Chapter 3
Morgan
I hum along to the Garth Brooks song as I wash the dishes. I dance a bit as I go—not technically part of the job description, but this is just for me anyway. Mrs. Donner, this morning’s client who requested the cowboy-themed package, is asleep in the living room.
She slipped off about five minutes after Kit and I got started. I kept an eye on her since Kit is back in her bathroom cleaning, and after a few minutes I gently took the whiskey sour out of her hand and set it on the side table.
It’s not uncommon for her to fall asleep. She’s in her late eighties, and while she’s a fun lady, apparently the pull of sleep is too strong to counter the thrill of having two young, shirtless men clean your house.
Kit comes out from the back rooms with two small bags of trash to take out. He glances at the sleeping woman and grins.
We’re both wearing pretty much the same outfit as I was wearing last night when I showed off to Rory: a cowboy hat and worn jeans (although not the tight ones Rory likes). I’ve traded my belt for something a little showier and switched my comfortable bar shoes for work boots.
We’re both shirtless. We’re shirtless for every job.
Kit’s business, Buffed & Polished, started as a side hustle and it’s blown up.
It’s a great side hustle for me, Hunter, and Silas.
I’ve known these guys pretty much my whole life, so we make a good team.
I pick up a few gigs when I’m not at the bar in the off-season and Hunter does the same.
Ski season is too busy to do much, which is when Silas picks up the slack.
Mrs. Donner bought the Whiskey Sour package, but we’ve also got a Cosmopolitan (bow ties and the titular cocktail), a Teacher (fake glasses and the lesser-known gin cocktail), and the Fireman (cheap Halloween costume fireman pants and a Fireball whisky cocktail that I personally think is disgusting).
I keep telling Kit we should do a Masked Men– or a Regency-themed one, but he just says I need to get off TikTok and stop watching Bridgerton.
I guess our off-season clientele is a bit older and probably not as up with the trends. But during ski season, we get parties coming up from the city, and Kit’s got a friend who swears her book club about two hours away would hire him.
“Done with the bathroom,” Kit says in a low voice. He sets the trash bags by our cart and then makes a few trips back and forth to put the cleaning supplies away. I finish the dishes, check Mrs. Donner’s fridge for moldy food, and then run a mop over the linoleum.
Mrs. Donner’s daughter hires us to come in once a month and deep clean. I think it’s mostly just for fun though, since the place always looks pretty good.
And since there’s not much to clean, I can think about Rory. Last night after she finished her tater tots she was subdued. I know she enjoyed the show—her eyes were so big and they darted all over my body like she couldn’t figure out what part of me she liked the best.
Personally, I think it was the snake tattoo. I got it to remind me not to turn my back on a viper, but if she likes it, I’ll show it off.
As she does every time she comes, she moved to a booth once she was done with her beer, read on her phone, and drank water for about an hour before she left.
She doesn’t even say goodbye to me, her roaring motorcycle alerting me as she pulls away.
One of these days I’m going to win her over. She’ll linger longer, waiting for me to close. Maybe we won’t even make it home—maybe I’ll get to have her right there in the bar, her legs wrapped around me, her black pants dangling from one ankle while I thrust inside of her.
And then, of course, we’d do it all over again in bed when I get her back to my place.
Dammit. Now I’m sporting a boner on the job. I turn my mind back to cleaning before Mrs. Donner wakes up and I give her a heart attack.
Kit and I finish up our chores and he crouches down next to Mrs. Donner in the armchair. He places a gentle hand on her arm and whispers her name.
Her eyes open and she blinks up at Kit. “Oh,” she says, her voice rough from sleep. “Did I fall asleep again?”
Kit grins and takes her proffered hand, helping her sit up and then stand. “Yes, ma’am, you did.”
“Well, fiddlesticks. I didn’t even get to enjoy the show you boys put on.”
“Don’t worry,” Kit says with a wink. “I enjoyed it enough for the both of us.”
She laughs and pats his chest, right over where he has the tattoo that goes with mine. She may squeeze a little, but Kit doesn’t say anything.
Sometimes we have to get strict about our no-touching policy, especially in the case of the bachelorette parties, but Mrs. Donner’s harmless.
She grabs her purse and walks us to the door, rooting around for her pocketbook. She gives us two twenties each, and we thank her, hamming it up by adding a drawl to our “Thank you, ma’am,” and tipping our hats to her.
Kit and I grab all the supplies and load the van. The side of the old Dodge used to advertise Kit’s other company—Hutchinson & Co Cleaning—but the new lettering has the Buffed & Polished logo in bold colors and a stylized set of abs on the doors.
“You got more to do today?” I ask.
“Yup. A cabin at my parents’ and one of the Airbnbs in town.”
Hutchinson & Co is a regular cleaning service. He’s the only one in town, and his parents own a few rental properties, which is how he started. Sometimes he cleans for the lodge too, but those jobs are few and far between in the off-season.
“Lunch?” I suggest as we slide into the front seat, picking up our T-shirts before I sit. It’s one of the hottest days of the year today, and my skin is warm from the sun beating down while we worked in the driveway.
“Hell yeah.” We spend a minute putting our shirts back on before he starts the engine and we head into town.
I check my phone. There’s a missed call from my uncle, which is weird. I’ll return the call later. I clear the rest of the notifications—social media and junk mail—and focus back on Kit.
He gossips about his family, complaining about his sister who still lives with his parents. She’s in her late twenties and I love to tease Kit about how he’s thirty-two and also still living with his parents.
“It’s in the basement,” he insists. “That’s different.”
We drive past the old mill building with its For Sale sign. I have no idea who’s going to buy a fifty-thousand-square-foot building that hasn’t been used in so long that people can’t even remember what it used to mill. But it’s pretty close to town, and therefore a big eyesore.
Here, New York, is a sleepy little place when it’s warmer.
There are only a few options open for lunch, and we pick Sweet Persuasions, the coffee shop and bakery.
We sit outside, since it’s a sunny day, and pick up our sandwiches.
Mine is grilled veggies and mozzarella, served on a toasted baguette. Yum.
“How’s the bar fund coming?” Kit asks.
All the money I earn from this side gig goes into my Buy Your Own Bar Someday Soon fund. That’s literally the name of the bank account online. I’m dedicated as fuck. Even the twenty in my pocket will go in.
It’s not that I don’t like working for Hunter at Sirens.
But the Schaefers who own the lodge have pretty much checked out.
Hunter and I brainstorm ways to bring more business in and the Schaefers, who claim that we have autonomy, slap us down.
Usually, it’s after we’ve already announced the event or special or whatever it is that we’re trying to push.
Hunter and I have a hunch that they only know what’s going on because they see it on Instagram instead of reading the emails we cc them into.
So sometimes we just . . . throw secret parties.
Not ideal, I know.
I’d love to have a bar of my own. Maybe walking distance from the house I rent.
Some place I could bring my golden, Princess, to work with me, some place that is busy every day, not just in ski season or Sunday night when there’s half-price happy hour.
There’s enough business in the winter for another bar .
. . if you can survive through the summer.
“Eh.” I shrug. “Slow but steady.”
We talk about the local real estate. Silas, who’s a part-time agent, messages me anytime something comes on the market.
The problem is that in a town this size, there’s only a few places that are already kitted out as bars.
One of those is sitting right across the street, but the guy who owns it is asking a ridiculous price.
I don’t know why—he doesn’t need the money.
He owns several properties and businesses in town, like the one the dispensary rents and the old theater.
About half of them are shuttered and listed for bonkers prices.
The locations in my price range all need work—bars built, bathrooms upgraded, and in one case, squatters kicked out. I don’t have the money to do the first two or the heart to do the last one. Winters are tough up here.
Leo, who works in construction, tells me he’d do the work for free in exchange for a partial ownership.
Silas, when he’s not working as a real estate agent (in a town this size, I’m sure if you added up all of the work the agents have, it wouldn’t even amount to a full-time job), is also a photographer.
He takes pictures of our drink specials at Sirens and would do the same for me in exchange for free drinks.
And Kit’s got his cleaning services to offer.
Even with all that free labor and the love that comes with it, I still need a lot more money if I’m ever going to afford a place.
“You’ll get there,” Kit says, always the optimist.
“Maybe by the time I’m forty.”
“You could quit the bar and work more for me,” he teases. We both know I wouldn’t do that to Hunter.
“You need to import some workers,” I tell him. “If you’re ever going to buy your own place, that is. Don’t you have some friends in Fork Lick you can recruit? Get them to come up for a weekend and do a few jobs.”
Kit snorts. “You’ve met Alex. If I could tear him away from his farm and Molly for the weekend, do you think I could get him to strip down and clean?”
“Touché.” Kit’s college roommate is a big, burly farmer who makes up for Kit’s blabbermouth with his stoic silence. “With that beard he’d do a great mountain man theme.”
We shoot ideas for a mountain man package that’ll never happen as we finish up lunch and leave. Kit and I are both scruffy, so we float the idea of growing thick beards and offering a limited-time special. I hate growing a beard—it’s itchy—but I’d do it for Kit.
It’s a Monday and the bar’s closed, so Kit takes me home, just a few blocks away. I could have walked, but I know what Kit wants.
The minute I open my front door he’s down on the floor with Princess, who whines and moans uncontrollably, her favorite hard rubber bone in her mouth and her lips pulled back and eyes squinty.
“Who’s the most beautiful Princess in the world?” Kit asks my golden retriever. I swear her answering whine sounds like “Meeeeeeeeeee!”
I toe my shoes off and rest my keys and wallet on the table by the door.
My house is cozy, but it works for me and Princess.
Two bedrooms, a shared bath, and a fenced-in yard that’s a smidge too small for a rambunctious golden, but we make it work.
It’s one block off the main road and the smallest house in the neighborhood.
The best part is that there’s a teenaged girl next door who loves to come play with Princess on nights that I have to work.
I grab myself a soda from the fridge and plop myself down on the couch in view of Princess with the only man she loves as much as she loves me.
Since Kit lives with his parents, he can’t get a dog yet.
They have an orange tabby with one brain cell and a hatred of other animals.
Honestly, you’d think a cat that was so dumb he regularly attacks his own tail so bad he cries out in pain would be ambivalent about other pets, but I guess that one brain cell is dumb and angry.
Maybe he’s angry about being dumb.
Kit finally comes up for air. “Princess, my darling, my love, my soulmate. You wanna come with me back to work?”
He says it with an upticked tone, the same one I would use to say we’re going for a walk, and her whole body rockets up. She drops the bone and spins in circles, pausing occasionally to look at me and then the leash hanging on the wall.
“Don’t be an asshole,” I tell Kit.
He laughs. “You know you’re going to take her for a walk next. I just love to see her all riled up.”
She’s only been alone for three hours, but yes, I will take her out for a walk next, so I get to my feet as Kit clips the leash on.
We walk outside and Kit waits for Princess to pee.
My dog squats and also lifts a leg like a weirdo, but does her business and then smothers Kit with kisses before he says goodbye and drives off.
I head down the street with Princess and let her sniff whatever she wants. She played in the backyard this morning and I’ll probably spend the afternoon back there with her again trying to wear her out. Since Mondays are my only day off from the bar, I enjoy my time with her as much as I can.
A motorcycle roars from somewhere nearby, going down Main Street, probably. I can’t see it but I hear it. It’s different from Rory’s, but it makes me think of her anyway.
Why does she come to town every other week? Where does she go after she leaves my bar and why do I never see her around?
Too many questions and too few answers.