I spend the rest of the week in the most god-awful funk, compounded by the fact that every day at exactly one p.m. Jackson appears as if out of thin air, sits down in his booth and eats his bloody grilled cheese sandwich without saying a word to me. By the end of the week, he is on first-name terms with all of the staff and Devon has developed a bit of a man-crush, probably triggered when he realised Jackson is the guitarist of his 'most favourite band of all time'. Even Finn, who has shown the most restraint, opting for 'Team Kat', seems to be softening towards him, so much so that I even caught them having a conversation which ended up in a manly fist-bump. Men! Why can't they hold a decent grudge, for fuck's sake?
Everyone seems to know the purpose of these daily visits, except me. I can't work out if he's trying to humiliate me or rub my nose in the fact that I walked away from an awesome guy. Either way, I can't take much more of this. I can't eat, I am barely sleeping, and all I seem to do when I'm alone is cry. And that is undeniably not healthy. If I'm not careful I will end up with a colitis flare and I really can't afford for that to happen right now.
So, by the time Saturday night arrives, I decide it is time to get my game face on. I dress in my sluttiest skirt and the skimpiest top imaginable with more than ample cleavage showing and head down to the bar to start my shift. I catch Bailey and Sam giving me a couple of looks, but I smile back brightly and crank the music up. As the bar starts to fill I keep upping my level of flirtation. Young, old, it doesn't matter. As long as they are single and male, they get the Kat flirtation special. The free drinks keep coming my way, but instead of cashing them off like I normally do, I line up shot after shot of Firecracker shooters to save for later.
At eight p.m. the hair prickles on my neck, and I look round to find Jackson sitting in his booth with a guy that I recognise to be the drummer of the band and a couple of others I have never seen before. Girls who understandably know who they are flock around the table trying to get the guys' attention. I grab two of the shots and down them in quick succession, then return to making cocktails for a hen party waiting patiently at the bar.
A while later the two shots are followed by a third when I see a gorgeous redhead rubbing her hand across Jackson's thigh, and a fourth when some brunette kisses him on the lips. By now my movements are getting a bit sluggish, and I can see my behaviour is not going unnoticed by Finn, so I lay off the shots and down a bottle of water instead.
By eleven p.m. I regret chugging down that bottle of water since I have to dash to the ladies' loos during hellishly busy last orders. Once inside the cubicle, I hear a new set of voices in the bathroom start talking about Jackson.
"Did you see that totally lush guy, the one with the black hair and blue eyes?" one of the women says over the sound of running water.
"Yeah, Sarah says he's like, in a band. Total rock star, apparently, if you like that kind of music," her friend responds.
"Who gives a shit about the music? I bet he knows what to do with those fingers, though. I am totally going to do him tonight." They burst into laughter and then I hear the sound of the door swinging shut.
I look down to find my hands curled into fists, nails digging into my soft palms so hard they've left indentations. I take a deep breath before leaving the toilets and heading back to the bar. Despite being determined not to, I glance over at Jackson to find another girl chatting him up. Maybe it's Bathroom Girl? I swallow down a lump of rage and follow it with shots five and six.
The next half an hour disappears before I can blink and by the time it is ready for close, I notice the bar is still quite full. Then it dawns on me that Finn is probably having one of his infamous lock-ins tonight and somehow, I missed the memo. I realise that the majority of people still hanging around are friends, well mostly Finn's friends because, as we have already established, I like to push people away. I spot Sophie making her way over with her housemate, Evie, and a couple of her friends that I vaguely recognise from college. But then my eyes meet Jackson's and my mind screams 'Hell, no!'
He raises his glass at me with a strange look on his face, an intense look that I can't even begin to fathom as the alcohol hits my bloodstream. My response is to knock back another shot and, when Finn dares to advise me to take it easy, I tell him to fuck off and down another. There is a momentary lull in the music where the noise from the bar floods my senses, and then I hear the beat of a song by Peaches called Fuck the Pain Away. "Hell, yeah," I shout at no one in particular.
With barely a coherent thought, I clamber onto one of the bar stools and then haul myself onto the bar. Crazy but in my drunken haze it seems like a perfectly rational thing to do. I start gyrating to the beat, feeling like one of those hot girls from the film Coyote Ugly. Wolf whistles bring me back to the present, and I send out a sexy smile towards the guys who are now standing in front of me, watching as I attempt a version of pole dancing without a pole that seems incredibly erotic in my head, but maybe in reality, not so much. But they seem to appreciate it, or maybe it's just the fact that they can see up my skirt.
"That's enough." Jackson's voice cuts through my alcohol-fuelled haze and I realise that he's appeared in front of me. He grabs me around my waist and hauls me down off the bar unceremoniously. I wriggle in his grasp, desperately trying to lever myself away from his body, but his grip is like iron.
"Get the fuck off me, Jackson. Let me go!" I scream in his ear as he stalks through the crowd to a darker corner of the bar.
"What the hell are you playing at, Kat? You could have slipped and fallen up there," Jackson says as he dumps me down onto a leather banquette.
"So what? It doesn't have anything to do with you," I snarl back at him. "Leave me the fuck alone goddamnit. You come in here, day in, day out, fucking with my mind, and… and I just can't take it anymore…" I trail off as I feel the tears forming so I push past Jackson with as much strength as I can muster. Storming towards the end of the bar, I swipe a bottle of tequila and head into the office for some much-needed peace and quiet.
Curling up on the small sofa, I pull out the pouring nozzle so that I can take a swig directly from the bottle. The alcohol burns my throat as it makes its way down and for a moment I feel like I am going to throw up. But the feeling quickly passes, so I take another sip, and then another, and another until the world mercifully goes black.