“Ah, yeah, because you never were like any normal teen and roasted yourself in the sun, you could still pass for twenty-one.  Why the last name Never?” she asked slipping her legs into a clean pair of jeans in exchange for her bloodied ones.

“Not the word never.  N. E. V. A. E. H, it’s heaven spelled backwards.  I don’t know, maybe because, I’m not in that hell anymore. ” Pulling a compact mirror out of my purse, I tried to cover up the redness of my swollen eyes as much as I could.  “There’s no use with the make-up, is there?  Let’s just get a few drinks and find a place to sleep.  We are so deep in the Adirondacks that we should be fine here for a few days.”

The bright pink neon light that flashed the bar’s name read McSmexymelts, with a dancing neon ass-shaking animated sign next to it.  “Holy crud, Sam…ah damn…I meant…Lainey, we’re really doing this, aren’t we?”

Trying not to limp too much with the burning sting from the cuts and scrapes on my legs as they rubbed against the material of my pants, I made my way to the entrance of the bar. “Yeah, Bree, we are really going to have a drink in a strip bar.  I don’t care how many lap dances I see or how many snail trails decorate the poles.  We both need a drink after all of that.”  I waved my hands in the air in the direction of the dark patch of highway we had just come from.

She touched my elbow before I could reach for the door, a slow smile building on her battered face. “No, I meant, we’re really done with it all.  We’re not going back, are we?”

“Freaking LOOK at me. I will never go back there.  I don’t care what I just gave up.  None of that stuff is worth my freedom and my sanity.  To hell with them all,” I said, meaning every word.  Then I laughed.  I laughed and smiled for my freedom. Hell, I wanted to break out into a cheer, but I needed that drink first.

The cozy warmth of the bar was the first thing I noticed, the second was the sweet smells of cinnamon and vanilla. It was like a slutty Bed and Body store.  The walls were painted a deep rich burgundy and the tables and chairs were a dark cherry wood.  A long bar graced one whole side of the wall and a dimly lit stage decorated the backdrop.

Having never stepped foot in a strip joint before, Bree’s eyes widened as they scanned around the room, taking it all in.  Me, I’d been to tons of them when I was younger, the result of being stuck around so many guys and never having many girlfriends to relax with.  It didn’t faze me a bit.

Grabbing Bree’s hand, I pulled her to the bar and settled myself on a tall elegant stool, complete with velvet cushion.  The stage was empty, and just a few patrons, a mixture of male and female, sat at tables, eating and drinking.

“Well, this stinks.  I thought I was going to see some strange cooch climbing up some poles,” Bree chuckled, as she slid her body over a stool.

“Dancers don’t come on ‘til ten, love,” a deep voice called out from nowhere.  Bree and I both looked at each other, and then scanned the bar for the person who belonged to the voice that answered us.  We came up empty.  Her eyes met back up with mine, wearing a furrowed brow.

“Wow.  Impressive.  Hairy McTittieBounce’s Bar has an invisible bartender,” I chuckled.  “Well, Mr. Invisible Bartender, we need the strongest drink you can make.”

A head of thick sandy blond hair rose up from behind the bar in front of us, and the prettiest face you ever saw was attached to it, complete with a pair of clichéd baby blue eyes.  No, not pretty, beautiful.  Blah, like a damn Ken doll.  God, men weren’t supposed to be that pretty.  Handsome, yes.  Pretty, no.  But, this guy?  This guy was beautiful.

It kind of made me want to roll my eyes and gag.  I might have, if my face didn’t hurt so much.

The moment he laid eyes on us, the Ken doll’s eyebrows arched up to his hairline and he made a little strangled gasp-like sound. “Are…Are you okay?” he asked me.  A light British accent tinted his words.  Well, wasn’t that a bowl of yum.  A beautiful man with an accent; it was going to be impossible to get Bree out of here.

I offered him my best smile, which caused one of the cuts on my lip to bleed again and he quickly handed me a wad of cocktail napkins. “Are you saying I don’t look okay?” I gasped in mock horror, and then tried for a wink with my less swollen eye. “What? Do I have something hanging from my nose?” I asked, laughing absurdly and patting my lip with the napkins he had offered.

I had to crack jokes and laugh at myself, because the reality of the situation was too much for me otherwise.  Life is tough; you have to endure the bad with the good, because the alternative is so…final.

I will endure this.

Next to me, Bree put her head down, covered her head with her arms and giggled into the wood.  The bright purple welt across her cheek was darkening by the minute and didn’t help her look any better.

The Ken doll paused to examine my face and reached out his hand, touching my chin lightly, while I tried not to flinch, “Well, it can’t be too bad if you’re both laughing about it, yeah? You need me to round up some boys and give somebody an arse kicking?” If my cheeks weren’t so discolored with bruises, he probably would have noticed the hot blush that surged right under my skin.

“Um, no.  Thank you, though.  Just a few drinks, okay?  Anything that will numb all this puffy loveliness we got going on,” I said, slowly leaning my face away from his hand.  Why in the world would a man think it would be comfortable for a woman to be touched when she looked as battered as I did? 

“Sure, you bet, love,” he mumbled, walking away to grab a bottle each of vodka, rum, and tequila off the top of the shelf.  From the middle shelf, he pulled out some gin and another bottle of something I couldn’t read and some lemon-lime soda.  Then he just started pouring everything together.  I was almost illegally above the limit of drunkenness just watching him make the damn drink.   He placed two small cocktail napkins neatly in front of us and went back to mixing, I toyed with the idea of telling him to save his fancy little beverage linens, because I didn’t intend on taking my drink from my lips long enough to set it down, but I didn’t.  Mostly because I didn’t want anyone really to know the pain I was in.

“Dibs,” Bree whispered softly next to me.  As if I had a chance in hell with her around, me Miss Plain Jane Smarty Pants compared to her Miss Lottie too Hottie.  Don’t misunderstand me, I was attractive, but Bree fell into the blonde-bombshell-outrageously gorgeous adjective pile when people described her, and I got thrown aimlessly into the awkward-yet averagely-decent-looking-brainiac pile.

Snorting out a laugh, I nudged her with my elbow.  “Sure, he’s all yours.  He’s way too pretty for my taste.  Besides, I think I’m done with men for a while.”  Rubbing my clammy palms down the pant legs of my jeans, I bit at the one tiny part of my lip that didn’t hurt, “I’m feeling kind of buzzed and I didn’t even drink yet.”

“Adrenaline. Loss of blood.  Don’t change the subject, I’m still calling dibs,” she whispered.

Nope.  I think it’s freedom.

The bartender slid two glasses full of his dark concoction across the lacquered length of the bar, “Here you go, loves.  This drink is called an Adios, Motherfucker.  Which, I hope to God you both said to whomever the hell put their hands on you,” he said, leveling a pair of serious-as-hell blue eyes at us.

Adios, Motherfucker.

Bree held up her drink to mine and clinked her glass against it. “To new beginnings,” she whispered.

“To freedom,” I whispered back.

Adios, Motherfucker.

I watched as the beautiful bartender walked away from us, moved around the bar talking to the other patrons and grabbing plates of food off their tables.  He carried them through a door into a back area and reappeared with other steaming plates of food to serve.  There were no other employees around.

We sipped our drinks in silence, both of us most likely trying to forget the last twenty-four hours of our lives.  But, man, I wanted to forget a lot more.

Bree’s eyes followed the bartender like a little lost dog, “So what do you think?  Want to stay for a while?  The scenery is nice.”

“Oh, sure. Yeah.  I always wondered what it would be like to live in a freezer.”

“It’s not that cold.  And we’re far enough.”

“Jen…dammit…Bree….what the hell kind of name is Bree anyway? It’s like twenty degrees and it’s October.  Across the damn world would not be far enough.”

“Germs don’t live in cold environments?  We could dye your hair black.  I could use a whole new hairstyle and look.  It will be like playing hide and seek.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious.  We have plenty of money and no one would ever look for you in the middle of the woods.  They’d try looking in major cities and that’s if anyone is even looking,” she whispered.

I almost spit my drink all over her. “So you think nobody will be looking for me?”

“All I’m saying is that we could blend in here and the bartender is really gorgeous.  What do you think? He seems nice, right?”

“Oh, yeah.  I’m such a great judge of character.  Please.  I wouldn’t know a sociopath if he tore off my arms and beat me with them.”

“You ladies need anything over here?” The Ken doll asked a few minutes later, as he wiped down the top of the bar.  My eyes zoned in on the sinewy muscles of his tanned arms as he dried off the condensation from our cool drinks in smooth circular motions.