Cold Brew and Bullets (Part 1 of the Syndicate Series)

Chapter 2- Worse for Wear

"This coming from a girl who hates doctors and hospitals more than anyone I've ever met. We thought you had ruptured your appendix one time and you threw such a fit that I gave up trying to make you go."

"I was fine without it, wasn't I?"

Ezrah waved to a leaving customer and wished him a good day when he turned back to me, "Eliana, why don't you take the day off? You have part of your undergraduate thesis due in a month or so, don't you? Get some work done, get some sleep, I'll call around and see if anyone else can take your shift this afternoon."

"I also have to pay for those classes, I'll take all the hours I can get. Besides, the reason I've been working more than usual is because everyone else has been calling in on their shifts to cancel. I've got this."

He gave me a reproving look, "If you're going to continue insisting on opening and closing alone, make sure that you've got that baseball bat nearby for safety. Some of the places nearby have been hit lately, and you know the my rules and procedures if someone tries to rob you."

"I know, I know," I rolled my eyes. "If they ask for money and they've got a gun, just give them the keys to the register and run for it if I can."

"Only use your weapon to fight your way out if you have to, don't fight just for the hell of it. Priority one is your safety, it's a different kind of self defense than you used to have to worry about, but you've got people relying on you now."

"Since when are you 'people'?" I teased.

"Mr. Walker would also be sad if you died. The other employees would miss you."

"I got it, I got it." I brushed it off, knowing that I couldn't really plan my response when a gun was pointed at me. You could remind yourself all you wanted, but when it came down to it, survival instincts would override any logic.

Little did Ezrah know that I still had a gun at home. He wouldn't like it, he didn't like anything relating to guns or violence for that matter, but old habits die hard and I felt a whole lot safer with an old revolver in my nightstand at home. I never used it, but I had acquired it a couple years before during a brawl that went wrong. I hadn't fired it with the intention to kill, but that didn't mean I wouldn't need it at some point in my life. I just couldn't tell anyone that I had it.

Ezrah seemed to think that it was easy for me to get rid of every event in my past, but I was a firm believer that everything that happens to you gets you where you are in the present. Those histories don't just cease to exist once they happen, they create habits. No matter where I lived or how nice and cushioned my life became, I was still going to be a girl who spent years on the streets and knew her way around a fight. It had been a long time since my last scuffle, and I still flinched at loud noises and my heart sped up with raised voices. My instincts used to be that I would always to fight back, but that didn't mean I didn't get a little scared.... And if keeping a gun in my nightstand drawer made me sleep a little better at night, then I would do it, and it wasn't Ezrah's business.

I tried not to dwell on it too much. When I thought too heavily about some of the stuff I had done or what I had tried to leave behind, I got jumpy. Sure enough, I was well into working the evening dinner shift when something spooked me.

I had been picking a couple glasses of water up from the counter, about to take them to a table when I caught a glimpse of a man outside the shop, walking on the street. It was a fleeting glance at his profile, but it was so familiar that my heart slammed in my chest and the glasses slipped from my hands. Thankfully I had still been holding them above the counter so they didn't shatter against the floor, merely bounced and splashed water all over me. I did a double take, making sure that the boy outside the window wasn't who I thought he was. There was no way it could be who my mind had flashed to first, that was for sure, but that didn't mean I wasn't shaken. My brain seemed to be looking to make connections to my past since I had been thinking about it earlier, more than ever since I rarely thought about it at all.