Eerie by C.M McCoy Read Free Book Online Page A

could I not? That idiot waitress spilled beer all over him.”
    Hailey’s jaw fell open. She wasn’t the most graceful server in the world, but she thought “idiot” was going a little far.
    â€œShe’s such a skank. You hear about her sister?” Hailey froze. “Somebody kidnapped her from the parking lot in broad daylight, and all they found was her bloody shoe!”
    â€œServes her right. She threw herself at every guy that walked in here.”
    Hailey’s heart pounded in her ears. She felt sick. And angry.
    â€œYou’re such a bitch.”
    Finally one of them was making sense.
    â€œWhat? She was ,” the girl jeered. “I knew her in high school. It was probably her pimp that took her.”
    Well, that was all Hailey could stand. She kicked the metal door open, marched right up to the more guilty-looking of the two hairspray-monsters and put her finger in the girl’s face.
    â€œThe only skanks in this bar just spent the past eight minutes picking bugs out of each other’s hair and fussing over their over-painted, under-hydrated faces in front of this mirror, but none of your primping and preening makes a shit-bit of difference, because your soul is so ugly that no amount of lipstick and eyeliner can cover it up. No one is ever going to give you a second glance, and one day you’ll see in that mirror what everybody else sees right now—a dried up, used up, shriveled up, pitiful shell of an STD-infected, loudmouth hag!”
    The girl looked terrified. She shrunk away from Hailey and squeezed her eyes shut as if Hailey were winding up to punch her. The truth was, Hailey was no fighter, but she could sure shame someone into submission. She almost felt bad about that.
    â€œAnd it’s way too cold for tank tops!” she added as she turned to leave.
    â€œShe was talking to you ,” one of them said as Hailey strode out the door.
    â€œCrabs is not an STD,” the other argued before the door closed.
    Gross , thought Hailey, and she scrunched her nose.
    If Hailey felt bad when she walked into the bathroom, she came out feeling far worse. As she rounded the corner, she saw the booth where her dream man had been now sat empty.
    â€œHey Fin,” she said, pausing near the bar, “where’d my customer go?” She jabbed her thumb at his booth.
    â€œOh . . . He was pretty pissed you spilled a drink on him. He just got up and left.”
    â€œOh no, I didn’t apologize properly.” Hailey felt just awful.
    â€œThe guy was a jerk, Hailey. He didn’t deserve your apology.”
    â€œWhy? Did he say something?”
    Fin pressed his lips together and busied himself with wiping an already clean part of the bar. She looked at him quizzically, wondering how bad it was—wondering if the stranger had used the word “skank” as he stormed out. Fin never answered and looked relieved when a customer asked him to refill a stout. She hated it when someone walked away angry. Just another worry to add to the pile of things eating away at her.
    Holly would have smoothed things over in a jiffy. Then she would’ve grabbed her shoes, turned on the music, and got the crowd clapping and cheering and forgetting about one silly little spilled beer. Hailey looked longingly at the door, hoping she’d magically appear.
    She didn’t.
    Fin’s fans were back at the bar and back on the prowl in short order, fully recovered and completely unaffected by Hailey’s tongue-lashing. Fin was eating it up, too, tossing glasses in the air and bottles behind his back, never missing one and never spilling a drop. The hags cheered and shimmied and smothered him with compliments.
    It was revolting. Hailey didn’t want to be anywhere near them. She was about to grab some whiskey and go talk to her mom, when an unshaven, sweaty little man burst into the pub. He strode past the bar and made a bee-line for the back