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“Haven’t you seen that Sex and the City episode? What if he’s just not that into me?” I exhaled a stream of smoke and flicked my cigarette ash in the general direction of the overflowing bowl of butts nearby.
Juliet narrowed her black-rimmed eyes and furrowed her drawn-on eyebrows at me from the other side of the bar. Her entire makeup kit consisted of one black kohl eyeliner pencil. If it wasn’t for her trichotillomania—an inexplicable compulsion to pull her eyelashes and eyebrows out—she probably wouldn’t wear makeup at all.
Juliet was fresh out of fucks. I guess having a baby when you were still a baby yourself would do that to you. Despite getting knocked up by a drug dealer at the age of fifteen, Juliet had still managed to graduate high school on time and get accepted into the College of Business at the University of Georgia. Sure, she would have fit in way better at Georgia State where everybody chain-smoked, wore black, and experimented with veganism, but I wasn’t mad about her choice. UGA had way hotter guys and way better bars, especially the one she worked at.
Fuzzy’s Bar & Grill was a shithole with no discernable theme other than the place where wooden things went to die. There was wood paneling on the walls. The most scuffed hardwoods you’d ever seen on the floor. And every table, chair, and flat surface was made from something brown and splintery.
But damn if it didn’t attract some fine-ass losers.
The ten-dollar pitchers of Pabst Blue Ribbon brought in the tattooed, working class crowd who didn’t give two shits about the college-town locale. They were just there to get drunk on the cheap. The regulars loved Juliet, which was hilarious, considering what a bitch she was to everyone, and nobody batted an eye whenever she let her underage purple-haired best friend drink for free.
So, basically, it was heaven disguised as the inside of an old coffin.
Juliet handed me a Coke with plenty of Jack Daniel’s in it, then snatched the cigarette out of my hand.
“You’re right,” she said, taking a drag as I took my first sip. “He’s just not that into you.”
“Ugh,” I scoffed, snatching my Camel Light back. “I knew you were gonna say that.”
“Hey, I call ’em like I see ’em.” She shrugged, completely ignoring the impatient glares from her patrons. “You’ve been to his house, like, five times now, and he hasn’t even invited you upstairs. That’s fucked up.”
“It’s fucked up, right?” I threw my hands in the air. “I would have just written him off by now if we didn’t have these fucking Cirque du Soleil tickets. Now, I gotta deal with this awkward bullshit for three more weeks!”
A man cleared his throat from a table behind me, prompting Juliet’s pencil-thin eyebrows to shoot up.
Glaring over my shoulder, she shouted above the noise from the rowdy hockey fans gathered around the TV at the opposite end of the bar, “I’ll be with you in a minute, sir.” Then, lowering her voice, she added, “Dickhead.”
“Explain to me again why you get better tips than me.”
I looked up as a man with a megawatt smile and a chestnut-brown faux hawk came to stand beside Juliet. He was wearing a white button-up shirt and dark gray vest, but the tattoos peeking out of his collar and sleeves negated the formality of his outfit.
And increased his hotness tenfold.
“They’re called boobs, Zach.”
“Oh, right.” He beamed at me even though he was talking to her. “I thought it was your glowing personality.”
I snickered as Juliet rolled her eyes.
“B, this is our new bartender, Zach. Zach thinks he’s funny.”
Zach winked at me. “Your friend thinks I’m funny, too.”
Juliet turned to face him. I don’t know how she could keep a straight face while looking at something that fucking cute.
“My friend is on her second Jack and Coke. She thinks everything’s funny.”
I shrugged as Zach met my gaze. “It’s true.”
Juliet pushed past him to go abuse some more customers, pretending not to be affected by the potent cloud of charisma he was emanating.
Propping both forearms on the bar, Zach leaned forward and asked, “Is she always that shy?”
I giggled. I actually fucking giggled.
“She’s…she’s a bitch, man. I can’t even sugarcoat it. She pushed me into moving traffic once.”
“Hey!” Juliet shouted from ten feet away where she was standing at a table full of bikers. “I pulled you right back onto the sidewalk. Don’t be so dramatic.”
