Chapter 5 Jacks
Jacks
“Jacks! Bus table seven. And twelve needs refills. They’ve been waving for five minutes!”
“On it!”
I grabbed my tub and wove through the crowd, dodging elbows and sidestepping a guy who’d decided the middle of the walkway was the perfect place to have an emotional phone call with his ex.
The noise was overwhelming in the best way: laughter, shouted conversations, the clink of glasses, and underneath it all, the steady thump of whatever playlist Benji had commandeered for the evening.
Friday nights at Barbacks smelled like beer, sexual frustration, and the faint chemical sweetness of whatever cologne the after-work crowd had bathed in before hitting the town.
And I loved it.
Table seven turned out to be a disaster, a group of finance bros who’d torn through seven orders of wings and left behind a graveyard of bones, napkins, and what appeared to be an entire salt shaker’s worth of seasoning spilled across the tabletop.
I bussed it in record time, stacking plates with the efficiency of someone who’d done this ten thousand times.
Which I had.
Probably that night.
“Refills on twelve!” I called out as I passed the bar, dumping the tub in the dish pit. “Two Bud Lights and a Lightning Limbo.”
“Copy!” Finn didn’t look up from the drinks he was building, his hands moving with the kind of practiced grace that made bartending look like art. Beside him, Benji was doing something complicated with a shaker that violated several laws of physics.
Mark burst through the kitchen door with two plates of sliders balanced on his beefy forearms and a basket of fries clutched against his chest. “Hot behind! Move, move, move!”
I flattened myself against the wall as he barreled past, somehow navigating the packed floor without dropping a single fry.
For a guy who claimed to hate front-of-house work, Mark was disturbingly good at it.
The man could run food faster than any of us, and he did it with the grim efficiency of someone completing a military operation.
“Table four, table four!” he called out, already heading back for another round.
This was Friday night at Barbacks.
Controlled chaos.
Beautiful, exhausting chaos.
I grabbed a pitcher and headed for table twelve, weaving through the crowd again.
The place was packed to capacity, every seat filled, with standing room only near the bar.
We’d been slammed since doors opened at five, and there was no sign of it letting up.
Lightning game nights were like money magnets for the place.
“Sorry for the wait,” I said, topping off glasses. “Crazy night.”
“No worries, man.” One of the guys grinned up at me. “Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. This place is awesome.”
“Thanks. Let me know if you need anything else.”
I was heading back to the bar when I heard a voice, loud and confident, cutting through the ambient noise with the particular tone of someone who wanted to be overheard.
“—so there I was, floating in the ISS, and Mission Control is telling me the oxygen levels are critical—”
I stopped walking and turned.
At table nine, a guy in an expensive blazer was leaning across the table toward his date, gesturing expansively while he stirred his drink with the kind of fixed expression that suggested he was contemplating escape routes.
“—and I’m thinking, this is it. This is how I die. Then I remembered my training, all those years at NASA, and I just . . . took control.”
His date blinked. “You were an astronaut?”
“For six years, top of my class at Houston. They called me ‘Ice’ because I never cracked under pressure.”
I caught Benji’s eye across the bar. He’d been listening, too, because his face was dancing between horror and delight.
“Didn’t you say you were a hedge fund manager?” the date asked.
“Before NASA. And after. I like to stay busy.”
“And the astronaut thing was . . . between hedge funds?”
“Exactly.” The guy nodded like this made perfect sense. “NASA recruited me personally. My spatial reasoning scores were off the charts.”
I had to keep moving. If I stood here any longer, I was going to laugh, and that would be unprofessional; but dear God, the man was claiming to be a part-time astronaut.
On a first date.
In a bar full of queens who could hear every word.
Benji appeared at my elbow, having abandoned his post under the pretense of needing more lime wedges. “Please tell me you’re hearing this.”
“Oh, I’m hearing it.”
“A part-time astronaut who also runs a hedge fund?”
“And was top of his class at Houston.”
“They called him Ice.”
“Because he never cracks under pressure.”
We both looked at the table.
The date had pulled out his phone and appeared to be googling something. George Jetson (that’s what we nicknamed him right away) was still talking, now describing the view of Earth from orbit.
“The auroras are incredible from up there. Most people don’t realize you can see them from space. I have photos, but they’re classified, national security, of course.”
“Classified astronaut photos,” Benji whispered. “Of auroras.”
I groaned, barely restraining a laugh. “I . . . can’t.”
“Get back to work, both of you.” Finn materialized behind us, though I caught the twitch at the corner of his mouth. “And Benji, if you’re getting limes, actually get limes.”
“But Finn, he’s an astronaut.”
“He’s a liar on a first date. It happens.” Finn cocked a brow and pointed to the far end of the bar. “Limes. Now.”
Benji scurried off, and I forced myself to stop eavesdropping and get back to work; but for the next twenty minutes, I kept catching snippets.
The guy had also climbed Everest. Twice. Without oxygen. How one breathed without the stuff was a wonder, but I didn’t stop long enough to hear that explanation.
He’d consulted for three different presidents on economic policy.
He was technically a duke in some small European country, but he didn’t like to talk about it because Americans weren’t allowed to hold titles of nobility and he feared the plebeian masses revolting against him.
When his date excused himself to the bathroom and never came back, nobody at the nearby tables was surprised. The guy sat alone for another ten minutes, checked his phone repeatedly, then closed out his tab with a twenty percent tip and left without making eye contact with anyone.
“Rest in peace, George,” Benji said as the door closed behind him. “He cracked under pressure after all.”
“Ice, ice, baby.”
“Oh, God. I might hurl.” Benji burst out laughing.
“Sorry, careful, ice can get lodged—”
“Stop!” Benji wheezed. Our regular old-timers cackled from their corner where they’d heard the whole thing.
“Fine. I need to get table nine cleaned up anyway. His poor date’s drink is still sitting there, and I need the turn.”
The night rolled on.
More customers, more drinks, more chaos.
Mark ran food until his shirt was soaked through with sweat.
Finn and Benji worked the bar like a two-man army, building cocktails and pulling drafts without pause.
I bussed, refilled, restocked, and repeated until my legs ached and my arms felt like overcooked noodles.
Around eight-thirty, Finn straightened from the beer he was pouring. “Shit, what time is it?”
“Eight-thirty-ish,” I said. “Why?”
“Game starts at nine. I need to switch the TVs.”
Right. The Lightning. Some Western Conference team. I couldn’t remember which. The bar would want to watch, and Finn was fanatical about making sure every screen was synced up before puck drop.
“I got the bar,” Benji said. “Go do your TV wizard thing.”
Finn grabbed the master remote from under the register and began his ritual circuit of the room, clicking each of the twelve televisions over to the pre-game coverage. The familiar graphics flashed across the screens: highlights, stats, talking heads in suits making predictions.
Aside from the usual tension that built in the crowded room before every puck drop, I barely noticed.
I was too busy hauling a fresh rack of glasses from the dish pit, trying to get ahead of the rush that would hit once the game started and everyone wanted another round.
The pre-game chatter became background noise.
Talking heads discussed line combinations and power play percentages.
Highlights from previous games flickered across the screens.
I tuned it out, focused on the satisfying rhythm of work: grab, stack, carry, repeat.
The national anthem played. Gays clutched pearls in place of hands over their hearts as they sang along. Then cheers rippled through the bar.
Finally, the familiar sounds of hockey: skates on ice, the crack of sticks, the roar of the crowd.
I was restocking the garnish bins some twenty minutes later when it happened.
“GOAL! And it’s Shaw with the snipe! Skyler Shaw buries it top corner, and the Lightning strike first!”
My hands stopped moving, a lime bleeding onto my fingers.
On the nearest screen, the replay was already running.
A player in blue and white wound up, released, and the puck rocketed past the goalie’s glove.
The camera then cut to the celebration: teammates swarming, gloves tapping helmets, and in the center of it all, grinning like he’d won the lottery . . .
Skyler Shaw.
He looked different on the ice, bigger somehow, the pads adding bulk to his already broad frame. His helmet hid most of his face, but that smile was unmistakable. Even through the TV screen, even from across a crowded bar—hell, from across the country—it made something in my chest go tight.
The broadcast switched to another replay, this one in slow motion.
Skyler received the pass and settled the puck, then his whole body coiled before the release. The announcers were gushing about his wrist shot, his accuracy, and his ice-cold composure.
“—and that’s his fifteenth of the season. Shaw continues to prove why he wears the C for this franchise—”
I was staring.
I knew I was staring.
I couldn’t seem to stop.
Someone snapped their fingers in front of my face.
“Earth to Jacks.” Benji was giving me a look somewhere between amused and concerned. “You okay? You’ve been holding that same lime for like thirty seconds.”
I looked down. Sure enough, a lime wedge was clutched in my fingers, forgotten.
“Yeah, sorry. Zoned out.”
“Watching the game?” Benji glanced at the screen, where the broadcast had moved on to the next play. “Didn’t know you were that into hockey.”
“I’m not. I . . . got distracted.”
Benji’s eyes narrowed, and I could practically see the gears turning in his head. He glanced at the TV again, then back at me, and I knew with horrible certainty that he was about to say something I didn’t want to hear.
“Isn’t that the guy who—”
“Garnish tray’s done.” I cut him off, shoving the lime into its container with more force than necessary. “I’m gonna go check on the floor.”
I escaped before he could finish the sentence, weaving into the crowd and putting as much distance between myself and the bar as possible.
It didn’t mean anything.
I’d been tired or distracted, and my eyes had landed on the TV at a random moment when the announcer’s voice cut through the crowd. It could have been any goal, by any player.
That it was Skyler was coincidence.
Pure coincidence.
I spent the rest of the night deliberately not looking at the stupid TV screens.