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We took down the shots, tapping the empty glass on the bar twice as the alcohol burned our throats.
“I don’t think that’s really a drink you do a shot to health for,” I muttered between coughs.
“No,” Lena said. “I think you’re right. I think thisremoveshealth.”
Mom’s footsteps were making their way from the upstairs back down, and I grabbed both glasses to run them under the sink. We were both still coughing as I rinsed them out and began dabbing them with a bar towel before putting them back, just in time for Mom to come back into the room.
“What are you two standing around for?” she thundered. “Get to work!”
I snapped off a sarcastic salute and ran the opposite direction, busying myself with the first thing I saw, which happened to be a chalkboard sign that still needed the specialty drinks written on it.
Usually, Lena did this. She had the better handwriting of the two of us, though I was always better at coming up with the pun-inspired drink names. With the bar opening so soon, though, I didn’t have time to be clever. I just had to get the words on the board and hang it back up.
Lena disappeared and when she returned had changed into the skirt I let her borrow. It was, indeed, short, but Lena was built slightly thicker than I was, and on her it looked even skimpier. The bottom of her ass was hanging out of it, and when I had pointed it out earlier when she was trying it on, she plainly told me that was the point. At least she had switched to a thong rather than the granny panties she had been wearing earlier, because I had a feeling that wouldn’t have gone over as well.
Lena was going to be the one on the floor, taking care of customers with her big, fake smile and bright red hair. She was hard to miss, even in a crowd, and I was thankful not to have to be the one out among people. I could hang back behind the bar and help Mom there while Caroline did as she always did and took up waitressing with a zeal that none of us understood. Shelovedit. And was good at it, too. She’d been doing it since she was fifteen, and no matter how long or hard Lena or I worked at it, we never beat her in tips.
Not that I did poorly. I was usually pretty profitable, even though I hated the job. It felt demeaning to be so fake to bar patrons, and I realized how hypocritical that was. As an assistant, I had been plastering on a fake smile for six weeks and dancing to the tune of whatever song Hunter wanted to play that day. But somehow, being in a skirt and heels in an office felt different than a skirt and tennis shoes in the bar.
It was classier there.
Maybe I was just convincing myself of that like Dad’s wine room.
Before long, I was in the bathroom, reapplying makeup while crouched underneath both my sister and Caroline, while Mom screamed that she was literally about to open the doors. We all came out in a rush, and the doors parted.
It was gametime.
Thankfully, not literally. The Pats didn’t play until tomorrow, giving us a little breather to open before that, and as the pints started flowing, I was glad that there was no game to piss off the regulars.
The regulars were in full force though, and an hour into the bar being open, we had fallen into a rhythm, albeit a busier one than usual. The regular guys were back to chatting on their stools, ones they occupied several hours at a time, usually every day or every other day. They laughed and joked and then took us each aside to offer condolences on Dad like they had done when they were sober at Dad’s funeral. Which had been just before they got drunk and did it again, over and over, afterward.
Still, it was kind of nice to have so many people remembering him as the bar got rolling. It felt empty in there without him, and though Mom was acting like she always had, I knew she had to be hurting, too. She usually would pass off the baton to Dad at some point in the late night, dipping into the office to do some preliminary numbers and then coming back out to shoo everyone away after last call.
But now, she was depending on me to handle all that. On top of slinging beer and handling the occasional table. We weren’t serving much food yet, only various versions of potatoes and several sandwiches, all of which had been made beforehand by our fry cook, who was now at the bar, deep in his sixth pint. I was also in charge of slapping together sandwiches in case we ran out, and looking at the clock, I was figuring I was going to spend a good amount of time holding bread tonight.
At one point, as the darkness settled like an old blanket and the green light outside illuminated the streets past the open door, I saw a familiar-looking blond form walking in. A tall, well-built, blond form. He seemed to carve a path in front of him effortlessly. Like Moses, he just walked forward and people moved, giving him space to make his way wherever he wanted without bothering to excuse himself.
There was never an excuse for his presence. People excused themselves for getting in his way. That was how it worked with Hunter Erickson.
“Hello,” he said as he approached me, and I realized I hadn’t moved from my spot the entire time I watched him walk in. It was like my feet were bolted to the floor.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.
He laughed. “I was thirsty. This your table?”
He motioned to a tiny table off to the side. I wanted to lie to him and tell him it wasn’t, but it was true. It was mine. And it was still needing to be cleaned off, which was why I was out there in the first place.
“It is,” I said, brushing past him and beginning to clear the table into the busboy bucket. The people who had been there left a tip. I grabbed the ten and shoved it in my apron happily. They had only had two beers each, and though it wasn’tquitetwenty percent, I hadn’t really spent any time on them either, and they had only been there a few minutes.
Something was different about Hunter. It took me a minute to realize what it was.
He was smiling.
“Then I want somewhere else,” he said.
“Why?” I asked, confused.
“On the weekends, you don’t work for me. I’m just a customer getting a drink. How about this table?”
