Always For You (Books 1-3) by L. A. Shorter Read Free Book Online

but my grief, a numbing
grief that ate away at me every single day.
    I looked for a job, finding work in a
bar in town.
    “ Grace,
you can't work in a bar. You're not properly recovered yet,” my dad
had said.
    “ I
need something dad. I need something to do. I'm not going back to
college until September now. I can't just sit around here all day and
night.”
    “ Yes,
Grace, I understand that, but why a bar? Can't you work in a clothes
shop or something?”
    The truth was that I didn't want to
work in a clothes shop, or a cafe, or a clerical office, or anywhere
else. I wanted to work in a bar: somewhere busy, somewhere exciting,
somewhere where my mind would be taken off everything.
    “ Dad,
I couldn't find anything else. This is the best there is, and anyway,
I need to study in the day.” I fobbed him off, and there was
nothing he could say or do.
    Tom wasn't much different. The idea of
me working in a bar, surrounding by guys hitting on me all night was
hard for him to take. “Grace, how about I get my dad to let you
work in our restaurant. You can work with me?”
    It was never an offer I was going to
take. Frankly, the idea of being around Tom any more than I already
was wasn't as appealing as it should have been.
    I'll have to admit the first night at
the bar was fairly daunting. I had no idea how to make drinks and was
sure I'd screw it all up. However, that first night was also the best
night I'd had since the accident. It was the first night where I'd
actually forgotten about things, forced to forget by the rush of
being behind the bar, cooking up cocktails and drinking some shots
after hours with the other staff.
    I met a couple of girls and guys that
first night and they settled in to initiate me when the night was
done. It was about 1 am on a Friday and they got me drunk slamming
cocktails and shots.
    “ OK,”
said Marco, a 28 year old Italian American, “a shot for every guy
you've slept with.”
    He and 'Pinch', aptly named for his
approach to women by pinching their bottoms, lined up a few shots
along the bar, speculatively putting down ten. I don't know what
they'd read in me, but I only shot the one.
    “ One!”
they exclaimed together, “you've only slept with one guy?!”
    I nodded. “Yep, Tom, been with him
for nearly 5 years now.”
    “ God
on ya girl.” It was a Chloe, a motherly type who'd been showing me
the ropes all night. “It's better to have a low number.”
    “ Ha!
For women, yes. For men, nooooo,” said Marco, every inch the
Lothario with his slicked back black hair and perma tanned face.
    I wondered if Tom would agree, as he'd
also only slept with me.
    I started the job over the December
period, and as the days drew on my life became ever more nocturnal.
I'd work as many shifts as possible, often working every night of the
week if I could, staying after hours and drinking with the staff and
any other locals who liked a lock in.
    It was the only thing that gave me
pleasure, getting out of that house, getting down to that bar. I'd
drink, drink more than I ever did, to numb the pain. Every morning
I'd wake up, a dull throb in my head, an ache in my heart. The longer
I stayed up, the longer I drank for, the easier it would be the next
day. I'd have less time to wait until my next shift, until my next
drink.
    Sometimes
I'd have no recollection of the night, drinking myself to a stupor.
One night in particular about a week before Christmas I managed to
blank out through an almighty fight, only hearing about it the next
day. Apparently it had been over me or something, some weird guy and
his mate picking on the guys I was drinking with after closing. I
just hoped it wasn't Tom. Fat
chance of that.
    By January I'd began going to the bar
even when I wasn't working. I'd started making friends with the
locals there, people I never would have got to know otherwise. It was
a vicious cycle, a cycle of drinking and sleeping, drinking and
sleeping. I knew it wasn't healthy, physically or