Popped (Barbacks #1)

Chapter 1

Finn

The woman in the flamingo hat wanted a mojito.

She arrived ten minutes ago in a white Mercedes SUV that cost more than I’d make in two years, parked in the handicapped spot despite her windshield’s obvious lack of placard, and marched into Riley’s Tap & Table like she owned the place.

Everything about her screamed money—the designer sunglasses perched on her head, the diamond tennis bracelet that caught the light every time she gestured, and the not-so-subtle work she’d had done that made her age impossible to guess. Forty? Fifty?

She spent her first five minutes complaining about the temperature (too cold), the music (too loud), and the fact that we didn’t have a specific vodka brand she never actually named.

Now she wanted a mojito.

This wouldn’t have been a problem at a bar that gave a shit about cocktails, but at Riley’s—sorry, The New Riley’s Tap & Table, as corporate insisted we call it after the reboot—we had three fresh herb options:

None, zilch, and not happening.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said, pulling out my service smile, the one that made my cheeks ache after hour three. “We don’t have fresh mint available, but I can make you a mojito with our house mix. It’s got a nice—”

“Fresh mint is the entire point of a mojito.” She said it like I was dim, like I somehow missed the fundamental concept of the drink I’d been making for years. Her manicured nail tapped against the bar top. “What kind of establishment doesn’t stock fresh herbs?”

The kind owned by a corporation that figured out customers will drink anything as long as it’s cheap and comes fast, I thought.

“I understand,” I said, keeping my voice level and professional. “Unfortunately, our suppliers don’t include fresh herbs in our regular inventory, but I promise our house mix makes a solid mojito. I can add extra lime if you’d—”

“This is ridiculous.” She looked around the bar like she was searching for someone more competent, more worth her time. “I want to speak to your manager.”

Of course, she did.

I spotted Brad hovering near the kitchen, probably checking his phone instead of actually managing.

Brad was twenty-one, had never worked a service job before landing this one through his uncle’s connections, and had somehow gotten promoted over me despite the fact that I’d been bartending since he was in high school.

Brad, the guy who called customers “guests” with a straight face.

Brad, the guy who had once written me up for “not smiling enough” while I was actively smiling.

“Brad?” I called. “Got a customer who’d like to speak with you.”

He hustled over, already shifting into his customer service persona. “Good afternoon! I’m Brad, the assistant manager. What seems to be the trouble?”

“Your bartender”—she spat it like it was a dirty word—“was rude when I asked for a simple mojito. I don’t appreciate being talked down to by the help.”

The help.

She actually said, “the help.”

I felt my smile freeze in place. I hadn’t been rude. I’d been nothing but professional while she’d implied I was incompetent for working at a bar that didn’t stock fresh mint, but Brad didn’t look at me to verify the story. He just nodded along, his expression sympathetic.

“I apologize for any inconvenience, ma’am,” Brad said, smooth as silk. Then he turned to me with that look—the one that said I was about to take the fall for corporate’s shitty supply chain decisions. “Finn, why don’t you make this lovely guest a mojito with fresh mint?”

I blinked. “We don’t have fresh mint.”

“Check the walk-in.”

“I did inventory this morning. We don’t—”

“Check the walk-in,” Brad repeated, his smile never wavering but his eyes promising retribution if I argued further.

Fine. Whatever.

I headed to the walk-in cooler, knowing full well there was no fresh mint in there because I’d literally done inventory six hours ago. I made a show of looking around, moving containers, checking behind the prep trays. Nothing.

Then I spotted it—a bag of something approximating mint leaves. They were the kind corporate sent us for “garnish purposes only,” made from some unholy combination of plastic and sadness. They sort of looked like mint if you squinted and had never seen an actual plant before.

I grabbed the bag and headed back to the bar.

Brad was still standing with the woman, both of them watching me.

“Found some garnish,” I said, holding up the bag.

“Perfect!” Brad’s smile could have powered a small city. “Make her the best mojito she’s ever had.”

Right.

The best mojito ever.

With pre-made mix that tasted like toothpaste.

I got to work, measuring out the mix, adding rum and soda water, and muddling lime. The whole time, I could feel the woman glaring like I was a trained monkey performing for her amusement. I finished the drink, placed one of the plastic mint leaves artfully on top, and slid it across the bar.

“There you go,” I said. “One mojito.”

She picked up the glass, examined it like it might contain poison, and took a sip.

Then she set it down and plucked the mint leaf from the drink.

“This,” she said, holding the plastic garnish between two fingers, “is not real mint.”

“No, ma’am. As I mentioned, we don’t have fresh—”

She waved the plastic leaf in the air between us. It drooped limply from her fingers, hanging there like a sad, green, flaccid—

Oh no.

Oh no!

I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek because I was not—absolutely not—going to laugh at the fact that this woman was waving what looked like a limp plastic dick in my face while complaining about the quality of her fourteen-dollar mojito.

I was a professional.

I was twenty-nine years old.

I was above juvenile boy humor.

But God, it looked exactly like a—

“This is unacceptable,” she continued, still waving the pathetic garnish around. “I asked for a real mojito with fresh mint, and you give me this—this—”

She gestured more emphatically, and the plastic leaf flopped even more dramatically.

I coughed to cover what was definitely not a laugh trying to escape. Behind the woman, I could see Jessica, one of the servers who was twenty-two and had zero poker face, turn bright red and flee toward the kitchen.

“Ma’am,” Brad interjected, his own smile looking strained, “I apologize for the confusion. Let me comp your drink and—”

“I don’t want it comped. I want a real mojito. With real mint.” She was still holding the plastic garnish aloft like evidence in a criminal trial. “This is an insult.”

The leaf chose that exact moment to droop even further, hanging at what could only be described as a ninety-degree angle of defeat.

I coughed again, harder this time.

“Are you sick?” the woman demanded, finally lowering her hand. “Should you even be working if you’re sick?”

“I’m fine,” I managed, my voice strangled. “Just—allergies.”

“Finn,” Brad said, and there was a warning in his voice. “Why don’t you take your break? I’ll handle this personally.”

Translation: Get out of my sight before you make this worse.

I untied my apron without a word, grabbed my phone from under the bar, and headed out the back door into the humid Tampa afternoon.

The alley behind Riley’s smelled like fryer grease and the bottom of the dumpster that hadn’t been emptied since Thursday.

It wasn’t an inspiring place to decompress, but it was private.

In that moment, I needed private.

The door had barely closed behind me when I doubled over, laughing so hard my stomach hurt.

A plastic mint leaf.

She’d waved around a plastic mint leaf like she was—

I couldn’t even finish the thought before another wave of laughter hit.

This was my life. This was what I did for a living. I served overpriced drinks made from pre-made mixes to people who waved plastic garnishes around like limp dicks while complaining that I, personally, had failed them.

Seven years. Seven years of this. I’d gone to college for this.

The laughter died in my throat, replaced by something that felt uncomfortably close to despair.

I leaned against the brick wall and pulled out my phone, needing something—anything—to ground me. A text notification leaped off the screen.

Mark: Hey babe, you working tonight?

Mark: Want to grab drinks after your shift?

I checked the time. Six-thirty. I was scheduled until close, which meant eleven at the earliest, midnight if we were busy.

Me: Working till close. Tomorrow?

Mark: Lunch tomorrow then. 1pm?

Mark: I’m buying.

Me: You don’t have to buy.

Mark: I want to.

Mark: Plus I need to talk to you about something.

Me: That sounds ominous.

Mark: It’s not ominous.

Mark: Okay, maybe a little ominous.

Mark: But GOOD ominous.

Me: There’s no such thing as good ominous.

Mark: Trust me on this one.

Mark was my best friend.

He and I had a history, though not the kind that usually made for good stories.

Three years earlier, we’d met in a gay bowling league—yes, those exist, and yes, we were both terrible at bowling—and had immediately hit it off.

We talked for three hours that first night, exchanged numbers, and went on our first date two days later.

By date four, we’d both come to the same awkward realization: we had about as much romantic chemistry as two bottoms stranded on a deserted island without a double-ended dildo.

For the straights in the crowd, that translates to a total of zero.

We liked each other well enough, enjoyed each other’s company, and could talk for hours without running out of things to say, but the one time we’d tried to kiss, we both pulled back and started laughing because it felt so fundamentally wrong.

“Like kissing a brother,” Mark had said.

“Or like kissing a golden retriever,” I’d countered, because Mark kissed with way too much enthusiasm, more tongue than a member of Kiss, and less technique than a four-year-old at her first ballet recital.

We spent the rest of that fourth date drinking beer, relieved to admit that while we made terrible boyfriends, we’d probably make excellent friends.

That turned into the greatest understatement in the history of understatements.

We became best friends who had the kind of easy physical affection that confused the hell out of everyone around us, mostly because we thought it was funny.

We called each other “babe” and “honey,” made vulgar, juvenile innuendos that sounded sexual but were actually about mundane things, and generally acted like a doting couple without any of the actual coupling.

It worked for us, and baffled everyone else.

Mark got a best friend who’d tell him when his ideas were stupid, and I got a brother who’d show up at two in the morning with ice cream when I was having an emotional breakdown over Netflix canceling season two of my favorite show.

Our friendship was better than dating ever could have been.

So, receiving a text from my bestie at any hour, day or night, wasn’t unusual. His wanting to have lunch was almost a daily occurrence. The tease about ominous good news? That was new.

Before I could ask what this ominous conversation might entail, the back door swung open and Brad stuck his head out. “Finn, we need you back on the bar.”

I checked my phone. “My break’s not over for another eight minutes.”

“Yeah, well, we’re slammed.”

We were always slammed. The place was perpetually understaffed because corporate had determined the exact minimum number of bodies required to keep the restaurant operational, then cut that number by one.

I’d asked Brad about hiring another bartender six times in the last two months.

All he said was that he’d “look into it,” which I’d learned was corporate-speak for “stop asking.”

I pushed off the wall and followed Brad back inside.

By some grace of the gods, the flamingo hat woman was gone. Brad had comped her entire meal and given her a gift card to make up for the plastic mint travesty. Her seat at the bar had already been taken by a guy in a Buccaneers jersey who wanted to know if we had any “good” beer.

We had sixteen taps. Fourteen of them were variations of light lager. The other two were corporate’s idea of “craft”—an IPA that tasted like pine needles and a wheat beer that somehow tasted like nothing at all.

“What do you consider good?” I asked, already knowing this conversation was going to end with him ordering a Bud Light.

“You know, like, something with flavor.”

“We’ve got an IPA—”

“Nah, IPAs are too bitter. What about that wheat beer?”

“It’s pretty mild—”

“I’ll just have a Bud Light.”

Called it.

The rest of my shift was a blur of watered-down margaritas, split checks, and a bachelor party that ordered round after round of shots and tipped eight percent on a three-hundred-dollar tab.

By the time I clocked out at eleven-thirty, my feet ached, I smelled like a lime grove had exploded on me, and I was pretty sure I’d developed a permanent twitch in my left eye.

I sat in my car in the parking lot, soaking up the A/C, and checked my phone.

Mark: You still alive?

Mark: Dumb question, you’re at Riley’s, of course you’re dead inside.

Mark: See you tomorrow at 1.

Mark: Columbia Café?

Mark: You’re buying me the salad. Theirs is the best on the planet.

Me: Yeah, that works.

Mark: Perfect.

Mark: Get some sleep, kiddo.

Mark: Tomorrow I’m going to save you from dying a slow corporate restaurant death.

I stared at that last message for a long moment, thinking about plastic mint leaves and mojitos made from mix and customers who called me “the help.”

Me: That’s a hell of a promise.

Mark: I’m a man of my word.

Mark: Well, sometimes.

Mark: Okay like 60% of the time.

Mark: But I’m serious about this one.

I smiled despite myself and put the car in drive.