Kinky Bucket List
“Wait, have you got your hand down your pants?”
Ruby Red froze with her glass of zinfandel halfway to her lips, twisting her body on her bar stool to look at the man standing right behind her. He towered above her seated frame, glaring accusingly at her date, who was goggling back at him, face flushing guiltily.
It was Thursday night at The Crooked Lance, one of the more popular hangouts at Palmetto Plaza. The Lance was a transplanted Irish pub that tried its best to look like the genuine article from the Old Country, with a hand-painted shingle swaying outside and an assortment of farm tools hanging on the walls. They served European beers and Guinness on tap, along with Walkers crisps in multiple flavors, and good old fashioned pub food.
Ruby was more of a sushi bar girl herself, but when her most recent swipe right on Tinder had suggested meeting up here at the Lance, she was up for it. She’d been texting the guy for a week now, and figured that a bar in the middle of the largest and busiest outdoor mall in the town of Abyssinia was a safe place to set eyes on the guy in person for the first time.
Over the last couple of years, Ruby had spent so much time on dating apps that her girlfriends at the Plaza jokingly called her Tinder Tessa, and gathering around the coffee pot the morning after one of her dates to hear her recount her most recent disaster had become a ritual.
She took in stride the macabre interest her girls showed in her dating life. After all, she was a great storyteller, and who wouldn’t want to hear about the time her date’s wife—the wife he’d neglected to mention—stormed the restaurant where they’d been sharing tapas and life stories, and began whacking him on the head with a sombrero-shaped nacho plate?
Or the time her date had to split in the middle of their first beer because he was moonlighting as an Uber driver and had gotten a call to drive all the way up to Hester’s Weir, a village two hours away, and couldn’t say no because the ride would be so lucrative?
Tonight, she was beginning to rethink her acceptance of this particular invitation, because Wesley, the man she’d come to meet, was sitting on the other side of the table, one hand placed innocently next to his beer glass … and the other definitely under the table, close enough to his torso to be, well, stuck in his pants.
“I’m going to ask you again, mate,” said the man standing behind Ruby, his voice growing more menacing, “do you or do you not have your hand down the front of your pants in my establishment?”
Ruby craned her neck to take in the bar guy. His proximity was beginning to feel intimidating, given that his long, neat, powerful body was overshadowing hers like a stalactite threatening to detach itself from the cave ceiling.
She caught sight of a thick thatch of black hair, which repeated itself in his bushy brows. The brows were drawn together in an irritated frown, sheltering a pair of icy green eyes which Ruby sensed intuitively would probably sparkle when he smiled. Only, he wasn’t smiling now.
He wore a Kelly-green shirt over a pair of black Levis that didn’t look too awful clinging to his lean hips. The logo of The Crooked Lance—a literal image of a crooked lance that to her eyes seemed slightly suggestive—was embroidered over his left breast, and a bunch of keys jangled at his hip, clipped to his belt. All of this, along with the fact that he’d said ‘my establishment’ and her feeling that he didn’t mean it in the royal we, ‘this place belongs to everyone’ sense, but rather in the ‘I own this freaking joint’ sense, led her to believe that she was looking at the proprietor himself.
And the proprietor himself was pissed off.
Meanwhile, Wesley, who was brown-haired, slightly unshaven and bug-eyed, was beginning to stutter, slowly removing his hand from … well, wherever it was. “It’s not what you think,” he mumbled apologetically.
The guy in the green polo leaned forward, supporting himself on one fist upon the table between them, lip curling in disgust. “Oh, really? Because it’s beginning to look to me like you two are up to some freaky sex shit in my bar! And I’m not having it!”
His accent was so stereotypically Irish that Ruby figured he could make a lot of money on the side voicing ads that featured leprechauns. But that voice, deep and melodious as it was, was the last thing on her mind right now.
Because of Ruby’s many triggers, being falsely accused ranked high. “Hey! What do you mean, sex shit? Do I look like the kind of woman who would be playing some dumb sex game in the middle of a bar? In a public place?”
Mr. Kelly Green dragged his attention away from Wesley and turned it in her direction. He let his gaze slowly move all the way down her, from top to toe, as if gathering enough intel to truthfully answer her question.
Eerily, as that deep green searchlight took its time, Ruby saw herself as he must have seen her: umber skin that she lotioned nightly until it glowed; thick curly black hair freshly permed, cascading around her shoulders; and mad, mad curves. Her body was a handful, and she knew how to take care of it.
She ran four or five mornings a week down at Cottonwood Park on the other side of the Plaza with her girlfriend, Raya, the park manager, and swam at the Y every Saturday. Still, her body type remained generous, with thick thighs, wide hips, and a booty that drew stares when she walked down the street. She had no problem with the double-takes. She was forty and fabulous, and made sure everyone knew it.
Bar Guy was taking an insultingly long time answering her question, so she snapped her fingers in front of his face, reclaiming the conversation. “Hey!”
He returned from whatever mental side quest he’d been on, and his mood was in no way improved. “Lady,” he said with almost weary patience, “I can’t speak for what you look like. All I know is that an hour ago I had to toss two lads out of the street for toking up in my boiler room, and last night, a young couple decided it might be a lark if the girl slipped under the table and offered her boyfriend a, shall we say, ‘special’ dessert. Right over there!” He pointed accusingly at a table across the room that was now occupied by a coterie of inebriated middle-aged women, one of whom was singing loudly along to LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” pouring out of the speakers.
“In my bar!” he added, looking mortally offended. “So whatever kinky bucket list bullshit you two are trying to get away with, you aren’t doing it here.”
Ruby felt a prickle at the back of her neck. The sensation you get when you knew you were being watched. Kelly Green’s voice was now loud enough to attract the worst kind of attention: morbid curiosity. All around them, the denizens of the Lance, who occupied varying places on the drunken spectrum, were beginning to take notice.
She turned a pleading look on Wesley. “Whatever you’re doing, please stop.”
To her horror, the man shot to his feet, revealing to all that his hand had, indeed, returned to the crotch of his pants. Ruby let out a little shriek and shot off her chair, backing away. Okay, she’d been on enough bad dates to fill a blog on romantic failures for a year, but this was the first time one of her swipe-rights had actually fondled himself in her presence.
“It’s not what you think!” Wesley protested, still rummaging down his pants like he was at the Everything Must Go table at a flea market.
Under his tan, Mr. Green turned purple, his face mottled, glaring from Ruby to her date. “That’s it. You two, out!” He pointed at the door like an exasperated homeowner disciplining a puppy that had just pooped on the floor.
Wesley gave a tremendous yank, dragging a long, wriggling, hairy creature out from under his belt.
Ruby clapped her hands over her mouth to contain a shriek. “Ohmigod!”
“It’s only Ferb! My ferret!”
She goggled at the bedraggled animal clutched in his hand. “You brought a ferret on a date? In your pants?”
Wesley looked as if that was a ridiculous question. “Well, yeah. Did you expect me to leave him home alone?”
Mr. Green made an exasperated sound. “Look, mate, I’ve had just about enough—”
Ruby managed to squeeze the words past the tightening in her throat. “So you were … petting him? Right next to your …?”
Wesley looked offended. “I was feeding him!” He pointed at the platter of chicken wings they’d ordered. “The chicken here is very good.”
“Thank you,” Green said sarcastically. Then he leaned closer, his head swiveling from one to the other as he delivered his edict. “And now you, your girlfriend, and your overgrown rat—”
“I’m not his girlfriend!” As if!
“—are going to get out of here.” He thought for a fraction and added, “After you settle the bill.”
Wesley was frantically tossing money on the table while Green, looking satisfied that the problem had been put to bed, turned back toward the bar, where his bartenders were standing, gawping.
Ruby decided he wasn’t getting away with any of that shit. “Hey, you! Bar Guy! I’m talking to you!”
He pretended he didn’t hear her, so she snatched at his bicep, which was rock hard under her fingers, and spun him to her. “I’m not that guy’s girlfriend.” She couldn’t understand why it was so important to her that he should know that, but it was. Maybe it had something to do with not being linked, even in the consciousness of a stranger, to a man who walked around with a sharp-toothed feral carnivore right next to his nuts.
He shook his head slowly from side to side in dismissal. “I don’t care.”
“I had nothing to do with that ferret thing. I don’t even know the guy.” She needed to let him know.
“Miss,” he said, slowly and carefully as if making sure his words sank in, “all I want right now is for you to leave. You, your date, and his trouser pet. Understand?”
She stood there, glaring into his angry, angular face, feeling her own ire rise at the injustice. What stung even more was the knowledge that there was absolutely nothing she could do to change his opinion. She was on his turf, and he had a right to kick her out. So she sucked her teeth in that very West Indian way of hers, spun around, and headed for the door, where Wesley was standing, cradling his ferret like a baby.
She couldn’t resist spinning back in Green’s direction for one last zinger. “You’re a jackass, you know that?”
He shrugged eloquently. “So I’ve been told.”
(119 pages including bonus chapters.)
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