Wild Bastard by Ella Savitskaya (book suggestions .txt) 📕

THREE WEEKS AGO

Marina

"Marina, what should I do?" Tears of absolute fear are rolling down the cheeks of my new friend.

Lana, a blonde girl who is not even eighteen yet, sobs, dropping her head on the bar. I wiped it recently after one of the customers generously spilled Jack Daniels on it.

"First of all, calm down!" I demand. I always thought that useless whining would get you nowhere. "Second of all, the only thing I got from your sobs was that you crashed someone's expensive motorcycle."

Lana sobs and raises her weepy eyes at me like a helpless kitten.

"Hey, girl, how long do I have to wait for my beer? The guy in the armpit-worn blazer calls me out in a snooty way."

"Can't you see the girl's crying?! Nothing's gonna happen to you if you wait a little bit more. Finish that first," I bark glancing at the clock and waiting for my shift to end.

I'm sick of these drunk faces. I wonder if they even have a bottom. Sometimes I think the customers at "Mads" Bar can pour alcohol into themselves in immense portions.

"Well, remember when I told you about Dan?" Lana sobs a couple of times, trying to string the words together into a full-fledged story. "He taught me how to ride a bike. Today I asked him to race. He resisted at first, but finally let me go on the condition that I keep my helmet on. He didn't want someone to see me. Look, don't be mean, Rina, just get me a drink!" The nose on her face wrinkles as if she's about to burst into hysterics again.

"No. I'm gonna be fired. Only alcohol-free, if you want."

"Ok, grandma" Lana shows me her tongue and rolls her eyes.

"Tell me everything again!" I ignore her whim, filling a handful of ice and mint leaves into the glass. Pour it all over Sprite while she continues.

"Long story short, I didn't make the turn and fell!" The girl's lips embrace the straw and take a few greedy sips of the cocktail "I scratched it badly, bent a part. God, I don't know, but now Dan wants me to pay for the repairs, and I don't have any money. I gave you the last of it, didn't I?"

Her chin begins to shake again.

Yeah, she did. This girl sometimes reminds me of a naive cartoon princess. She thinks the world is as simple as a nickel. I was a complete stranger to her, but she lent me a few hundreds. Just because I accidentally blabbed about the fact that I could not pay my rent and in a few days I will live in the bar utility room. In fact, from that day on, our meaningless conversations became more profound.

The girl started to drop by almost every day, telling me about herself, and then dragging me to the movie or park. I didn't realize how I had soaked her in my sisterly feelings. And it's only for three months. It was probably because I had never met anyone like her before. Since childhood my socialization was limited to a narrow circle, in which if you did not survive, you died in the basement or froze from the cold.

And Lana... she is like the sun. She's bright and warm. She makes me want to warm up, too.

"Look, there's nothing wrong if you tell your father or your brother. They'll help in any case. You're a family." I shrug, sending a beer down the bar to an impatient idiot waving an empty glass at me.

"No!" The girl's big brown eyes take on the size of Planet Earth whenever I mention her family. "My father would send me to a private women's university if he found out I even learned how to ride a bike. And my brother would kill me. He's crazy! Sick! Mad!"

Lana's heart is bursting every time she talks about her brother. I've heard all kinds of horror stories about how he broke a guy's arm just because he stole his girlfriend and after that set his house on fire.

"Lana, he's not gonna break your arms after all!" I try to appeal to her sanity, but I get a negative shake of the head.

"Marina you don't understand! He's coming back soon! Just thinking about it makes me shiver. You don't know him. He's the most horrible person I've ever met! He hates me my whole life! Matthew is capable of anything. If he threw my father's mistress down the stairs, he won't be ashamed of doing the same to me."

I can see from the hysteria in the huge eyes that she is not exaggerating. Apparently her brother has been allowed a lot of things since childhood, since he thinks he's a king of the world. If I were this depressed girl, I would have given him a sweet life a long time ago.

The clock on the wall reads twelve sharp. It's time to call it a night.

I turn around and, taking the remote control in my hands, turn off the plasma on the wall. I am immediately rewarded with disappointed male shouts and demands to turn it back on. But I don't care. The bar is open until twelve, and I'm not going to wait for their drunken faces to get wasted. My alarm clock is set for six in the morning.

"Let's split up!" I shout, climbing up onto the bar with my feet. "Hey, kid, pick up your friend, too, or do you want me to drag the big guy out from behind the bar by myself?" I point my finger at the biker, who's had too much to drink and can't find the strength to even stand up.

"Baby doll, come with us, we know how to be gentle," Casanova with worn armpits winks at me, "you'll like it!"

"And I know how to be rude," I cut them off with a nod at the door. - And you won't like it, that's for sure! Get out of here!

At first I tried to be polite with them, but if you don't grab them by the balls, they will relax and fall apart like chickens on roosts. And tomorrow, tired after a day's work, they all come back anyway, and sometimes even with flowers or chocolates. Idiots.

After everyone leaves, I close the door from the inside and turn over the sign with the word "closed,".

"Look, I wish I could learn to do that. There were ten of these drunk bullies. Aren't you scared?" Lana is staring at me with admiration.