Chapter 2 #2
My heart stutters, my body suddenly feeling hot all over.
What the hell am I doing? Flirting with a stranger isn’t a smart move.
Why the hell isn’t Boss stepping in here?
Quickly, I turn toward the end of the bar and move to fill up the empty pints waiting.
I work through the things I can control as I take a deep breath.
Like knowing how many steps to the exit—fifty-two— the exact location of the shotgun Boss has behind the bar, nestled between the Arbor Mist and Zima bottles.
I roll my ankle, reminding myself of the switchblade I have tucked inside my left boot.
I list off the rest of the precautions I’ve taken, like the steak knife taped to the toilet in the bathroom, and the taser stuffed behind the fire extinguisher strapped to the wall between the emergency exit and the office.
Breathe. It’s all there, I assure myself. I’ll use them if I need them.
When I finish, I turn back and take in his dark brown hair, half pulled back into a knot.
Long hair on men always looks messy to me, but on him, it more than works.
Do I like messy now? The only thing I keep thinking about is how it would feel between my fingers.
A short shadow of a beard surrounds lips that have tipped into an almost smile.
His arms drape forward, fingers clasped loosely together on the bar.
The rings on his fingers and the worn leather cuffs along each wrist earn a second look.
Viv’s voice cuts into the podcast that’s playing over the sound system.
“You do realize that the names you keep picking don’t belong to people who actually come here?
” she says with an eye roll, looking up at the board with this week’s name written across it.
“Never met a Julian in all my six decades.”
“You mean seven decades,” Boss corrects.
She flips him off as she tilts the empty bowl in front of her. “Ah, fuck. Please don’t tell me there’s no more popcorn, Naomi.”
“Julian isn’t an uncommon name,” I say, plucking the rest of the half-empty popcorn bowls from around the bar.
“It’s a little feminine.” She scrunches up her nose. “Not a single cowboy or farmer I’ve met has a name like that,” she mumbles out. Close-minded and judgmental sounded the same, regardless of where I found myself.
“You say feminine like it’s a bad thing, Viv. I grew up thinking that there wasn’t anything more beautiful than women and the things we’re capable of.” I liked Viv, depended on her even, which means I don’t let her get away with shit comments like that.
“How many times do I need to go over this?” Boss pipes in. “It’s a random name generator, so I don’t have anyone,” he says, pointing at her and three others listening in, “pissed off and accusing me of picking my friends’ names out of a hat.”
She ignores him, waving her hand in the air before she reaches for her pint.
I pour my popcorn into the three empty bowls, catching the scent of the rosemary I dried and ground up with sage. Tossing herbs on popcorn is entirely underrated. Depositing the freshly filled bowl in front of her, I catch the handsome stranger still looking at me.
He’s wearing the hell out of a black long-sleeved shirt that fits rather nicely across the expanse of his chest to each shoulder and down his biceps.
His build is imposing—thick and defined.
Even sitting on the other side of the bar, he’s tall, but his presence feels bigger than most of the people who come in and out of here.
It was my mother, sometimes my sisters who I thought too aggressively objectified the men who passed through their bar.
But right now, I’m trying to determine the difference between objectification and appreciation.
The size and stature of a complete stranger, not to mention the closed-off but curious vibe he’s emanating is making my face flush and my pulse race.
“Stevie Crowne here,” my sister’s voice cuts in and plays over the Bluetooth speakers placed around the bar, instantly taking me out of my own head for a minute, and I smile at the fact that she’d be nudging my arm about this guy, making sure I noticed him.
“I hope you’re ready to hear about some of the best tasting whiskey you can buy for twenty-bucks and the cold case that’s finally reopened because of coordinates scribbled across a twenty-dollar bill that led to multiple bodies found in the Pacific Northwest. This is The Distilled Truth.
” I pause the episode, knowing I still have some whiskey flights to pour for the few folks participating in tonight’s tasting.
“Decided if you’re going to stay?” I ask, putting down a cocktail napkin in front of him.
He meets my eye for a moment and gives me the smallest tip of his lips.
It’s not a smile, but something close. “A podcast and whiskey flight sounds good.” Clearing his throat, he leans forward, elbows on the bar.
“I should probably clear up a few things first.” He reaches around to his back pocket.
“I’m not a farmer or cowboy,” he says, taking out his wallet and sliding his ID across the bar.
I’m not sure what he’s referring to until he adds, “You’re right about that. ” He turns his head towards Viv.
No way.
Viv’s resting bitch face blooms a little pink as her eyes dart to mine, wordlessly saying, You’ve got to be shitting me.
Boss starts laughing from the end of the bar, watching Viv eat her words.
The stranger’s eyes connect with mine, holding me in place and making it nearly impossible to break away, never mind breathe.
Looking down, I focus on the Oregon ID of Julian T.
Colton. Born in the same month as the one we’re in, only thirty-eight years prior.
Organ donor. Eye color: hazel. I would argue it’s prettier than that—more green with only a few flecks of brown. His height reads six foot three.
He looks around at Boss, Viv, and then back to me when he says, “What do I get for having my name on that board?”
Viv barks out a laugh before answering, “You drink for free.”
“All night?” he asks with his eyes on me.
With a smile, a bit of inflection, and a twinge of confidence, I answer, “All night.”
“With that kind of time . . .” he trails off, glancing down at his phone.
He swipes at the screen and leans forward again, fitting it back into his pocket.
“What do you suggest?” The eye contact only lasts for a few seconds, but I’m brave enough to meet it.
It’s when he shifts his attention down, to my lips, that I falter.
Instead of answering like the confident woman I’m pretending to be, I turn away, pulling the bottles of whiskey for tonight's flight.
With my back to him, I swallow down my nerves and say, “We offer a whiskey flight every Thursday. It’s been curated to match each week's episode of The Distilled Truth.”
“That’s creative. Are you more of an expert on whiskey or true crime then?” he says, rotating the ring on his left pointer finger.
I used to watch my mother do this like a goddamn professional.
I’ve never been good at it. Flirting, for me, always meant being quiet, paying attention, trying to best or one-up whomever I found wildly attractive.
My sisters somehow inherited the effortless gift.
But that skipped right over me. This, however, feels easier.
Maybe it’s for the simplest reason that I have nothing to lose.
No past to tell, no future to plan, no rumors to navigate.
I thought that maybe I was too broken now to feel attraction again.
Or even want to flirt. Apparently, I’m not so broken.
“I could tell you a thing or two about whiskey,” I tell him, tipping the first bottle I lined up in front of me. “True crime, not so much.” Best to avoid topics around truth and crime.
I lean forward, resting my elbows on the bar in front of him, mimicking his earlier posture. “If there’s something you want that’s not on the menu, I can make it. You can have whatever you want as long as it’s behind the bar.”
“Anything I want, hm?” he asks with a subtle quirk of his eyebrow as he moves a fraction forward. Jesus Christ. I want to cover my face and snort out a laugh, but it’s the way he smiles at me that has me pausing my self-deprecation. “Alright then, you choose. I’ll have dealer’s choice.”
If he only knew what that got him in some bars—one, in particular, that took that request to its limits and made one helluva show about it.
I reach for the metal shaker, and it hits the ground with an exaggerated clang. Brilliant.
Viv smiles at me, sensing that I’m feeling all sorts of out of my comfort zone, and pushes her empty shot glass forward.
“It’s a three-finger kind of day, Naomi.
Hit me with another.” As particular as both Boss and Viv are, they take their roles here seriously, and I’ll forever be grateful for that.
Equal parts protectors and therapists, among other things.
I pull the bottle of whiskey again and pour her shot to the rim. It’s enough to shake me out of my head and focus on a task I’ve done plenty of times.
“Since you’re technically lost, are you passing through or planning to stay?” I ask Julian, looking over at him again and holding up the bottle.
With a tilt of his head toward the bottle, he says, “I wouldn’t mind staying if you tell me a little more about what you’re pouring.”
I rub my lips together, trying to play off my smile and not geek out too much.
There are two things I understand and know more about than most—catalyst reactions in organic compounds, and whiskey.
Most of the time, I’m shoving this kind of information at customers, and they couldn’t give a damn.
So I start with what most distilleries start by saying. “Every bourbon is whiskey?—”