Many thanks to tennesseered for reaching out, and for editing this work.
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Two or three times a year I'm sent to Stanthorpe for work. Without wanting to give too much away, my job involves fixing things when people fuck them up, so as you can imagine, I don't really enjoy the visits.
Besides, it's not like Stanthorpe is a bustling city. It's a rural town about three hours west of Brisbane. There are lots of farms; apples, grapes, stone fruit, cattle, etc, but not a lot really going on otherwise -- not compared to the northside of Brisbane, where I live.
Perhaps you're wondering who I am. It's Literotica so surely I'm a bloke with an eight inch dick, right? No. The reality is that I'm a woman in my forties. I'm average height, slim, but I'm not really pretty or anything. I can come across a bit intense at times, but really, I just like to sort things out. I like order. My best attribute is probably that I want everyone to have an easy time as possible, and I suppose that's why I get sent out to places to fix things, mend relationships even though I'm also quite the introvert.
My worst fault is that I can get offended over silly little things and get passive aggressive, and it's one of my passive aggressive tantrums that makes this story possible.
The morning prior to my most recent trip, my boss had made a public jab at me during our weekly team catch up about a fuel receipt I'd submitted the week prior. I'd filled up at a service station that was fourteen cents a litre costlier than the one down the road. In his estimation, this led to an additional five dollars and sixty cents in expenditure.
He ignored the fact that I'd been on my way to salvage a six figure business deal he nearly ruined by trying to use a cheap and nasty freight company, and that I was running late because of another urgent work situation. I just sat there and took it -- he's not the sort of person you can argue with -- and decided to get him back in my own way.
Normally when I travel, I buy a microwave meal and a soft drink to eat in my hotel room. According to company policy, we can spend up to $50 AUD on dinner and drinks, $30 for lunch, $25 for breakfast. My average was less than half that, more like a third of it. Everyone knew it, too. I thought, well, fuck it, if I'm going to get publicly called out over a few dollars, I'll start utilising every cent of my meal allowance. I decided that that night, I'd go to the local pub and buy myself a nice steak on the company dime.
I went to my motel and checked in. I always stay at the same motel. Most of the rooms are unrenovated, and there are plenty of yellow Laminex and brown bathroom tiles. The motel itself is next to an energy company's depot and they have a bright spotlight that seems to shine equally brightly into the bathroom of every single room, making getting a good night's sleep challenging. I've been told it's the best place to stay in town, and because I don't want to have to navigate staying in a potentially worse room, I just suck it up.
I brushed my hair and my teeth, fixed my make-up and walked up the road. I wasn't dressed up per se, but I was tidy. As in many country towns, Stanthorpe has a main street on which pretty much ninety percent of the town's commercial business is located. There are motels, a car dealership, hardware, pubs, and an assortment of other shops. The Groove n Grill diner is pretty good, but they're not open every night and besides, the food's kind of heavy for eating just before bed.
The temperature was mild but not cold, and it was good to stretch my legs. I walked past one pub and on to another, one I'd been to on a previous trip. Despite having a public bar, a gaming room, and a bistro, it was pretty dead. There were signs advertising Wednesday night trivia but not much was happening on a Tuesday night. I was the only solo traveller. There was a family finishing up their dinner, and a table of foreign workers, here for one harvest or another, but that was pretty much it.
I ordered my steak with vegetables and mash, and asked for a whiskey, but the girl at the counter told me she was only seventeen and therefore couldn't serve me alcohol. After taking my dinner order, she suggested I go to the public bar and get a drink there.
I walked around to the public bar. There was only one person drinking, a man of indiscernible age. Maybe he was in his forties but he could also have been late thirties or early fifties. He had a really dark tan which was pretty typical of the area. I see a lot of men who work outdoors in my job, and in some areas they seem really on top of skin protection, but in others they are all dark and wrinkled before their time. Stanthorpe is definitely the latter.
The man was half-watching me out of the corner of his eye as I approached the bar. I smiled at him and he turned away abruptly. Despite me being an introvert, I smile a lot, and oftentimes strange men will look away. I don't know if they think I'm hitting on them or whatnot, and whether or not that type of reaction is some uniquely Australian thing, but I'm used to it. I don't read too much into it these days.
The bartender came and took my order. She made my drink, and I tried to tap my card to pay, but nothing happened. The chip just wouldn't read. After I tried touching it to the little pad, and she tried touching it to the little pad, we tried inserting it, wiping the magnetic strip, the whole kit and kaboodle, but it stubbornly refused to function as a credit card should.
The bloke at the bar must have thought I didn't have any other way of paying, because he held a folded twenty dollar note between the first two fingers of his right hand and offered it to the bartender.
The bartender looked at me quizzically, seeing what I wanted to do.
'It's okay,' I told my two companions. 'I have my own credit card. I can pay with that. I was just trying to use my work card because my boss was being a jackass this morning and I want work to pay for my drink. If I try to submit an expense claim they'll probably throw a tantrum about me claiming alcohol as an expense.'
I put my hand on top of the man's hand and pushed it -- and the money -- gently away, before diving into my purse for my personal credit card. This time the chip read perfectly.
The bartender left us to go do something in the back room. I decided to take a seat at the bar. My meal wouldn't be ready for a bit, and I didn't want to go and sit in the bistro by myself. Perhaps I was also a bit lonely. I'd been divorced for nearly two years, after my ex-husband left me for a (much) younger woman. I thought I might see if the mystery man would talk to me.
He did.
'You work nearby?' he asked.
'No, in Brisbane, but I come out here a few times a year.' I replied.
I gave him an abbreviated version of my job and he told me he worked on a local farm, looking after the infrastructure. Most of his workmates were Timorese and they kept to themselves. He told me this in as few words as possible, but he wasn't unfriendly.
Having had a closer look at his face I gauged that he was well into his forties. He was sitting down but I doubted he was more than two inches taller than me, and he had a dad bod going on, but he was attractive in a rural sort of way. He had a bit of a tattoo peering out from under a sleeve, but it was an old tribal style one, not at all modern. Hazel eyes, long eyelashes, and curly brown hair with a widow's peak that was probably becoming more prominent as he got older.
We were both in jeans and a shirt, but my clothing was significantly more fitted. I got the impression he'd showered before he came here and had thrown on whatever was clean and nearby. He had no wedding ring, and no tan line showing that one had been removed recently. Plus, I just had that gut feeling he was single.
We talked a bit more and he told me a funny lost-in-translation story about his workmates, and I told him about my first solo travel assignment at my company, when I'd arrived in a small country town at eight o'clock and tried to order from Uber Eats for dinner only to find the town was lacking both Uber, and restaurants to supply food for Uber Eats. I ran up the road to the local service station just before it closed and bought an ice-cream cone and muesli bar for dinner.
I forgot about the steak I'd ordered until the young girl who'd taken my order wandered into the public bar, looking for me. She left my plate on the bar and went back to the bistro.
There was no knife or fork.
The man finished his beer and stood up. He didn't say anything, and I thought 'oh fuck, you idiot, now you're going to be left alone in a public bar with a steak and no way to eat it'. I felt like a right idiot and told myself it served me right for thinking some random guy was going to be interested in spending an evening talking with me.
I picked at a few pieces of carrot and wondered if I should go back to the bistro to eat.
'Here you go.'
