Page 12 of Crash’s Secret

CHAPTER 5

CASSIDY

Four days into Saber's run, the bartender calls in sick twenty minutes before open, and Crash takes the news with his phone pressed to his ear and his eyes shut.

“It’s fine, Manny. Drink fluids.” He hangs up and stares at the ceiling like it’ll send down a replacement.

It’s not fine. There’s a baseball tournament in town. We’re about to get crushed. And Violet no longer bartends.

I put my pen down on the ledger. “I bartended for three years in California.”

“No.”

“Dive bar near campus,” I continue. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Cass, you’re here to fix the books, not pour⁠—”

The front door opens, and the first six guys in matching jerseys walk in, and the decision makes itself.

“Apron is under the register,” he says.

By one o’clock, the rail is two deep, and the room is wall-to-wall red and yellow jerseys.

I remember exactly why I quit doing this and exactly why I loved it.

The problem isn’t the volume. The problem is the area behind the bar, which is a very tight space.

Crash calls a drink, and I’m already reaching for the bottle. I call for limes, and they appear at my elbow. Every turn puts us inches apart, his hand on my waist to move past me, my palm flat on his shoulder blade so he knows I’m behind him with a full tray.

An hour in, we stop saying excuse me. Two hours in, we stop needing words at all, and that’s worse, because now there’s nothing to listen to except his hand finding the same spot on my waist every time.

“Two margaritas, one IPA,” he says.

I’m shaking the salt tin when he reaches over my head for the tequila, his arm a warm line above me, and a guy in a red jersey leans across the rail.

“Sweetheart, can I get your number with that beer?”

“No,” Crash says, without turning around, in a register the whole rail goes quiet for.

The guy tips well and doesn’t speak to me again.

I bump Crash with my hip on my way to the register. “I can handle drunk baseball players.”

“Never said you couldn’t.”

“Then what was that?”

He racks clean glasses and doesn’t answer, and I take the next three orders with a stupid smile I can’t talk my face out of.

The evening bartender walks in at four, ties on an apron, and surveys the wreckage of the lunch rush.

I untie mine, and it’s the first chance I’ve had to take a deep breath. I go to the back office to get away from the crowd.

Crash comes in a second later. “Didn’t know you were in here. Forgot my phone.”

The space is even smaller than the bar area. “I just needed a moment to myself.”

“You were good out there,” he says. “Better than Manny.”