled. Susannah marches up to him, looking up into his face. “You were all over me at the pool table, but now another dude shows up and you’re like, ‘My bad, bro, didn’t know she was yours’? What am I, property?”
Red Polo stares at her. “What?” he says, sounding lost.
“I’d like an apology,” Susannah says.
Red Polo’s expression morphs into something between a sneer and a scowl. “What is your problem?”
Susannah takes a step closer to him and, her voice dripping with disdain, says, “You and your man act.”
Red Polo clearly doesn’t like his masculinity being threatened. His half sneer turns into a snarl, and he makes to shove Susannah away. Susannah grabs his wrist with one hand and with her other grips his arm, her thumb digging into the meat above his elbow. He rises on his toes in pain, and when he tries to twist away, she stomps on his foot with her Doc Martens before letting go. “Shit!” he yelps, and then takes a hard swing at her with an open hand. Susannah raises her arm, blocking his slap while bringing her elbow up into his chin, then follows with a palm strike to his eyes. He cries out and staggers back a couple of steps.
Jack Daniels, who is behind Susannah and out of her line of sight, starts to make a move, then stops when I whip a pool cue around so the cue end of it is under the soft part of his jaw. “Uh-uh,” I say, pressing into his neck with the cue so he steps back. I glance over at Blue Polo, who raises his hands as if in surrender.
“You fucking bitch,” Red Polo says, seething and glaring at Susannah. “You are dead.”
A large hand clamps down on the back of Red Polo’s neck. The bartender, a big bald guy with a beard and an earring, has decided to intervene. In a deep voice corroded with a lifetime of cigarette smoke, he tells Red Polo, “Get out.”
“That bitch assaulted me!” Red Polo says.
The bartender shakes Red Polo gently, like a Rottweiler with a rope bone. “Self-defense,” he says. “After you harassed her. Out.”
Susannah smiles at Red Polo as if sympathetic. “’Bye, Felicia,” she says.
After Red Polo and his posse leave, the bartender, who introduces himself as Jerry, offers us a drink on the house. “Nice job dealing with those assholes,” Jerry says to Susannah.
She gives him a little smile. “Instead of a drink, how about a job?” she says. “You need a waitress?”
Jerry grins, an ugly contraction of his face that still manages to be friendly. “I might at that,” he says. “You waited tables before?”
“Our uncle—” I start to say, about to mention Uncle Gavin by name, say how both of us worked at his bar, but Susannah interrupts.
“Our uncle
