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‘Did he also cancel the wedding?’ Adam asks.
‘You broke up?’ Kai’s question intertwines with Adam’s as he speaks over her.
I shake my head, but as I open my mouth to explain, Adam interrupts.
‘Wait!’ he commands. ‘First things first…’ He grabs three shot glasses, pouring a shot of Stolichnaya’s Elit Vodka – his favorite – for each of us. ‘Jade obviously needs to drown her salty heart, so she gets a double.’
He’s a mind-reader. This is our nightly routine – well, not the double shot. Usually, a single shot helps me get through my shift and gives me the courage to do our bar top hula dance. Even Adam wears the uniform, minus a bikini top (except that one night when he wore the souvenir coconut bra hanging from one of the walls as decor – he made bank in tips that night).
‘My heart is not salty.’
‘Sure it’s not,’ Adam says, lifting his glass for a toast. ‘To a good night.’
Kai lifts hers, tapping it to his. ‘One where Jade doesn’t mace some unsuspecting asshole guy because she’s in a mood,’ she adds with a smirk.
‘It was one time,’ I say defensively, knocking my glass against theirs before downing my shots. Yum. This vodka is velvety smooth, a bit sweet, and doesn’t go down like you just drank a cup of firewater. ‘He deserved it.’
Kai laughs. ‘The best part about that guy was when he asked if we were going to sixty-nine him.’
‘Then he fought with us when we told him it was eighty-six, which isn’t sexual, just a lifetime ban and your photo on the office wall,’ Adam says.
Finally, I crack a smile at the ridiculousness of that entire night. ‘I’m glad my presence can provide you two with such fun memories,’ I joke, grabbing a bottle of water to help wash down the vodka because, while it might be tolerably better than other booze, the aftertaste isn’t great.
‘The fact that he posed for his photo like it was going to be his new Facebook profile pic was the cringiest part. One day we’ll see that guy’s mugshot on the news.’
‘And he’ll be smiling.’ Adam grimaces as he finishes her sentence.
Those two are a lot alike; it’s why we’ve bonded so much since working here. We work well together and read each other easily. I explain the Conner thing vaguely to avoid making him look too bad, as I’m hoping this is just a hiccup in our relationship. We did move quickly, so the details of things haven’t been ironed out. That takes time; and apparently, Conner didn’t have any this morning.
‘That’s a big ol’ red flag, Jade. Don’t let those stack up, or you’ll end up miserable,’ Kai says.
‘Thank you for the advice, but I’m not calling any flags on the field yet. It’s one mess up.’
‘Besides the time he got your name wrong while publicly proposing in front of everyone you know,’ she reminds me.
I blow a long breath out. ‘I’m pretending that didn’t happen. He was nervous; really, it’s kind of a cute story. Now let’s get to work, can we? I’m not really in a chatty mood.’
Kai and Adam don’t push the conversation, and we part ways to get the place ready to open. There’s never a night we’re not busy, so keeping on task is vital to not getting overwhelmed and quitting on the spot. (It’s only happened a couple of times in two years.) I’m so glad these two have a way of lightening any mood. I couldn’t ask for better friends or co-workers.
Kai is twenty-six, like me, and is originally from Maui, not like me. She has long black hair, naturally tanned skin, and is as gorgeous as women come. She calls the garbage ‘rubbish’ and the refrigerator an ‘ice box’. Little details I’ve come to love. She’s an inch taller than my five-five, slender, with hips that don’t lie.
Her family moved to Oregon when she was thirteen after her parents divorced. We met on the first day of eighth grade. When I got to my locker, I discovered I’d been partnered with the new girl. I’d requested to be locker mates with Josh Jericho, our class’s most desirable thirteen-year-old boy. Now that he’s married to a lovely man named Stefan, it makes sense that he denied my request all those years ago. I may not have realized it then, but partnering with Kai was the best thing to ever happen to me. We instantly became best friends.
Adam is thirty-one and he’s originally from Haiti. A local family adopted him when he was two. He’s got dark brown skin, short shaved black hair, and more abs than are natural. Let’s just say beer goggles aren’t necessary when admiring Adam; he’s always gorgeous. The women who come in don’t miss that little detail either.
The three of us bonded almost immediately, and we now work the same shifts every week, along with our bouncer, a giant of a man named Roman. He ensures those unruly asshole men Kai mentioned keep their shenanigans to a minimum.
I am the sole white hula girl on our shift. I’m thin but not perfectly smooth in the places society thinks I should be (damn thighs). My boobs could be bigger, and my belly button is an outie, so no shots off me. Kai is the body-shot girl, and let me tell you, men will pay decent money for anything if a woman in a bikini top is doing it, no matter how stupid.
If anything, I’m overly average and good with it. What’s there to hate? I’m a human with flaws, but I also have really good hair. It’s my best feature by far. It’s thick, lustrous, long, caramel-y brown with golden highlights that I wear in big beachy waves and get compliments on daily. ‘What hair products do you use?’ is often asked of me. It’s all-natural, sweets, just like my itty-bitty titties (thank you, Laney for calling me that all through my teen years – she was wearing a training bra at nine – a gift not passed down to me). I don’t even buy expensive shampoos; I just got good hair. Laney has to work at the hair thing. YouTube videos, an entire cabinet of hair gadgets, extensions, and a countertop of products that precariously line the edge of her bathroom sink. One wrong move and you send them over the edge like a hair product bottlefall.
Spray tans keep me at a consistent level-two glow, so it always looks like I’ve just come home from a weekend vacation in the sun, even though I never have. Anytime someone asks if I went somewhere fun to achieve my bronzy glow, I make something up and keep going until they smile.
I was on a tropical cruise where I had the love affair of a lifetime.
I spent the weekend in sunny Las Vegas, and you know what they say about Vegas – what happens there, stays there.
I had a bikini photo shoot in southern Cali and will soon grace the pages of some Instagram swimsuit designer.
