Under the Alphas Protection
A s a child, I’m sure you were told about your guardian angel. That’s the heavenly figure that’s always watching over you, guiding you away from danger and caring for your mortal soul from above. It’s a really beautiful thought, but when you get older, it’s one that’s easy to sort of disregard at times. After all, as you mature, and the pressures of the world start to collapse down upon you with the weight of incredible burden, sometimes you might think that maybe the whole thing’s just a story.
My grandmother told me about my guardian angel when I was a little girl. She was very insistent that I had one. I don’t remember how old I was when I decided that she was so insistent because my mother had died before I was out of diapers. It was always a pleasing thought, although she was sure to stipulate that my mother was watching me too.
I always found that weird. You’d think, if I had one, that it would have been my mother, right? That’s what would have made the logical sense. But my grandmother insisted that it was a separate entity, my angel – always watching over me from nearby, careful to ensure my safety. She said that one day, I’d even meet him.
Him , she would conspicuously tell me. Always made it sound like it was more down to Earth than I would have thought. Like the presence was actually rather close by.
Whether or not you believe in one, it’s a common story, and you never really expect that you’ll bump into your personal little guardian.
You also probably don’t expect to fuck him.
~
I barely remember the night, now that I think back on it. Grandma was always worried about me coming home from work late at night, wandering the city sidewalks under the dim streetlights. But that’s the kind of life you have when you’re a struggling bartender at a shitty little hole-in-the-wall bar – lots of working late, being shouted at by management because of the inevitable last-minute barhoppers, and walking out the door at 2:45 AM. I knew that I should find something better – but I was eager for the experience, and it was pretty much the only place in walking distance that would take young, inexperienced me onboard. In fact, they were so desperate, and perhaps so divey, that they were willing to take me on under 21 years old.
Yeah…that’s right. Almost forgot – it was my birthday. I had just turned nineteen that night. I remember because I was furious about the drunken regular who came in at closing time – Chuck, his name was. He was a total mess after his wife divorced him, and he was always moping around the joint, telling the same sob stories to whomever would listen.
‘Whomever’ usually wound up being yours truly.
But that night, he was doing his usual schtick when I finally snapped at him. For one brief, beautiful minute, I really gave him an earful – telling him off about always wandering in right before closing time, scaring off the other customers, running up tabs and barely paying them off – the guy was a total mess, and I was sick to shit of him.
It looked like he was seriously going to have a change of heart. He looked at me with those drunken, remorseful eyes, and I gazed at him with a mixture of confusion and anticipation…I would love to tell you that I never had to deal with him again, that he took that nugget of passion and made it the foundation for the rest of his life. I’d love to go on about bumping into him on the street, months later, and seeing how much he’d changed. He wouldn’t have recognized me, and I would have only barely recognized him , with his clean-shaven face, pressed suit, and renewed confidence.
I didn’t have to deal with him again, that much was true. But that’s because he lost his shit, exploded at the manager, and I was fired on the spot.
Grumbling angrily as I left – denied my compensation and my tip-out from the two servers who had
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