Page 36 of Lying Hearts

Chapter Twenty-One

Annie

Face: calm, cool and collected. Cleavage: gathering beads of sweat.

Getting closer, I overhear Mark. “She’s not like every woman, Brendan. She’s just not.” His face is tired and he looks, well, heartbroken. I conceal my shock. Is Jerkoff Mark in love?

Brendan shoots him a huff of annoyance and turns in disgust, to me.

I can’t breathe, but I keep walking. My heartbeat suspends the air between us. I look at him like he’s any other customer, as I come to stand in front of him.

I wait for the fight to begin. For the name-calling. For the running out.

“Can we get a couple glasses of scotch, neat?”

I blink, speechless and waiting for more. Within fractions of a second, I realize he doesn’t even remember me. Here I am nursing a torch for a guy who has no idea I even exist! But in a flash, just as I’m considering whether or not to reach over and slap him again, I catch a glimpse of my strawberry blonde hair. It’s not that he doesn’t remember me. It’s that he doesn’t recognize me.

I plant my hands on the bar with a sassy smile. “What kind, honey?”

Brendan drifts to the hills of my breasts all pushed up and pretty, and holds there. As I feel goose bumps spread down my legs, he meets my eyes, his saying volumes, before he casually looks past me to the bottles on the shelf, deciding on a scotch. Stunned, I watch his face, grabbing the opportunity to tighten my screws.

How could I have forgotten how different I look from back then? Gone is the heavy, white foundation, leaving my freckles no longer hidden. Gone is the thickly applied black eyeliner and lipstick. Gone is the baggy clothing. My breasts are riding high in my halter; that certainly wouldn’t have happened back then. And the real kicker is my hair – long, light and healthy – the stark raving opposite to the black dyed bird’s nest he last saw me sporting.

He’s so handsome, it makes my brain hurt.

Leaning back, he regards me with a sexy look that instantly tingles my panties up. “Let’s do Oban.” I have to hold myself back from leaping the bar and landing on his lap.

Flashing him a flirtatious smile and a “Good choice,” I stroll away to the shelves with an extra swing in my hips, loving every minute of this newfound anonymity. Reaching up, I stand on my tiptoes with my back arched way more than necessary, pulling the bottle gracefully down like a sexy librarian reaching for a book. My ears are trained from working in bars for the past four years. I can hear anybody over anything if I’m focusing. Like right now.

Brendan says to Mark in a voice he thinks is undetectable, “Guess what I’m doing later?”

I almost fall over.

Also not quietly enough, Marks whispers back, “Looks like the door is open.”

Feigning ignorance, I plop the two glasses down, pouring heavily. The door has always been open…didn’t you know that? Didn’t you know how much I adored Brendan for all the years I was at State? How much I lived to hear just a word from him? No, you didn’t know, because you thought I was invisible. Well, I’m not invisible. It is on.

I hand Mark his glass, looking at him like, Recognize me. I dare you. He just thanks me for the scotch. I can’t believe it.

I shift my weight to my other hip and look at Brendan, daring the same thing. Eating me up instead, he sits back and smiles. He holds my look with the confidence of one who knows his admiration is always wanted.

“What’s your name?”

You asked me five years ago! My heart picks up the pace, racing with anticipation. When I tell him – AGAIN - will it jog his memory? Is this the moment the curtain comes down? Where we see that the wizard isn’t a sexpot ginger, but really just a shy, socially inept girl who nobody noticed?

“Annie.” I wait for it, ready for anything, my hair standing on end on the back of my neck.

“Annie.” Rolling it around on his tongue, he says it again. “Annie… I like it.”

Holy crap. He has no idea who I am. I need a second to think. I can’t be trusted not to climb over the bar and lick him.

So I tap the bar counter once, say “Good,” and head away.

As I’m leaving I look back and catch him staring at me. That he was still looking at me stirs up a smile from deep inside my heart. Something shifts in his eyes, too. Neither of us expects it. His reserve melts as our gazes are locked and I see it – what Brendan hides – his soft underbelly, exposed. I see in this instant the nice boy I used to love, not the suave player he’s become.

My old butterflies launch themselves into my stomach, happy to be home and wondering where I’ve been all these years. With eyelashes falling hastily to the floor, I look away. I can’t believe this feeling. It’s like I’m falling.