The Outcasts 2: The Bartender
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Ruth Robinson
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Steve crossed an ocean for love and ended up with a broken heart and a bar to call his own. Christian has spent his whole life invisible in his twin brother's shadow. Then Anna walks in—red hair, sharper tongue, impossible to ignore. Caught between the brooding bartender and the quietly devastating man in the wheelchair, she's about to discover a secret that ties all three of them together in ways none of them saw coming.
Chapter 1
Book 2: The Bartender
STEVE THE PUNK
I’m gonna let all you lovely people in on a little secret…Cocktail is my favorite film of all time. Yep! The one from the ’80s starring pint-sized heartthrob Tom Cruise.
When I was a kid growing up in a shitty part of London, I spent so many hours with my snotty nose pressed up against the television watching that shit over and over.
Then I grew up and discovered my love of punk.
Music was always an intrinsic part of my family. My grandfather had come over on the Windrush from Jamaica in 1948 as a young teenager. He was already playing in a reggae band when he moved, and that continued in England.
Eventually he met a girl, and they got married and had my dad.
Growing up in London in the ’70s and ’80s, in the mixing pot of culture, my dad was heavily influenced by the reggae he heard at home and the punk he heard on the streets, so it was kinda inevitable he ended up in a ska band.
And so, my house when I was a kid was always noisy. My grandfather singing and playing his guitar, my dad singing and playing his bass, and then you throw in six kids…my mother is a fucking saint, I tell you!
I’ll never forget the day I got my grubby little paws on my dad’s punk collection. Mind. Blown.
My life was forever changed.
By the time I was sixteen I was spending all my time hanging around Camden Lock with the other punks, safety pins pushed through various bits of soft skin and shitty Indian ink designs scrawled on my body.
It was around that time that I first started working in our local, just collecting empties and shit, and while working for a grumpy landlord and serving the belligerent drunks from the neighborhood wasn’t the fast-paced exciting world of bartending that Cocktail had showed me, it was enough to spark my interest again.
I started working behind the bar as soon as I turned eighteen.
That’s when I met the love of my life, Ramona. I thought she was the one, for real. We were together for two years, then she decided to move to America. I was so in love I just packed up my things and followed her.
For a year I trailed around after her like a fucking lost puppy. Then, one day, she was gone. Turns out I was just something to be used to piss her rich daddy off with.
So, I spent a few months drifting. Now I was twenty-one I could work in the bars over here, so I fell back into doing the only thing I was qualified to do.
I ended up in this town and immediately felt at home. It’s very much a student town, full of weird off-beat shops like Camden, and lots of girls my age who all wanted to hook up with the English bartender.
So, I stayed! Been here for nearly seven years now.
Three years ago, I managed to pool together enough money to buy the shitty bar. At last, I had somewhere I could call my own, could do whatever the fuck I wanted.
Took huge amounts of debt in order to do so, but fuck it. That’s a problem for future Steve.
The day I signed all the contracts and got the keys, the day I officially became a pub landlord, a bar owner, a businessman if you will, was the day I met the Gardener twins.
If it wasn’t for their different wardrobe choices and haircuts you would never be able to tell them apart. Oh, well, and the fact that Christian is in a wheelchair, of course.
There were a lot of goths back in Camden—it helped to balance out the bright colors of us punks—so Sam and I hit it off straight away. Dude may look like a scary fucker, but he’s a top bloke under all the black.
And despite all the shit he’s been through, Christian is still a snarky fucker, funny as hell. They’ve been good friends to me for the last three years.
***
I stroll up the path to Sam’s yard whistling, flashing him a wide grin when he opens the door.
Immediately my ears are subjected to the emotional bashing of whiny female vocals. Not that I hate female vocals, Gwen Stefani can fucking wail, but this sad shit just grates on my soul.
“Jesus fuck, who’s unleashed the Lisa Loeb CDs? I didn’t think I’d ever need to hear her again once the nineties were over!”
“She’s home, which I take as a win.”
Sam and his new kind-of-girlfriend were having some issues. As an outsider, it was easy to see that they both had feelings brewing, but they were both convinced they were the only ones.
Young love! Fucking crock of shit in my mind.
I sit down next to Sam on his comfortable large sectional sofa, and we crack open a brewski. “She spoken to you yet?”
“No.” He sighs, taking a long drink from his bottle.
It feels like days we sit listening to that depressing shit. Even Sam’s real heavy goth music isn’t as depressing as those ’90s chicks.
Someone starts hammering on his front door, and we both jump up, eager for whatever distraction is on the other side.
I never thought it would be such a little firecracker on the other side.
A girl who barely comes up to my chest is glaring at the two of us from Sam’s doorstep, hair dyed fire-engine red, wearing short shorts over sexy-as-hell fishnets and sporting a Bad Religion T-shirt. Shha-wiing!
“What the fuck did you do to her, fucking ass-wad!”
She pushes past the two of us before Sam can respond, striding down the hall to Lizzy’s room. She is quickly allowed entry, leaving the two of us standing by the open front door, our mouths still open in shock.
***
“It’s been two fucking hours.” I lean back so I can peer down the hallway at the closed door again. “I wonder who that girl is?”
Sam lifts his bottle of beer to his mouth, rolling his eyes at me.
“Hey! Emo-boy.” The sexy little vixen saunters into the living room. “Beth said you’ve got a secret stash of Double Stuf Oreos. We’re gonna need to commandeer them.”
She stands, leaning up against the archway, tapping the toe of her white Doc Martens against the floor. I can’t help but drag my eyes over her tight little body, feeling the blood starting to rush from my head downward.
I lick my lips, working up the courage to speak to the feisty punk fairy standing in front of me. “So, what’s your name, gorgeous?”
“Nope,” she replies quickly, popping the p.
“What?” I feel my smile drop.
“No.” She rolls her eyes as her plump lips purse together around the single syllable. “My name is not gorgeous. Or sweetheart. Or princess. Or any other banal pleasantry you deem fit to call me.”
I scowl a little as I notice Sam trying his hardest not to crack a smile at our exchange of words while he hands over his cookies.
“Thanks, Emo-boy.”
I can’t help my eyes from staying glued to her arse as she walks back to Lizzy’s bedroom, the sway in her hips almost hypnotic. “Sam, mate. I think I’m in love.”
***
“And then this dumb fuck decides it’s a fan-fucking-tastic idea to whip ’is pencil dick out and start showing the females in the bar—in his words—what they are all missing. The pigs actually did their job for once though and threw the cunt in jail.”
I chuckle, remembering the shocked look on the twat’s face when they clapped the handcuffs on him.
Sam is sitting with a cigarette in his mouth, letting it basically burn away, obviously not listening to me in the slightest.
I lean over and pluck the thing out from between his lips, taking a deep drag on it myself. He quirks his eyebrow at me as I exhale.
“Look, stop worrying about her. Her sexy little bodyguard is here. And at least she’s got Lizzy to stop playing that god-awful music. I even heard them laughing when I last went for a piss.”
“I just want them to come out and tell us what the fuck is going on.” He sweeps his hair back into a ponytail.
“What the fuck is going on is that we’re starving. Who wants to take me to go get Chinese?” The sexy nymph is standing in the doorway behind us.
This is my fucking chance! Excitedly, I start tapping Sam on his hard stomach with the back of my hand to get his attention.
“Ow! What the fuck, Steve!”
“Gimme your keys,” I whisper under my breath before giving the scarlet lady in front of me one of my sexiest smirks, the one that usually seals the deal for me. “I’ll happily take you, sweetheart.”
“Still not my name, asshole.” Her grin drips with sarcasm, and my dick is there for it.
“Well, we can use our little jaunt together to become better acquainted, buttercup.” I hold my hand out, my grin widening as Sam drops his car keys into my hand.
“Gee. Can’t wait.” She rolls her eyes again, turning on the heel of her Docs, leaving no room for me to do anything but follow her.
Sam’s car is a sexy black muscle car, one I had borrowed on several occasions to impress the ladies. My new spicy acquaintance didn’t seem overly impressed, just settled into her seat and started chewing on some gum.
“So…are you, like, Lizzy’s best friend?” I try not to recoil from the heat in her glare. For a little thing she is a big ball of fury.
“Look, Mr. I’m-so-cool-because-I’m-alternative-and-foreign…”
I chuckle, making her glare even harder at me.
“I’m not interested in getting to know you. I’m not interested in being your friend. I’m only here for my cousin.”
“Oh, so Lizzy is your cousin! Yeah, I can kinda see the resemblance now.”
She huffs when she realizes her spiky personality won’t deter me.
“So, princess, if you’re gonna be around a lot, then we are eventually gonna end up being friends.”
I smirk at her as she huffs again, tightly crossing her arms across her chest, which pushes her small tits up against the white skull nun on her black Bad Religion shirt. “Anna,” she spits out.
“Good to meet’cha, Anna. I’m Steve the Punk…” I try not to grin too much. “Your future lover.”
