Charcoal Tears Read Online Free PDF

chin often lowered to imbue an intensity in his stare. I smiled my obvious fondness for the silent stranger as he caught my hand and stamped himself. He touched a thumb to my cheek before he walked away.
    It was exactly what he had done on that first night a year ago.
    I stared after his broad back, noting the usual black jeans and black boots. I wondered again if he was related to my art teacher in some way. I handed the stamp over to Mark and skipped back upstairs, checking in once with Roger, who was working the bar.
    “Can you help me out here a bit, sweets?” he asked. “We’re busy tonight and Crystal called in sick.”
    “Sure.” I moved to his side. “What do you need me to do?”
    Roger was a science major, and I’m pretty sure that he was interested in both guys and girls. I’d seem him flirting over the bar with both genders. He had slicked-back hair, a nose piercing, and flat blue eyes.
    “Take one of those trays and start collecting glasses, thanks.”
    I retrieved the tray and headed out to the tables, piling empty bottles and glasses onto it. Someone slipped a hand around my middle and I pushed away from them, setting my teeth together in a show that wouldn’t have passed for a smile even on one of my good days. Random people tipped me, even though I wasn’t doing anything for them, and I collected the tips in one of the empty cups. I threw out the bottles and loaded the cups into the washer, and then did two more rounds before I started with the shots.
    “Hey there babe.” Some guy with ruddy cheeks and a crooked smile sidled up to me, and I straightened my spine. “How much?” He glanced at the tray, and then promptly set his eyes on my chest.
    “Two dollars,” I said, holding out one of the little shot cups for him.
    He grabbed it, tossed it back, and then grabbed another, dropping a few coins onto the tray and moving to pat my ass. I jumped out of the way, spilling some of the alcohol on my tray, and he laughed obnoxiously. I moved toward the outskirts of the room with grim resignation. I had learned early on to always have a wall at my back, but somehow in my preoccupied state, I had forgotten the golden rule. When I reached the corner that my silent stranger usually sat in, I slipped into the seat next to him and heaved a relieved breath. Unlike the other customers, he never grabbed me or leered at me, or even spoke to me. He glanced over as I sat, tipping a glass of vodka to his lips.
    “I’m having a bad day,” I told him.
    Under normal circumstances, I was well aware that spilling your guts to scary-looking strangers in seedy clubs wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but it was another given in my life—just like my father’s rapid-fire abuse and our constant state of poverty. The stranger in the bar. I wasn’t entirely sure how it had started, or when it had started, but somewhere along the way he had become the only person that I could really say things to. I knew that it was probably due to his lack of a reaction to the things that spilled out of my mouth, but it didn’t matter. He was like a priest behind a curtain—though, admittedly, one that you wouldn’t want to come across alone at night.
    “Hm.” He made a non-committal sound and indulged himself in another sip of vodka.
    I examined him in the shadow of our little corner, wondering why he even came to this place. Maybe he was a dealer.
    “I know,” I said, toying with one of the shot cups. “I have a lot of those. But today was especially bad… or especially weird. I feel like I’ve been living my whole life high above the crowds of normally-functioning humans, walking along a wobbly cord that doesn’t lead anywhere, and today… today I think something knocked me off. Someone snipped the cord, or maybe the world rushed up to meet me. I don’t know. Everything feels suddenly… changed. My favourite teacher, the new boys at school, even my painting—it all changed. It feels different now, and I don’t think