Cold Vows (Broken but loved at last)

PAAA! The sound thundered through the bar. For a full second, nobody moved. The music kept playing. And then like the world remembered how to function again every single head in the room turned toward me. I stood there, chest heaving, staring at the man whose cheek was now turning the color of raw meat. Good. I hope it hurts. It had started the way these things usually do with a man who thought a short skirt and a service smile meant he could help himself to whatever he wanted. I had been working a double shift at Augustine Bar since noon. My feet really hurts and I had exactly forty-five minutes left on my shift before I could go home, take off these shoes, and pretend the rest of the world didn't exist. I was carrying a tray of drinks to table seven when his hand landed on me. Not a brush. Not an accident. A deliberate, squeezing grab. I didn't think, my body thought for me. Then the entitled switch flipped. "What the hell, are you insane?!" He shot to his feet so fast his barstool scraped back with a screech. "She hit me! This waitress just hit me! I want the manager right now! Right now!" The crowd gathered immediately. Some were concerned, most just curious and I stood straight in the middle of all the stares because I was not going to shrink. I was not going to look sorry. This man put his hands on my body and I would slap him again, slower, if I had the chance. “Manager! I want the manager!" he shouted. Sandra appeared through the crowd like a bad smell. Sandra is my manager. She looked at the man's reddening cheek, looked at the crowd, looked at me, and I watched her brain do the calculation in real time. I already knew which way it would land. "Eve." Her voice was a hiss wrapped in professionalism. "What happened?" "He grabbed me," I said. Simple. Clear. "She assaulted me!" the man bellowed. "He put his hand on my backside," I said, turning back to Sandra, keeping my voice flat and steady while my blood boiled underneath it. "I responded. I would respond the same way again." Sandra touched the man's arm with her hands, the gesture of someone that loves pleasing people and then turned to me with her teeth— a smile that wasn't quite one”."Apologize," she said quietly. I stared at her. "Sandra" "Apologize to the customer. Right. Now." "He grabbed me." "Eve." Her voice dropped to something that was supposed to be a warning. "Customers are always right. You know the policy. Apologize or you leave now. The threat was clear I opened my mouth. I had words ready, sharp ones, the kind that would feel magnificent coming out and catastrophic afterward. Words about dignity and self-respect that "the customer is always right" was the most toxic policy ever invented by someone who had never been groped. I was half a second from saying every single one of them when my phone rang in my apron pocket. I would have ignored it. I ignore calls on shift all the time. But something made me glance down. St. Hilton Hospital. My mother. I picked up my phone before the second ring had finished. "Miss Callahan? This is Hilton hospital. Your mother was brought in by ambulance approximately thirty minutes ago by Mrs. Culture, your neighbor. She's been stabilized but she requires emergency surgery and we need a family member present as soon as possible for consent and …" I was already moving. I don't remember pushing through the crowd, though I must have, because people stumbled out of my way and someone said hey! and I didn't stop. I tore off my apron somewhere between the bar floor and the staff corridor and I was already dialing my father before I hit the back door. It rang. And rang. And rang. You've reached Patrick Callahan "Dad, call me back please. God..... It's Mum." I burst through the front entrance of the bar. My hands were shaking. I rang my father's number again with the same result and looked up to flag a taxi while the phone continued to ring uselessly in my ear. I was turning toward the street when the collision happened. My face hit a wall of hard chest and I stumbled back. Large hands caught my arms, steadying me before I could fall. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry " I was already pulling free before the words finished leaving my mouth. I didn't look up. I had maybe three seconds to catch a taxi and I couldn't afford to waste it. But in the space between collision and pulling away, I caught fragments. Dark shoes, expensive. The faint trace of something that wasn't exactly cologne. I faintly heard a cold voice, saying something I didn't wait to hear. I was already turning back to the road, arm raised desperately. A taxi swerved to the curb like an answered prayer and I threw myself inside. "St. Hilton Hospital," I said. "Please hurry." The ride took eleven minutes. I know because I watched every single one tick past on the taxis' dashboard clock while I called my father four more times and got voicemail every time and sat on my hands to stop myself from screaming.