A woman waves her hand in my peripheral vision, and I have to stop my eyes from rolling towards the back of my head in annoyance. This woman has just walked through the doors of the pub, on New Year's Eve, and expects to jump the line of people that are waiting on me to serve them drinks.
People that have such a high sense of entitlement really make my skin crawl.
It's not that she isn't aware of what she is doing (it would be pretty hard to miss the crowd of thirty people she had to push through to get to me), but it is that she just doesn't care. She thinks she deserves to walk ahead of people who have been waiting patiently, but I think she deserves a swift kick in the ass.
I serve a few more customers before I see that she is complaining to those around her and starting to upset some of them.
Just great, I think to myself and take a long inhale of breath to steady my anger before going to talk to her.
I paste a large plastic smile on my face and walk up to her.
"What will it be?" I ask through my teeth, with zero sweetness. There's only so much I can fake, and with her big head she probably won't notice anyway. Or she will and then forget after having a few drinks. Could go either way at this point.
The shits I gave ran out about a couple of hours ago.
"I'll take a flute of champagne, 2006 Péters if you have it," she flicks her fingers towards me with a credit card pressed in between them.
I take a glance at the clock on the wall. "We are handing out complimentary champagne in twenty minutes if you would rather drink that and order something else for now," I offer.
She scoffs and gives me an indignant look. "Oh, this is one of those types of bars. No, thank you. I wouldn't dare put that rubbish in me," she says pointedly.
With that rotten personality, I'm sure she puts all kinds of rubbish inside of her.
The winter here can be brutal, so from what I am told, it is not usual for tourists to come here. She certainly isn't a local, anyway.
"Of course," I drawl in thick mockery. "Only the finest of liquor may grace those poisonous lips. Something bubbly and overpriced, coming right up," I say while grabbing her credit card and prancing away. I can feel her piercing gaze glued to my back as I pour the champagne, overcharge her card and return back to her while - accidentally - getting my finger in her drink and flicking away the liquid.
Her face is scrunched up in disgust while she mutters under her breath about the street trash that this town hires to work in their decrepit establishments. I salute her and turn the motion into the middle finger when she turns around.
When will this night be over?
The usually dimly lit pub is all sparkles and glitz tonight, embracing the celebration as the clock ticks down to midnight. It's not it's usual look, but I am glad it's temporary.
A couple of ladies around my age are shouting and clapping as another one shakes her ass like she's making a Tik Tok. Knowing the few moves that are in every trendy dance, I join in for a few seconds and their cheers grow louder before I blow them a kiss and move back behind the bar. Once there, a few kind fellas ask me to take a shot with them, and I don't hesitate to oblige them.
It's hard to enjoy the celebration while making drinks and cleaning the bar, but I'm determined to find fun when I can.
With about fifteen minutes left until the countdown, I head to the next customer at the bar and from his peripheral I can see that he has a jaw sharp enough to cut glass. His dark, straight hair is long and reaches his shoulders, and as he angles his head down, it falls slowly across his cheek. His head cants in my direction as I near and his body stills when I come to a stop in front of him.
"What's your poison?" I ask him, watching as his eyes flick upwards to meet mine in a heady gaze. His eyes are a dark forest green with yellow flecks that remind me of golden leaves falling in a forest. They're absolutely beautiful, and I forget what I am doing for a moment until he speaks.
"Ferrum," he says in a lilt I do not recognize. Maybe he is from Canada or something. I never had a good ear for that anyway. "But I doubt you 'ave that. A beer'll do just fine."
"Dark or light?" I ask him, and a smirk appears on his lips that draws my gaze to it like a magnet.
"Guess," he says in a low voice that sends a shiver down my spine. With a voice and a face like that, I'm all too happy to play his game.
I nod my head at the girl next to him, and she tells me she wants a bourbon orange smash before I walk away to fill his beer and grab the ingredients I need.
I drop off a Guinness for the man dripping with sex and his eyes gleam when he takes a sip of the beer I chose for him. Noticing his lips again, my eyes keep involuntarily ficking in his direction to watch as he takes a sip from his glass. Even that small and simple move is utterly devastating to my libido right now.
Someone should not be that good looking. It doesn't seem human.
I try to distract myself with making the drink for that girl, but when he licks the beer foam off of his lips, my grip slips and I press too hard on the orange I am crushing to make her drink. Juice and pulp fly back towards my face, and I close my eyes as I pick off the wet pieces of orange that stuck to me and try to ignore the embarrassment that is turning my cheeks red under the weight of his stare that I can feel.
When I feel it's safe, I let out a sigh and open my eyes. I finish making her drink again without any more accidents and lean towards her to hand her her drink. As I lean back I feel someone's touch on my cheek.
The man of my current and unexpected obsession reaches up and pulls a piece of orange pulp from my cheek that I must have missed. The light and brief touch clears all sense of thoughts from my head and a strange buzzing builds in my ears before the world goes quiet.
As he is pulling his hand back to show me, my hand snaps out and grabs his wrist, taking us both by surprise.
Before I knew what was happening, I already had his finger in my mouth and was sucking the pulp off of it. Then, because apparently my brain has taken a backseat to my hormones, my tongue darts out and licks it's way up his hand and down his forearm.
"What are you doing?" His pupils enlarge and darken with a deep hunger that mirrors my own.
"I haven't the foggiest idea," I say with a low voice. His taste is still lingering on my tongue, and when a moan is pulled from my throat, I pause and try to get myself out from under this haze.
What the hell just happened?
When I hear a glass smash somewhere in the pub, I finally snap out of it and clear my throat before walking away awkwardly.
"Let's send out the champagne," I hear from behind me, and I turn to see Mike pulling out cups for us to serve it in. I help by pouring the champagne in to the cups he puts out, and then we both spend the next several minutes walking around the pub to make sure each customer has one.
Nearly the entire time the man's eyes tracked me like he was the hunter and I am his prey. I was both worried with my reaction to him and excited by it at the same time, so much so that I couldn't help but squirm under his heated gaze.
This is crazy.