Ryder

forty one

"One freshly made tequila sunset coming right up." A voice and a drink appeared right before me.

I looked up, startled, and found the bartender answering the unasked but evidently obvious question on my face. He looked pointedly at someone behind me. "The dude back there in black bought it for you."

Pinpricks of alarm went right through me and I turned around in my seat to see who he'd been pointing at. The dude, as he'd said, wasn't difficult to find, and I watched the man in the black suit already staring at me from across the bar, eyes smiling and suggestive and head tipping forward in a nod.

I didn't recognize him. He was a stranger, my mind confirmed. Letting the loud bar music buzz against my skin, I turned back around and pressed myself a little more into the bar counter. A small shiver ran down my spine. I held the cool cocktail glass between my hands. My fingers seemed to throb at the sensation and I wiped them on my pants.

"You can take a deep breath, Alice." Professor McAdams said as he regarded me with a concerned, pensive stare. "Everyone's left. Come on, have a seat."

I closed my eyes briefly then opened them just as fast, looking around me, around the bar, and exhaling slowly in relief when I saw that nothing had changed in the few seconds I'd had my eyes closed and everything else remained the same.

All except for the drink that still sat, untouched, before me.

"Not a fan of tequila?" The bartender questioned me as he cleaned an empty glass with a rag.

I shook my head, an agreement or a refusal--I didn't know, but didn't say anything more. I felt... I didn't know what I felt exactly. There was a phantom touch over my fingertips--an ache too strong. Professor McAdams had seen the terror on my face, known something was wrong with me when I'd panicked there--right there--in the music hall. He'd asked everyone to leave, in a way that was only polite and not obvious at all. He'd asked me to sit, offered me a glass of water. But I hadn't been able to shake myself out of that pure, sheer panic because I'd seen him.

I'd seen Santiago there--standing there with the other students who'd seen me with the violin still in my hands. He'd been there or maybe I had finally gone insane. Maybe I'd been hallucinating. Neither one of those options was an easy one to consider.

"You might wanna give him a heads up that you ain't interested," he added, giving me a knowing look, "he looks like he'd be making his way here."

He didn't though; the bartender was wrong. The man in the pristine black suit didn't make his way to the bar or anywhere near me. When I turned once again to catch another glimpse of him, I saw that he wasn't even standing there anymore. He'd left. And I had a deep, troubling feeling I knew how that had happened.

The panic was there again, it was always there, although this time it wasn't screaming danger at me, and I didn't know what that meant. It felt hot and suffocating and I glanced over at the two bulky men standing on either side of the bar corners, dressed like bouncers but I knew they weren't. They looked scary enough, arms rippling with muscles and penetrating stares that seemed like they would kill, and they'd been following me.

I shuddered and turned back around, hunched in on myself, and squeezed my eyes shut again. "Fuck," a scared whisper left my lips.

Those two men, who looked like bouncers but weren't, had been following me at a distance ever since I remembered leaving the university premises this afternoon. I knew that, was aware of that because I'd seen them following me at almost every corner. I'd let pure, dreadful panic take over me the first time I noticed. But they hadn't approached. They'd only watched me from a distance, followed me even inside this bar I'd walked into under a panicked rush.