"Surprise!" Olive called out to Max's back as she reached up to fiddle with the stereo. It was early yet in the bar, and she didn't have to yell very loud to be heard over the background white noise of conversations and music. It was amazing she hadn't taken a day off to recover like Olive.
"Hey!" Max's face lit with delight, angular lines softened by the string of warm yellow lights lining the overhang. "What are you doing here?" A nearby customer on a stool hadn't turned his head from his drink, but he watched their interaction from the corner of his eye.
"I wanted to see you," Olive smiled, rocking onto the balls of her feet, hands wrapped around her little green canvas purse behind her back.
"Well, here I am," Max cocked her head back, chin out, shoulder back, posing statuesquely for a mental snapshot before winking and relaxing into her more slouched posture. She looked exceptionally tall for a moment.
"Can I get you something? You know, my job," Max laughed, blue eyes sparkling with the reflected points of light. "I can feed you this time, huh?"
Taking the stool in front of her, Olive pulled her little bag into her lap. "Okay. Hm... seems like a beer-and-French-fries kind of day to me."
"That's it?" Max asked, reaching below for a cold bottle, wrapping it in a small square napkin that melted immediately into the damp glass.
"And spicy brown mustard." Max's face pulled to the side, amused. "I really like the combo of beer and spicy mustard," Olive explained a touch defensively.
"I'll be right back." With a professionally friendly wink, Max hurried off into a swinging door in the corner of the room, disappearing into the briefly-blinding white light of a kitchen.
In her periphery, movement caught Olive's eye as the customer three seats down picked up his drink and stood. Olive took a cautious sip of her beer.
He was dressed well enough, the buttoned shirt and slacks of a man with an office job trying to blow off the monotonous boredom he might call "steam" before heading home to an equally uninspiring private life. The nearly empty glass didn't look to be his first, but he didn't stagger as he walked.
Taking a hair too long to start talking as his eyes traveled the curves of Olive's body perched on the edge of the stool, the man's oily tone carried more meaning than the words, "Hey there, how's it going?"
"Good," Olive nodded noncommittally while taking a long drink, turned slightly away, hoping to stall until Max returned to be her buffer.
"I'm Rick. What's your name?" he had the smooth operator in full swing as he leaned confidently on the counter, cocky pull at the right side of his mouth, thinning hair smoothed back.
"Olive," she answered more firmly than necessary, trying to give the unspoken signals that avoided her having to "rudely" express her desire to be left alone.
Unfortunately, but predictably, he picked up on the sign and chose to pretend it was unwarranted and, therefore, hurtful.
"No need to get feisty," he said, final shard of ice clinking against the side of his glass as he raised his hands defensively.
Something snapped. "Are you really that weak?" Olive asked harshly.
"What?" His head turned to the side as if lightly slapped.
"Just curious." She let it hang awkwardly, ignoring his question and bluntly making it clear she wasn't being rhetorical.
His falsely wounded expression had quickly melted into confusion. And that, now, was a thin layer over a rising anger.
Olive continued in a flat tone. "All I did was answer. You're the one who got offended."
The anger was winning.
"You're being kind of a bitch —"
"Then why are you still talking to me?" Olive whipped back. Bits of exposed scalp shone bright pink through wispy hair, and his posture caught the attention of the bouncer at the door, but the tension suddenly broke as he turned and stalked away.
Max came out an instant later with a plate of fries.
"Here we go — why do you look like a viper?" Olive felt her rigid pose in the stool as she watched Rick take a seat at a booth in the back, facing away from them.
"Oh," she relaxed in the other woman's presence. "I'm scaring off your customers... sorry."
Max noticed the empty seat at the bar. "Rick? Nah, he gets shot down all the time."
Olive tried to turn her full attention to the thick wedges of potato that were still too hot to eat. "Awesome!"
Halfway through the plate and two sips into her second beer, Olive felt a tap on her shoulder. When she looked, the man behind darted to the other side to steal a fry.
Heart stuck halfway in her throat, Olive recoiled in her seat. "Who are you?"
The bald, heavily tattooed man looked like he must belong in all the gangs at once, with no significant expanse of skin lacking a subdermal layer of ink.
"Max," he sang her voice in a mocking, childlike way that was incredibly disconcerting from this grown man, particularly in his oversized, and noticeably dirty, T shirt and jean shorts.
She was seeing to customers on the other side of the bar, but the sound snapped her head up. On locating its source, her eyes went wide.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" Max hissed as she rushed back.
"You didn't tell her about me?" he used the same falsely wounded tone as the other man had, though far more overt and condescending.
He turned to Olive. "She's my little sister," he said with a proud grin that showed missing teeth, head tilting side to side.
"Half!" Max corrected instantly.
"Best half! Am I right?" He reached across the bar for a high five. Max didn't move her tightly crossed arms.
"Why?" she snipped at his extended palm. "Why are you here? In this bar? In my life?"
"Well, I *was* at your apartment. But did you know the door's locked?"
Max sighed irritably, lip visibly twitching.
He took another French fry boldly.
Max nodded hard at him. "You're looking pretty thin. Are you *de*toxing or *re*toxing?"
He snorted, bowing his head as if acceding to the superior chess player. "I'm on my way up. So get me something to drink."`
"No." Max was made of stone. "But is that why you were at my place? Did you go to my house to *burgle* me?" she asked in a nearly parental tone, one that spoke of repeated transgressions that strained, then broke, trust long ago.
"No," he let the word elongate melodically. "That's not why I went there," voice pure saccharine.
"There's nothing to steal there anymore anyway. I kicked Trey out yesterday. He took whatever music stuff he had with him. Don't bother adding another line to your rap sheet for nothing. Seriously." The final word took on the genuine plea of a person who wanted to see someone make the right choice for once.
"Why'd you kick him out? Makin' room in the nest for this one?" He touched the edge of Olive's sleeve, sliding his hand inappropriately along her skin.
Everything happened at once.
"Get off me —"
"That's it!" Before Max's fingers were up to signal, the bouncer was on the move.
No stranger to starting trouble, he saw the approaching guard and instantly backed off, hands in the air.
"I'll go. I'll go." The world snapped back to normal speed. As he made his loping way, escorted, to the door, he looked back. "Catch you later, sis," managing to infuse the words with a disturbing passive aggressiveness.
"Yikes. When I was a kid, sometimes I was jealous of my friends with brothers or sisters. Right now it doesn't feel so bad," Olive mused out loud as she stared in the direction of the bouncer guarding the door.
"Yeah, he's... bad news. If you ever think you need to call the cops on him, don't hold back on my account."
Olive's eyes widened briefly. "Okay. Got it. Is he really the kind of person to break into his sister's house?"
"Don't call me that. And yes. Especially if he's on drugs. Which," she gestured to where he'd been standing, stealing fries.
"Well, what should I call him if not your... um...?"
"Ruben. Look, he's a violent asshole with no life skills who will be back in prison again soon. I'd love to be wrong this time, but..." she pursed her lips and inverted her hands helplessly.
"Hm," Olive avoided the fries near the ones he'd taken. "Should I be worried about him?"
Max shook her head. "No — well, yes. I mean," she gestured widely explaining the nuance of the threat he posed. "He's never done anything like hit the chick who had his kid or —"
"You're an aunt?" Olive blurted out.
Max paused, momentarily taken off guard. "Oh yeah. Huh," she shrugged. "But he doesn't have, like, a history of violence against women as, like, a thing. That being said... he's a lunatic. Just... the less we have him in our life, the better."
Olive tried to make a mental note to come back to the aunt subject, but the more pressing concern, "How did he know who I was?"
"Oh," Max looked to the side, hands hiding under the black apron tied around her waist in a novel show of bashfulness. "Well, he usually shows up right after talking to our mom." She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "He always gets her to spill details about my life I don't want him having. She's old and not super with it, and he's a manipulative sociopath. So yeah."
"So I'm a detail you shared with your mom?" Olive asked curiously.
With an embarrassed smile, Max looked at the ceiling for the answer. "It would have been weird to send the photo without explaining it's the girl I'm in love with."
Even though Max's eyes were still locked on the ceiling, she couldn't smother her grin.
"You seriously told your mom — jeez," Olive laughed lightly, wanting to chastise her for jumping the gun again, but it was cute.
"She must have shared the good news with Ruben." Shaking her head, Max sighed. "It's so hard to be mad at my mom. All her mistakes revolve around her being too nice. It's really annoying."
——
