Chapter 16
Finn
Ishot upright in bed, my heart already racing, electricity humming through my veins like I’d been plugged into a socket.
We’d done it.
We’d actually done it.
I grabbed my phone off the nightstand. 11:47 a.m.
I’d slept for twelve hours.
Holy cow.
I stumbled out of bed and into the living room, where Priya was sitting on the couch in her pajamas, hair in a messy approximation of a bun, watching some daytime news show about a local politician who’d been caught doing something he definitely shouldn’t have been doing.
“He lives,” she said without looking away from the TV.
“Barely.” I rubbed my eyes. “What time did you get home last night?”
“Around one. You were already passed out.” She looked at me. “So? How’d it go?”
I tried to find words, failed, then did what any rational adult would do in this situation:
I spun around with my hands high above my head, fingers wiggling like sparklers, in an awkward, uncoordinated attempt at a celebration dance—
And immediately lost my balance.
My shin hit the coffee table.
And I went down in a tangle of limbs and regret.
“Finn!” Priya was off the couch faster than I thought the woman could move, laughing so hard she could barely help me up. “Are you okay?”
“I’m great,” I managed, rubbing my shin. “That was supposed to be a victory dance.”
“That was supposed to be a trip to the ER.” She was still laughing, pulling me to my feet. “I take it things went well?”
“Things went amazing.” I was grinning like an idiot despite the throbbing in my leg.
“Priya, it was insane. We were packed. Like, fire-hazard packed. People were even lined up outside. We ran out of vodka . . . twice! We ran out of ham and onions and English muffins. Rod had to improvise half the menu because we kept running out of ingredients.”
“That is incredible, my Finny.”
I gave her side eye but was too excited to fight back.
“It was terrifying and exhilarating, and I think I aged five years in eight hours, but Priya, it was incredible!” I pulled out my phone. “We should celebrate. Brunch. Right now. Let me text Mark.”
“It’s almost noon.”
“It’s never too late for brunch.”
I fired off a text to Mark, a jumble of words surrounded by the number 69. It was an abuse of the Bat Signal, but I didn’t care. Excitement was its own brand of emergency.
I looked at my phone, briefly considered texting Jacks, then decided against it.
Jacks was great—enthusiastic, hard-working, and exactly what we needed—but there was a line between being a good boss and being friends with your employees.
The bar environment already blurred that line enough.
I didn’t need to smear it into the dirt.
“Mark’s on his way,” I told Priya.
“Of course he is. That man cannot sit still.” She stood up and stretched. “Give me ten minutes to get dressed . . . and maybe ice that shin before it swells up.”
Twenty-five minutes later, Priya was driving us to Three Coins Diner in Seminole Heights, our favorite breakfast place.
It was a hole-in-the-wall kind of spot with cracked vinyl booths, laminate tables, and a broken jukebox in the corner that only played one country song if you smacked the side in precisely the right spot.
Despite the décor, they had the best pancakes in Tampa, and the owners treated us like their own children.
The bell attached to the front door tinkled as we walked in. Mark waved from a booth by the window where he sipped coffee and stared at his phone with the kind of manic energy that suggested he’d already had three cups . . . or ten.
“There he is!” Mark shot up and pulled me into a hug before I could even sit down. “We did it!”
“We did it,” I agreed, sliding into the booth across from him while Priya took the seat next to me.
“Good morning to you, too, Mark,” Priya said dryly.
“It’s a great morning, Dr. Priya, an amazing morning.” Mark was vibrating. “Do you know what we did yesterday?”
“I have no idea. Please tell me,” she said as she nudged my knee with hers and fought the urge to laugh at Mark’s childlike enthusiasm.
“We made over two thousand dollars,” Mark and I said at the same time.
Then we both started talking.
“—people were lined up outside—”
“—ran out of vodka in the middle of overtime—”
“—some guy started a drinking game and everyone—”
“—Lightning Jersey and his friends were so drunk they—”
“—Rod had to improvise the entire menu because—”
“—Maya’s Instagram exploded. We have like three hundred followers now—”
“—people kept asking when the next watch party was—”
“—this couple stayed for the entire day, just watching and holding hands—”
“—I went to the liquor store twice—”
“—Jacks learned to bartend in like thirty seconds—”
We were talking over each other, gesturing wildly, and looking like absolute maniacs to the other diner patrons, but neither of us could stop.
The waitress appeared. It was Linda, wife of James, co-owner of the diner since the twelfth century. She looked from Mark to me then to Priya, shrugged once, then set down a pot of coffee without a word, spun, and disappeared into the kitchen.
I assumed she’d take our orders when we calmed down.
Maybe.
Priya poured herself coffee, poured me coffee, then poured Mark more coffee even though he didn’t need it.
She was smiling that genuine smile she got when she was happy for someone, the one that made her look less like a hard-ass ER resident and more like the friend who’d patched me up three years ago and decided I was worth keeping around.
“—and our chef, Rod, he’s a genius—”
“—the food was so good people were taking pictures—”
“—this one guy ordered three burgers, said he was taking them home for the week—”
“—every single person I talked to said they’d come back—”
“—they said they’d make us their game time home—”
“—Finn was behind the bar for like eight straight hours—”
“—Mark went to the store so many times I lost count—”
Finally, we both ran out of steam at the same moment and just sat there, grinning like idiots.
Priya took a sip of her coffee. “So it went well?”
“Well?” Mark snorted. “It went amazing.”
She smiled. “I’m happy for you guys. Seriously. This is incredible.”
“It is incredible,” I agreed, then felt my brain shift into planning mode.
“But we need to keep it going. Obviously, we have to do another Horny Rivals watch party next Sunday, but what else? What games are during the week? What’s on Friday or Saturday night?
We need more plans, more flyers, and a lot more vodka. ”
Mark pulled out his phone, punched a few times, then said, “There’s a Lightning game Wednesday. Looks like a home game against the Hurricanes.”
“Wednesday watch party,” I said. “We could do drink specials, maybe a special menu item—”
“Rod could do something themed,” Mark added. “Hurricane sliders or something.”
“We can’t celebrate the enemy,” I said, scowling. “How about a new drink called ‘Pucker Up’? I could make it with something sour, like those rock candies that make your lips and tongues turn red.”
“Ooh, I like that,” Mark said. “We could rename French fries as ‘hockey sticks’ or something. Do you think Rod could do a chocolate lava cake shaped like a puck?”
“What about weekends?” Priya asked, getting into it. “You can’t rely on just sports, right? What else brings people in?”
“One of the bars down the street does trivia,” Mark said. “Gay trivia night could be fun.”
“Hmm. That’s almost as overdone as karaoke. We need new themes, new ideas,” I said, writing this down on a napkin because of course I didn’t have my notebook with me. “Maybe like . . . decades night? Eighties night, nineties night?”
“Drag bingo,” Priya offered. “That is always popular.”
“Is it?” I looked at her.
“There is a reason every gay bar does it. People love drag queens and they love bingo. Put them together and you have a guaranteed crowd.”
Mark was nodding enthusiastically. “We could do it monthly . . . on the first Saturday or something. Get a local queen to host.”
“I don’t know any drag queens,” I said.
“I bet Maya does,” Mark countered. “That girl knows everyone.”
“If the crowds keep coming, we’ll need more staff,” I said, my brain already calculating. “Jacks and I can’t handle the bar and the booths and high-tops.”
“So we hire another bartender, maybe a server to work the floor.” Mark was typing notes into his phone. “We can afford to expand the team.”
“Slowly,” I cautioned, holding up my index finger. “We had one good night. We need to make sure this is sustainable before we start hiring a bunch of people.”
“One amazing night,” Mark corrected. “And yes, we should hire slowly, but we should at least start looking.”
Priya watched us with amusement. “You two are already planning world domination.”
“Not world domination,” I said. “Just Ybor domination. Maybe a Seminole Heights takeover, if we’re lucky.”
“Tampa domination,” Mark said. “Fuck it. We’re gonna take over the whole Bay Area! Look out St. Pete; we’re comin’ for ya.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Mark was outrageous. “Dream big or go home.”
As we continued brainstorming, I filled my napkin with notes. Mark continued typing into his phone as Priya threw out ideas that were surprisingly good for someone who claimed to “not know anything about running a bar.”
Eventually the energy started to wind down. Linda had come back, taken our orders, and refilled our coffee twice. The diner was getting busier, the late lunch crowd starting to trickle in even though it was barely one o’clock.
Priya took a sip of her coffee and tilted her head, studying me with that look she got when she’d figured something out.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not your nothing face. That’s your something face.”
“I don’t have a something face.”
“You absolutely have a something face.” I pointed at her face. “And that’s it. Right there. That face.”
She set down her coffee mug and leaned back against the booth. “Okay, fine. Why do I get the feeling there’s something you are not telling me, baby cheeks?”