Girl In Pieces Read Online Free PDF Page B

dozens of my shirts in her closet from over the years. Some boxers too. And hoodies.
    Despite her kleptomania, I didn’t mind. Not really. Truth be told, I even kind of liked seeing her in my clothes, lounging like a tom cat across my couch at two in the morning watching infomercials because she couldn’t sleep or didn’t want to go home.
    Her shirt didn’t smell like her anymore, but I’d still stood there like an idiot trying to convince myself not to go to her apartment, push her against her front door, and kiss her for the rest of her life.
    Instead I’d shoved her shirt into my closet and put it out of my mind.
    But that was a mistake of course. I might as well have had her hidden in my closet instead for how much it haunted me late at night. If I had any sense, I’d have thrown it out and saved myself a lot of madness. I’d never been a masochist in my life, but I couldn’t stop punishing myself with memories of her. Couldn’t and didn’t want to if I could.
    On Mondays, knowing I’d be back here counting and checking inventory logs and doing other housekeeping tasks, sometimes she’d show up with take-out and a new playlist and helped herself to helping me. She never asked for anything in return, though sometimes I’d take her upstairs afterwards and cook her dinner. She liked procrastinating her own responsibilities with mine.
    Without realizing it then, Mondays became my favorite days. Mondays it was just me and Kat in this tiny room, me on the ladder counting the top shelf boxes while she made the chalkboard signs fancier than stockroom labels ought to be. She did most of the talking, naturally, the cadence of her voice coinciding with the numbers I was reading off. That was how everything was with us, guessing each other’s next move and compensating.
    Damn, I missed her.
    I touched one of the chalkboard signs and ran a thumb across the smudged white powder. The handwriting wasn’t hers. It hadn’t been hers for three weeks now.
    Three inventory Mondays had gone by where I avoided the stock room and asked Brian or one of the waitresses to do it. The girls came kicking and screaming about how boring inventory was, and were so little help they might as well not have been there at all. They wanted to know where Kat was, when she was coming back to do this awful task. I’d remind them she wasn’t an employee, but they’d complain that it wasn’t the same without her. They demanded to know what was keeping her away.
    A new man. That was the rumor. She was hip deep in a new lover and couldn’t be bothered to come up for air. It took all my power not to deny it outright and it made me crazy feeling jealous of her fake boyfriend. But I couldn’t tell them the truth. Shit. I couldn’t admit the truth to myself let alone anyone else.
    I shook my head. The rum. I had to find the fucking rum. And I had to get the girl with the ridiculous pink hair out of my head. I had a bar to run. Employees to employ. And none of that was going to happen if I didn’t have any rum.
    Except as I searched the shelves, I didn’t find the rum. I didn’t find anything.
    Well, not nothing exactly. Each slot had boxes and crates and canisters that had once contained bottles, but they were all empty. Every last one of them, as if South River hadn’t received a shipment in weeks.
    Now. Now I wanted answers.
    The bar was quiet enough that I could hear Brian arguing with someone inside his office, but couldn’t make out the exact words, only that his tone was terse and slightly desperate. During the week, South River opened only in the evenings so the only two people around in the middle of the day was me and Brian, my bar manager and best friend. And Kat’s older brother.
    I knocked once before pushing the office door open. Brian jumped and quickly clapped his phone shut.
    “Hey,” Brian said as he tossed his cell on the desk. He rubbed his hands against his jeans, then through his hair until it stood up every which way.