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The thought of them has my head pounding harder and I know that I have to do something about it before it gets to the point of no return.
Rolling to my side, I gingerly pull my legs out of bed and push to sit at the edge, all while squeezing my eyes shut. This is not fun.
It takes some convincing, but eventually I pry my lids open—and immediately notice the water bottle and piece of paper on my nightstand. I reach for the paper, frowning at the unrecognizable, but masculine, scrawl with the phone number at the bottom.
You’re probably going to be hurting when you get up, but you had a rough few hours. Drink fluids. The O’Gallaghers would suggest you eat a huge breakfast. Avoid Tylenol but go ahead and take ibuprofen.
After that, there’s a section that was scribbled out so much that even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to decipher what was under the mess of lines and circles. But then the note is signed:
You deserve better friends—M aside.
—Jake “The Bartender”
CHAPTERFIVE
Jake
I clockin at four on Saturday, the biggest night of O’Gallaghers’ St. Patrick’s Day weekend festivities. I’m closing with Ben, Cash, Saint, and Nick tonight, but I wouldn’t be shocked if Colie and Shayne stay a few extra hours after their shifts. Conor sent a group text earlier in the day saying he could come in at any point but he’d also texted yesterday to tell everyone he got hit with whatever bug was going through his house—it was the general consensus of the group he’s better off staying home and far away from the pub.
The last thing we need is to be Ground Zero for a late-season flu outbreak.
We’re already busy, and likely have been since the parade concluded a few hours earlier. I usually drive into work but because it was so crazy downtown today, I opted to walk.
Walking back over that bridge for the third time in three days—Thursday night, then on Friday morning to collect my car, and again today—had me thinking about the light haired woman who hasn’t been too far from my mind in the last thirty-six plus hours.
The one who amazingly lives in the same apartment community as Ben and I.
Except, Ben and I live clear on the other side, so even though I’vewonderedwhy I’d never seen Sophia before Thursday, it was easy toknowwhy.
I know my immediate neighbors, and I recognize a few vehicles in different sections of the community, but there are simply too many people to know or recognize everyone.
At the moment, Shayne and I have the bar while the others working are running from bar to floor to back. The O’Gallaghers Original—OG—that I had Sophia try the other night is a hit with the crowd today, and between that and the always popular on St. Patrick’s Day in America, “green beer,” I’ve already had to switch out kegs, and likely will have to again in less than an hour.
We have a couple of games going that the pub plays every year for the festivities. First, there’s a stupid game of “pin the four leaf clover on the leprechaun’s ass,” and the leprechaun cut-out is more “Jolly Green Giant” than tiny mischievous thing. The four leaf clovers, though, are just about real life sized, so it makes the game—and figuring out the winner for the hour—more interesting. The person who gets the four leaf clover closest to the marked spot on the leprechaun gets a party-sized platter of cheeseburger shalaylees. It’s our most popular appetizer, a wonton-like wrap stuffed with seasoned ground beef and melted American cheese. They’re served with a Guinness-infused ketchup.
Some might say that’s a ridiculous prize—give out beer! T-shirts!
But the people have spoken, and it’s the shalaylees they want.
The second game we have going isn’t so much a game as a “shame.”
If you walk into O’Gallaghers with a shirt saying “Patty,” you are required to sing for your supper, so to speak. There have already been ten men—and one woman—who’ve had to go up on the rarely used karaoke stage and belt out “I’m a little teapot” in the hour I’ve been here.
There’s bound to be many more before the night is through.
However, if you walk in with a shirt proclaiming that it’s “Paddy’s” day, you get a gold coin that you can use on one alcoholic beverage of choice.
So what about those who don’t have Patty or Paddy on their shirt? But they’re wearing green, or proudly proclaiming they’re Irish, so kiss them?
All St. Patrick’s Day dressed patrons get a wooden coin that they can either keep to redeem for a free drink or appetizer at a later date, or they can write their name and number on the coin before dropping it into one of three raffles we have for the weekend.
They’re not “boring” prizes, either.
There’s a box suite for up to twenty guests to an April Enforcer’s game, food and beverage included. There’s a set of memberships to the San Diego Zoo—probably because the younger O’Gallagher kids would live there if given the choice. Third, there’s a weekend trip, all expenses paid, to wine country.
And the thing is, every one of those buckets will have coins by the end of the weekend. Peoplewantthe prizes.
For the majority of us on staff and working today, it’s our first year celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, O’Gallaghers Style. However, Colie and Saint have been here for a couple of years and they prepared us in ways the O’Gallagher siblings couldn’t.
