Tapped! (Barbacks #2)

Chapter 1

Jacks

The ice bucket weighed four thousand pounds.

Okay, maybe not four thousand, but my arms were screaming as I hoisted it onto the bar, biceps straining, sweat beading at my temples.

The bucket was overfilled, which was my own fault for trying to save a trip.

Chunks were already escaping over the rim, skittering across the floor like frozen refugees.

“Little help here?” I grunted.

Finn didn’t even look up from the drink he was mixing. “You’re the barback. That’s your job, to back the bar.”

“That’s not—that doesn’t even make sense as a sentence—”

“GENTLEMEN!” Benji’s voice rang out with the gravitas of a circus ringmaster. “And that one lady in the corner—hi, Doris!—I present to you my most daring drink mix act ever!”

I froze, the ice bucket still clutched to my chest. “Benji, what are you—”

“Oh, shit,” Finn muttered.

I turned in time to see Benji standing on the rubber mat behind the bar, three bottles clutched in his hands, a shaker balanced on his head, and—oh God—a container of craft glitter tucked under his arm.

“For my next trick,” Benji announced to the crowd of regulars who’d gathered to watch, “I will create the Lightning Strike Sparkler—a drink so magnificent, so bedazzling, that it will make the heavens themselves weep with envy!”

“Benji,” Finn said slowly, finally looking up, “why do you have glitter behind my bar?”

“For pizzaz, Finn! The Lightning are playing tonight. We need PIZZAZZ!”

The crowd roared on cue. One old guy at the end of the bar chanted, “Pizzaz! Pizzaz! Pizzaz!” while banging his palm on the wood.

Finn leaned toward Benji and growled, “We need health code compliance—”

“WITNESS ME!” Benji ignored him.

What happened next would be debated in Barbacks lore for years to come.

Benji attempted to flip all three bottles while somehow incorporating the shaker from his head and—for reasons that would never be explained—opening the glitter container with his teeth.

The bottles went up.

The shaker went sideways.

And . . .

The glitter went everywhere.

The container’s lid popped off mid-flip, and what could only be described as a nuclear plume of sparkly goodness erupted into the air.

It was like a glitter bomb had detonated at ground zero.

The stuff fountained upward, caught the air conditioning current, scattered to the four corners of the bar, then descended upon everyone like the world’s most fabulous snowfall.

I was still holding the ice bucket, arms extended, unable to shield myself as ten thousand pieces of glitter rained down on my head, face, shoulders, and into the ice bucket I’d spent five minutes filling and schlepping across the bar.

Finn got blasted from the side, glitter coating one entire half of his body, including a spectacular concentration in his hair that made him look like a punk rock experiment gone wrong.

And Benji—

Benji stood in the epicenter, bottles miraculously caught (the bastard actually caught them), covered head to toe in sparkle, grinning like he’d been blessed by an ancient pigmy stripper angel.

“MAGNIFICENT!” Benji crowed.

The bar goers cheered.

Regulars were dying, absolutely dying. They had their phones out and recording as they howled with laughter and pointed at Benji, then me, then a red-faced—and glittered—Finn.

Someone started a slow clap.

Doris in the corner was wiping tears from her eyes.

“ENCORE!” someone yelled.

“There will be NO encore!” Finn sputtered, spitting glitter. “There will be—” He ran a hand through his hair and a cascade of sparkle drifted down. “Oh my God, it’s everywhere. I think there’s glitter in my crack.”

Doris snort-laughed at that.

I looked down at the ice bucket. The ice was now partially melted and roughly forty percent glitter. “I have to dump this entire bucket.”

“It was so worth it,” Benji said, still holding his bottles like trophies. “Art requires sacrifice.”

“This isn’t art; this is a biohazard,” Finn snarled.

“A beautiful, sparkly, perfectly executed biohazard.”

Finn tried to brush glitter off his shirt, which only succeeded in spreading it around more. “I’m going to be picking glitter out of my ass for a week.”

Benji’s face lit up with unholy glee. “That’s why you have a resident lawyer boyfriend, boss, to clean your crack.”

That’s when I lost it.

The laugh came from somewhere deep in my belly, completely beyond my control. I doubled over, ice bucket forgotten, as tears streamed down my glitter-stained face.

Finn’s expression of mortified outrage only made it worse.

I was making sounds that weren’t even human anymore—wheezing, honking, hooting.

“I hate everyone in this building,” Finn said, his accent deepening to almost unintelligible, as he bit back a smile.

“Don’t worry, Finny Boy,” Benji said, patting his shoulder and leaving a glitter handprint. “Chase likes a little sparkle. Trust me.”

“How would you know what Chase—you know what, never mind. I don’t want to know.” Finn turned to the next customer with aggressive professionalism. “What can I get you?”

I was still wheezing as I staggered toward the kitchen, sparkly ice bucket clutched to my chest, leaving a trail of glitter in my wake like the world’s most festive slug.

By the time I’d dumped the corrupted ice, rinsed, dried, and refilled the bucket, and returned to the bar, the chaos had settled into general merriment.

Benji had somehow talked his way out of trouble—as he always did—and was now serving his “Lightning Strike Sparkler” to adventurous customers who didn’t mind a little golden glee in their cocktails.

“It adds texture,” I heard one guy say.

“It adds a lawsuit,” Finn muttered, though he didn’t stop Benji.

And that was the thing about Barbacks.

It was constant chaos, but it was our chaos.

A year ago, I answered an ad for a barback position at a new place opening up in Ybor. I’d been aimless, bouncing between odd jobs, trying to figure out what came next, while trying not to think too hard about the life I’d planned that hadn’t worked out.

Then I met Finn and Mark, the owners of Barbacks. They hired me on the spot. When I showed up on opening night, I realized I’d somehow stumbled into a family.

Now I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

Even covered in glitter.

Even with Benji as a coworker.

Even when the chaos felt like it might kill me.

Barbacks was home.

From a booth in the corner, Mark looked up from his laptop, took in my glitter-encrusted appearance, and sighed. “Do I want to know?”

“Benji.”

“Say no more.” Mark returned to his spreadsheet. “I’m adding ‘glitter incident’ to my insurance claim research, just in case.”

Chase, who sat across from Mark reviewing some legal documents, glanced up. “That’s not a real category.”

“It should be. We should make it a category.” Mark squinted at his screen. “Is ‘aggravated sparkle’ a thing? Can I sue?”

“You can’t sue your own employee for being enthusiastic.” Chase rolled his eyes.

“What about ‘glitter with intent’? There’s got to be a crime in here somewhere.”

“Mark.”

I had to get in on this action. “What if there was a secret organization called The Glitterati? They could be a group of mysterious gays who walk the city at night tossing glitter everywhere. They could have a secret handshake and everything. Would that give Mark his case?”

Mark pointed up at me, nodding, then looked toward Chase without so much as cracking a grin.

“Why did I go into law?” Chase groaned and rubbed his temples. “Seriously. It was not for this.”

Bored with the business talk, I returned to the bar, grabbed a clean rag, and started wiping down the section that had caught the worst of the fallout. Sparkly shit clung to everything—the wood, the glasses, my own arms. I was going to be finding this stuff for weeks.

“Hey, Jacks!” Benji bounded over, shimmering like a disco ball. “You have to admit that was impressive, right? The bottle catches? The drama?”

“You turned the ice bin into a craft project.”

“A beautiful craft project.”

“I have glitter in my eyebrows, Benji.”

“It brings out your eyes!”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed again. Benji was impossible to stay mad at. He could be annoying as hell but was impossible to stay angry with.

The Lightning game started, and the bar shifted into game-night mode.

Regulars cheered, drinks flowed, and Benji led increasingly creative (and suggestive) chants every time Tampa scored.

Finn and I worked in practiced rhythm, anticipating each other’s movements, keeping the drinks coming and the customers happy.

At some point, I caught sight of Finn and Chase in a quiet moment. Chase had come up to the bar, and they were leaning close, arguing about something with fond exasperation.

“Chocolate fountain, Finn. One chocolate fountain. That’s all I’m asking.”

“It’s tacky.”

“It’s delicious,” Chase countered.

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“Exactly! It can be tacky and delicious. That’s the whole point of a wedding.”

I smiled and kept working.

Finn and Chase had gotten engaged a few months ago—a whole dramatic proposal that I’d heard about seventeen times from Benji despite us both being present to witness the scene.

They were disgustingly in love, the kind of love that made single people want to throw things.

It was also the kind of love I tried not to think about too hard.

Why worry over the unattainable, right?

An hour and a half later, the Lightning won.

The bar rattled with cheers and applause.

Benji’s glitter sign—oh God, he’d made a sign somewhere between the second and third periods—got held aloft like a championship trophy, shedding sparkle onto everyone within range.

“LET’S GO, BOLTS!” the crowd screamed.

“LET’S GO, BOLTS!” Benji screamed back, louder than everyone.

I was laughing, freshly covered in even more glitter, surrounded by people cheering when—

The TV zoomed in to capture three Lightning players as they slammed into each other, gloves tapping helmets and smiles parting lips.

And for a moment, my mind drifted.

Six weeks ago, three hockey players had walked through our door. The tall Swedish one, the chirpy shorter one, and—

Skyler Shaw.

They were the same three players now congratulating each other on the screen.

Skyler had looked at me like I was some kind of college football stud, like I’d won the Heisman despite my career ending before it could take off.

He even knew my college jersey number and remembered games I’d played years ago.

I stretched my fingers, recalling how the unfairly sexy player had shaken my hand and held on a beat too long.

It had been six weeks.

Despite his promise to return, Skyler hadn’t come back.

Of course he hadn’t—he was an NHL captain with a schedule packed tighter than an altar boy’s ass. That night had been a fluke, a weird, wonderful, singular moment.

Skyler was the most eligible bachelor in Tampa.

The most eligible straight bachelor.

The papers and news shows made sure everyone knew that, showing him on dates with one bombshell bunny after another. He’d fanboyed over my football days, but sadly, that was all our shared moment had been, football passion but not attraction.

I shook it off. There was no point dwelling on some silly hockey player fantasy.

I had a bar to clean.

A glitter apocalypse to recover from.

And a life I loved, right here, with these ridiculous people.