Finding Tessa by Jaime Hendricks (best ereader for comics .TXT) 📗

That’s when it started for me. He hits because he cares.

Damon reappears from the swinging door that leads to the kitchen and stops in front of me. He takes two glasses out of the tub of rinse water by the sink under the bar and dries them with a rag, then flings it over his shoulder and smiles at me, that smile, which for some reason has the fairy tale in motion in my head. He’ll be sweet and kind and rescue puppies, then he’ll be jealous and controlling but that’ll just show me how much he loves me, and how much he fears me leaving. That’s love.

Stop, I tell myself. Don’t do it this time. Break the cycle.

The Asshole is about to find out that even I have a breaking point. He may have put his hands on me often, which sometimes felt tender to me, even when it hurt. But the current bruise under my right eye is from a coffee mug. Came home early from entertaining clients, didn’t like that I was eating ice cream (“you’re becoming a fat fucking bitch!”) and whack, right across the right side of my face, and I faltered like a sack of potatoes. When I came to, he was gone, left a note that he was going back to the bar. That, a bunch of insults, and a warning about what would happen to me “next time.”

Except there won’t be a next time for him. The clues are there. The cops will find them.

I have help in ways he would never expect.

Patience, my love.

“So, have you decided on something to eat?” Damon asks.

I take a sip of my wine and place the glass back on the coaster, then fold my arms on the bar and look up at him. “What’s the house special?”

He laughs. “We just use the menu. The chef is cranky.”

I giggle like a schoolgirl. Stop! “Me too.”

“Nah,” he says with a smirk. “I can tell you’ve already got everything figured out.”

Moron. “Oh yeah?”

“Yep.” He removes the towel and wipes the bar in front of me, then puts a placemat and place settings on top. “Look at you—out-of-town girl, funky haircut, dressed nicely. And you’re alone. Confident. Not glued to your phone. I like that.”

Not a moron. “Well, how do you know I’m not meeting my date here?”

“Because this is a wine bar, I’m a bartender, and let’s just say I’ve seen my share of Tinder hookups start this way. You don’t always turn your head to the door when it opens. You don’t give a shit who’s walking in.”

Observant. “And how do you know I’m from out of town?”

“I didn’t. You just told me.” He smiles again. “People here have a look. One that you don’t fit.” He makes a funny face and mocks someone texting on a phone, then brushes his hand against his shoulder and nods his head back, like he’s flipping hair out of the way.

He’s funny.

He’s probably wonderful. Stop!

I grab the menu and scan for ten seconds while he waits.

“I’ll have the organic roasted chicken, but instead of brussels sprouts can I replace that with literally anything else?”

He grabs a pen from behind his ear and jots it down in a pad. “We have asparagus or maple-roasted carrots.”

“Surprise me.”

Damon goes into the kitchen, and I purposely don’t look at my phone, because I don’t want to be like all the girls that he made fun of. I raise my head to the flat-screen television above the bar and there’s a baseball game on. Yankees versus Red Sox. This will have to do for now, even though I’m not much into sports. I’ve heard everyone around here roots for that team. Rabid fan base, from what little I know.

Every so often I see Damon help other patrons, and I even get a little jealous as two girls hee-haw over everything he says. They’re the girls that you hated in school. Primped to the nines, one with long blond hair and another with long dark hair. Both have their tits on display, wear too much makeup, and want to post everything on Instagram, which they scream about loudly every time they take a picture. Damon plays along, although he always comes back to me, and refills my wine without me asking. Barbie and Bitsy (that’s what I’m calling them) at the other end of the bar don’t like that, and loudly call him over to take pictures of them while they make kissy faces to the camera. He happily takes their iPhone and snaps away, then looks at me as he heads to the swinging door to the kitchen and makes fun of them by pretending to text and flipping his hair again, as he did earlier.

When he comes out, he places a perfectly roasted half chicken in front of me, one that has asparagus and carrots next to it, with a little dollop of mashed potatoes on the side.

“Everything look okay?” he asks.

“Scrumptious.”

I learned that word from my mother, right before I was taken away. The first time I heard it, we all still lived together as a family. Well, me, my brother Kenny and all the half siblings, and whichever boyfriend my mother had at the time. She used the word to describe whatever was in the needle that her own Boyfriend Number Whatever brought home. After she passed out, I asked him what it meant, and he showed me. It was the first time I did heroin. My brother Kenny called 911 when I foamed at the mouth and had a seizure.

I was twelve.

I do remember the feeling I had at first. Warmth, bliss. It’s indescribable, just a feeling. One that can’t be put into words.

Wait. It can. Scrumptious.

It’s a miracle I’m alive. I like to think I’ve straightened out, and I have as far as the drugs, but I’m only straight in the way you smooth out a piece of wrinkled paper. It’s still a rectangle, you can