Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Five Years Later
“ B ryce, your order is sitting at pick-up. Get it before it melts.” Kai shook his head at Bryce and smiled. He was a good waiter, but damn if he didn’t let things sit too long at the bar. As he washed a glass at the hand sink, he scanned over the restaurant. A wall of windows looked out over a patio, and beyond, the green grass, sporadic olive and palm trees surrounding Fountain Lake took over the view in the fading evening light. The fountain centering the lake shot up a plume of water, going up over three hundred feet before cascading off to the side. He smirked. If the wind got up, the people walking in the park would enjoy a fine mist of smelly, green water today.
His attention drew down the long bar that ran the length of the restaurant, the gray, quartz bar top and high slatted-metal bar stools sitting at the front of it. He loved it here. Learning to tend bar had been the right choice, no matter what his mother thought about it. He dried the glass on a towel and stacked it with the others on a counter above the glass cooler.
“Hey, can you put the ASU game on here?” An older man pointed at a television hanging down from the ceiling over his head.
“Sure.” Kai smiled and twisted around, his ponytail flinging across the back of his black t-shirt with the restaurant logo emblazoned on the front. He grabbed up a remote sitting on an island behind the bar that held the drink blenders, taps, stacks of glasses and the POS station, then switched the feed to the game and scanned across the other televisions lining the wall. Most already had this game on, but apparently this guy wanted it dead center. He set the remote down and looked across the room at the televisions lined up over the windows and glass doors to the patio. Looked like the game was on over there, too. Hope no one complains. He curled a corner of his mouth.
Kai stepped to the ticketing machine at one end of the island and ripped off a drink order. Lots of beer today, probably because everyone was here for college football. He smirked, grabbed two cold beer glasses from the glass cooler, then tilted one under a tap and flipped it forward. With all these beers, he didn’t have the chance to try out the new bottle trick he’d learned last week. Doing flair bartending always got him better tips. As he filled the second glass, he let his gaze wander over the fake brick walls of the restaurant and out into the crowd sitting at high-top tables, eating, drinking, and chatting.
“Fuck me.” Bryce stood next to him with dirty but empty white plates in his hand. “Guess who just walked in?”
“Huh?” Kai lifted his brows and pushed the tap back, then turned around.
Conner ambled to a high-top table, wearing a gray, polo shirt and jeans, his wide shoulders pulling the fabric of the shirt tightly over his chest, a brunette on one side and a blonde on the other.
Kai’s breath caught. His heart skipped. Holy shit. He gulped hard. He hadn’t seen Conner since that chem final. “What the fuck? ”
Bryce came closer. “Right? Where the hell has he been? And where’s Paige?”
“No idea. I haven’t seen him around either. He couldn’t still be with Paige after all this time.” He stared at Conner, dropping his mouth open. Damn, he still looked gorgeous and pretty much the same. He let loose a long exhale, brought the beers to the pickup station and dropped them off, then searched the people at the bar for empty plates and glasses. Everyone seemed okay for now. His gaze caught on Conner.
Conner chatted with the brunette, then looked across the bar at him. A faint smile tickled his lips. He hung his head and fingered his menu.
Kai’s heart pinched. What was Conner doing here after all this time? He’d figured Conner would have moved away or something. And why the fuck am I still feeling this way about him?
A few more orders scratched out of the machine. Kai stepped to it and tore them off, one by one. Finally, something fun. He perused the order. Four lemon drop shots. He smirked and set up four lowball glasses on the drip rail, then grabbed four shakers from the underbar and lined them up. As he glanced out at people watching football, he picked up a bottle of vodka from the well, swung it around his head and flipped it over, pouring clear liquid into each shaker, raising the bottle high in the air before moving on to the next one. He repeated the performance with a lemon juice bottle and simple syrup, then scooped ice into each shaker, set one on top of the other, held them tightly together and brought all four to hover over the lowball glasses, straining the liquid into each one.
Clapping sounded around Kai, and someone whooped. He let a wide smile spread over his mouth, and as he poured the last shot from the shakers, he peeked up.
Conner smiled at him, watching the performance with his chin resting in his hand, elbow on the table.
Kai’s heart skipped a beat. If nothing else, Conner would see that he was good at something besides chemistry. He let a sly grin spread over his lips. Though bartending was sort of like chemistry. He lifted the shakers up and set them in the sink, then finished off the drinks with the twist of a lemon peel.
“That was pretty cool, kid,” said an older gentleman a few seats down drinking a white wine.
“Thanks. Been working on my skills.” Kai laughed, tucked all four glasses into his hands and brought them to the pickup station, then went back to pouring the usual beers and wines.
The restaurant filled with people, and more waited at the door to get in. Time to kick it into gear. Focus. The machine spat out more orders and a few customers stood behind the chairs at the bar, waiting for drinks.
Janice, her red hair pulled high in a bun, came around the far end of the bar, slid a pen behind her ear and started making drinks. “Jesus, it’s crazy in here tonight.”
Kai glanced at Janice, his hands working quickly to fill drink orders. “Why didn’t you put somebody else on?”
“Well, Beth called in sick, or she would have been here. When I tried to call in Nick, he said he was busy.” She snorted. “I figured it’d be like old times, just me and you if we got slammed.” She filled several beer glasses at once under the taps.
“Well, you got your wish.” He jogged to the kitchen to check for a food order, perused the dishes waiting under heat lamps on a stainless counter, then picked up a plate of wings and a burger. As he turned around, Bryce came barreling at him.
Bryce shimmied out of the way. “Fuck, Kai. Watch where you’re going.” He laughed.
“Right.” He shook his head and strode out to the bar, then placed the plates in front of an elderly couple. He smiled at them. “Enjoy your food.”
“We need to talk when this is over.” Bryce brushed up behind him and nodded his head at Conner.
Kai glanced at Conner, then pursed his lips. “Don’t tell me he’s in your station. ”
“Of course. I overheard some very interesting things.” Bryce wiggled his brows at him.
Kai poured red wine into a wine glass. Oh no...” Get back to work. I’m in the weeds here.”
Kai sighed and dried beer glasses with a white towel, then set them on the top of the glass cooler, stacking them. He looked out over the restaurant. Now only a few stragglers left to go, and it would be time to head home. He sure hoped his old blazer started tonight. Probably needed a new battery. Maybe that was all it was. At least it was cool enough now to walk home if he had to.
Bryce wiped down a high-top table, then searched around him and sided up to the bar. “Hey.”
Kai clenched his jaw. Here we go. Bryce was going to fill him in on Conner. He really wished he wouldn’t. He’d be so much better off not knowing anything at all. And especially not seeing him. He’d worked long and hard to forget the guy. He sighed. “What?” He picked up a new glass from the dishwasher and wiped.
“So, Conner broke up with Paige about a month ago.” Bryce glanced at the table Conner had vacated during the rush, as if Conner could still hear him. “He didn’t say why, but he moved into town from Scottsdale and he’s living at Park Place, right across the street. He’s also working from home as a pharmaceutical rep.” He narrowed his eyes and looked Kai over.
His heart pounded. Damn his emotions. “Okay. So?” He lifted his brows.
“So...” Bryce straightened his spine. “So, he’ll probably be hanging out around here.”
Kai shrugged. “Why do I care?” Though he did care, probably too much. He should have been over this stupid crush by now. But seeing Conner again confirmed it. He wasn’t. He continued wiping the same glass, going round and round with the towel.
Bryce scoffed. “Jesus, man, I don’t know. Maybe you can quit hating him now.”
“I don’t hate him. I don’t even think about him anymore.” Okay, that’s a big, fat lie. But whatever, Bryce didn’t need to know that. He set the glass down on top of the stack and grabbed another. He should change the subject. “So, mountain biking or trail running on Monday?” He glanced at Bryce.
Bryce offered him a wide grin. “Mountain biking. I can’t keep up with you when we run the trails.”
Kai grinned. “Fine. McDowell Mountain Park? Let’s do the whole Pemberton Loop this time. No pussying out on me.”
“Fine.” Bryce huffed and walked off.
A flash of light lit the park up beyond the patio, followed by the loud boom of thunder.
Kai startled and dopped his mouth open, peering out the row of windows to the patio of the restaurant. “Shit.” Thick rain fell beyond the patio. As the rain made its way underneath the awning, a couple sitting at a low-top table grabbed up their drinks and came to a table inside.
Janice walked out from the kitchen doors to stand next to him, placing her hands on her hips. “Looks like we got us a late monsoon.” She chuckled.
“Looks like.” He dried a wine glass.
Another flash of light came, followed by deep rumbling.
“At least we didn’t lose power. I heard this storm is bringing a lot of flooding.” She tapped his arm. “Good thing you have an SUV.”
He smirked. “Yeah, as long as it starts.” Damn battery.
Bryce jogged up to the front of the bar. “Hey, my customers are saying some of the roads are getting shut down. The washes are all overflowing. You should see the flooding in the park already.”
Kai glanced at Janice. “I hope this settles down before we have to go home.” Last thing he wanted to deal with was figuring out how to navigate closed roads. He set the dried glass on the counter.
“The trails might be crap tomorrow.” Bryce gave him a sly smile.
“They’ll be fine. Don’t try to wuss out on me. We’re still mountain biking tomorrow.” He chuckled.
Kai, dressed in a grey t-shirt and black cycling shorts, parked his tan blazer in the carport of the beige adobe-style two-bedroom duplex he shared with Bryce. Turquoise hand-hewn wood vigas lined the roofline. He turned the key to shut the rumbling engine off. “Wasn’t so bad, was it?” He snickered at Bryce, siting in the worn black cloth passenger seat in a multi-colored cycling shirt and shorts, wiping sweat from under his side-swept brown bangs with a red bandana.
“Not so bad if you like feeling like your lungs are burning up inside your body.” He chuckled. “You killed me out there.”
“You need to get out more.” Kai opened the door on the SUV, stepped out and shut it, then looked up into a clear blue sky and pulled the hair tie off his ponytail, letting his hair fall past his wide shoulders. “Let’s get the bikes off the rack and cool down. I need a shower.”
Bryce got out of the vehicle. “Yeah, me, too.”
Kai walked to the back of the blazer, taking in the splotches of sun damage in the paint on the roof and tops of the doors, then the dent in the back bumper. As he met Bryce at the back, he unfastened his bike and worked it off the bike rack stuffed into the hitch.
Bryce shook his head. “You spend all this money on your bike and gear, but you can’t afford a new car.”
He grinned. He’d heard this before. “I don’t need a new car. I can walk to work if I have to, and right now, this old thing gets me where I need to go.”
“But it’s so ugly.” Bryce burst out in a hardy laugh. “And it doesn’t have Bluetooth.”
“Shut up.” Kai set the bike on the cement driveway and rolled it into the carport, then rolled the bike inside the duplex, setting it against the wall in the kitchen.
Bryce followed and stacked his bike against Kai’s. He hit his arm. “Hey, Kai, what the fuck? Did we get mice or something?” He pointed toward the sink.
Kai searched over the oak cabinets of the kitchen, the white laminate counter, to the stainless sink, then down to the beige, ceramic tile floor. Several glasses lay sideways but unbroken. As he wrinkled his brows, he stepped to them and picked them up. “How the hell did they fall off the counter and not break?”
“No idea. That’s so weird.” Bryce approached him and stood beside him. “Whatever, just put them back.”
“Yeah.” Kai set them on the counter and walked into the main room, taking a quick scan of the wooden front door. Still locked. He drew his brows together and perused the worn puffy brown leather couch and chair that sat under a large window looking at the neighbor’s house and Ashbrook Wash beyond. In front of the couch rested a black coffee table and matching end tables with iron lamps topped off with cream shades. Nothing looked out of place in here. Weird.
As Kai walked into his bedroom, he flicked on the light from the wall and looked over his queen-sized bed with a red quilt and beige sheets, then at the dark, mission-styled headboard and nightstands. The bed rested beneath a window looking out over the trees and bushes of Ashbrook Wash, the scruffy palo verdes and mesquite trees hovering over brittlebush and desert marigolds. Again, nothing out of place. So maybe not mice, and maybe no one had broken in either. He brushed his hand over the back of his head, twisted his mouth, then made for the hallway .
As Kai stepped into the bathroom of oak cabinets, white laminate counters and a shower-bathtub combo sitting behind a plastic sliding door, his cell phone dinged. He unzipped a mesh pocket on the side of his shorts, slid it out, and held it up to his face.
Brandon
When can we get together?
“Fuck.” Kai huffed. What did he have to do to get Brandon off his back? He never should have hooked up with that guy. What a price to pay for a few drinks and a blowjob. His image in the mirror caught his gaze and he twisted around. He’d filled out a lot in the last few years and it was all muscle. He smirked. Maybe that was why he couldn’t make Brandon go away. Maybe he was too nice, though. At least that’s what Bryce and May always said. He held up the phone and typed.
Kai
Not sure.
The phone chimed. “Damn it.” He peeked at it.
Brandon
When do you work next?
“Shit.” What should he say? It was a trick question. Brandon knew he always worked weeknights with Sunday and Monday off. This was the problem with hooking up with people he met at work. They always knew where to find him. Maybe it was time to stop doing that. He peeked at the phone. He couldn’t lie, could he? He scowled.
Kai
Tomorrow night.
He watched the screen, the little dots taunting him.
Brandon
See you then.
“Fuck.” He shut the door, locked it, then turned on the chrome shower spigot.