Bottom Dollar

Seven| Trigger happy

Fists were flying as I scrambled to safety behind a booth, and Lacy came running over only seconds later as other diners made their escape out the front doors.

"What do we do?" she hissed.

"Roy has a fake rifle on the wall in his office," I said breathlessly, my eyes fixed only on Nate as he struggled with several bikers at once.

I'd expected him to be a bloody mess within the first few minutes but it turned out, Nate could fight. I supposed only an idiot would rile up a biker gang without first knowing how to defend himself.

"Grab it and threaten to shoot everybody if they don't stop," I said.

"But you just said it's fake," Lacy said, her voice shaking with fear, and I gave her a look.

"They don't know that, Lacy."

"Meg, I don't know if I—"

"Stay here," I said, scuttling toward Roy's office before throwing open the door.

We called it an office, but it was really a storage cupboard with a small, secondhand desk and stool against the back wall. I saw the rifle on the wall above it and grabbed it off the hook, realizing it looked a lot faker now that I was clutching it in my hands.

Still, it wasn't like I had a lot of options.

"Nobody move!" I shouted from the doorway, the gun pointed in the direction of the brawl.

Everybody froze as they looked over in surprise, including Nate, who smiled when he saw I was harboring a rifle, despite the fact his eye had already swollen to twice its size.

"Yeah, nobody move!" Lacy shouted from her position behind the booth.

I glanced toward her. "Thanks, Lacy, but I've got this." I turned back to the biker gang and pointed the gun between the eyes of the bearded man. "You have ten seconds to leave," I said in my calmest voice, though inside my heart was pounding away in my chest. "And then I start shooting."

It's surprising how fast people move when a gun is pointed in their direction, and in less than twenty seconds the diner had cleared, except for Nate, who stayed standing in the middle with blood dripping down the side of his face.

"Well, you don't see that everyday," Bernie suddenly said from the kitchen door, and I narrowed my eyes at him before finally lowering the gun.

We closed the diner early after that and I ordered Nate to sit down with an ice pack to his eye whilst the rest of us cleaned up the mess. After the diner was back to normal, I sent Bernie and Lacy home before turning to Nate with narrowed eyes and folded arms.

"You must be some kind of stupid to pick a fight with a biker gang," I said at last, sliding into the booth opposite him before reaching out and holding the ice pack to his eye.

"Technically, they started a fight with me," Nate said, wincing when I moved the ice pack slightly.

"You antagonized them," I said, my eyes flitting over the dark purple shadow steadily spreading across his cheek. For some reason, seeing the damage done to his face and knowing it was because he'd defended me did something strange to my insides. "Where'd you learn to fight like that anyway?"

"The streets."

I raised my eyebrow. "What?"

He flashed me another award winning grin. "I'm kidding. Mostly. I took some lessons when I was a kid. I used to get picked on in school, so my mom wanted me to learn to defend myself."

This surprised me. I couldn't exactly imagine someone like Nate getting picked on by anyone.

He looked up then, a slow half smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "Seeing you pull out that rifle is something I'll never forget," he said, his eyes flashing with what looked a lot like admiration. "You're something else, Meg. You know that?"

I felt myself blush, and I quickly focused my gaze on the table, the fluttering feeling in the pit of my stomach only intensifying. "Why did you leave me such a big tip that night?"

We were both silent for a moment as my question hung in the balance, until finally Nate lowered the ice pack and placed it on the table between us, fixing his eyes on mine.

"I watched you that first night in the diner," he said quietly, "moving from table to table, your hair falling out of its ponytail. You looked exhausted, like you hadn't slept in weeks. I figured you needed it more than I did."

I looked at my hands, trying to digest his words. Clearly, I wasn't as good of an actress as I thought. "Well, I didn't," I said lightly, though for some reason, a lump was beginning to form in my throat. "I don't need your pity, Nate. I'm doing just fine."

"I wasn't pitying you," Nate said, his eyes holding mine in a way that caused something in my chest to tighten. "I was admiring you."

I cleared my throat and focused on the ice pack between us, wondering why I felt so emotional all of a sudden. "It's getting late," I said after a moment of silence, standing up and taking off my apron. "We should go."

Nate stood up, too, and for a moment, we just looked at each other, standing far closer than what was considered a normal proximity.

"I guess I'll see you around," he said in that deep voice of his, and my heart all but skipped a beat.

"Yeah, see you," I said in a tight voice, because I could already feel what was beginning to happen, and I didn't like it one bit.

Nate was beginning to intrigue me, his handsome looks beginning to entice me, and I didn't like the way my body was responding, didn't like that I fought so hard each day to take control of my life, only to be faced with something I had no control over.

No, I thought as Nate made his way out of the diner doors, I didn't like this at all, and all I could do to take back control was to make sure I never saw Nate again.