Free Fury by Fisher Amelie Page B

everybody else. I wasn’t the Montana boy next door, and I’d always been okay with that despite the stares every now and then when I was in an unfamiliar place. Occasionally, though, I got taken by surprise even at home.
    Buffalo’s was packed to the rafters but when we walked in, everyone stopped. Waiters, waitresses, customers, managers. Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at me. But I knew in that moment it had nothing to do with my strange height or dark hair. No, they were staring because this was the first time I’d emerged into public save for the visits to the bar. I was a spectacle. Everyone look at the boy who just got dumped! Cricket’s and my breakup was the biggest thing to happen in our little town because we lived in a little town and scandals like ours just didn’t happen often. And I was the one who got left. I was the one they were curious about.
    When you’re as tall as I am, it’s hard to look conspicuous and the times in which you feel like you’re on display that height makes it difficult to shrink into oblivion. I started backing out but Finley grabbed my arm and pulled me through.
    “Don’t worry, they’ll get over it soon,” she explained under her breath.
    Sure enough, after a few seconds of utter silence except for the jukebox, heads returned to their plates and the staff got busy again. I sighed in relief. Finley dragged me to the booth in the far back corner by the long bar top and made me sit with my back to the wall.
                  “I’ll be right back,” she said, giving me a small smile.
    I turned around in my seat, peered over the half wall near me and watched her tie her half apron over her cutoffs. She wore this almost sheer, billowy pullover on top of a a white tank top along with a pair of worn-in brown leather cowboy boots with a squared toe. An off-white sock peeked out of the tops of her boots. Her auburn hair was wavy and fell down her back. She stood near a mirror over a few shelves where she placed the messenger bag she’d brought with her. She peered into it and dragged all her hair on top of her head and started jamming pencils into the random pile. It looked absurd but when her hands fell to her sides and she examined herself, the result, I had to admit, was pretty. Tendrils framed her face and neck. Soft and romantic yet practical.
    Someone moved behind her I couldn’t see because they were hidden in the office behind the open kitchen. She turned and said something to them then laughed. She waved a hand toward me and said something else then nodded her head before heading back my way.
    She pulled a pencil out of her hair but it did nothing to ruin what she’d just accomplished. I stared at her in wonder.
    “You thirsty?” she asked me when she reached my table.
    “Yeah, uh, could I get a Coke, please?”
    “Well, gee, I can see what I’ve got, Beav. Sit tight,” she said, winking then heading to another table and taking their drink order.
    She approached a third group of four teenage boys and I sat up a little for some reason. They gave her their drink orders and she wrote them down, smiling and patting one on the shoulder. The one in the back corner on the left asked her a question and she leaned over to hear him better because the music was so loud, which made me hold my breath for yet another reason I didn’t know. The one she’d patted on the shoulder purposely dropped something on the ground and tapped her on the shoulder then pointed toward what he’d let fall. She looked down and he said something to her to which she just laughed at then headed back toward the kitchen, passing me with a smile.
    She got everyone’s drinks and spread them in a spiraling circle on a drink tray. She picked the thing up like it weighed nothing and walked our direction again. She set my drink down so quickly I barely saw it.
    “Be right back,” she said over her shoulder.
    She dropped off the table’s drinks between mine and the boys then