Chapter 1 #2
I stood behind the bar and pulled my lips back from my teeth. It probably looked like a smile to anyone not paying attention.
My phone buzzed in my apron.
Mrs. Park
Dinner ate, meds taken. She's watching the show with Pickles. She says hi and tell the rich people to share.
I almost laughed out loud. Sabrina. Sabrina. Don't cackle at your phone behind a bar at a wine auction. It’s not normal.
I tapped a quick reply.
Sabrina
Tell her I love her.
I put the phone away.
That was when he sat down.
I clocked him before he'd made eye contact.
The suit alone would've done it—charcoal, expensive without announcing itself, cut to his shoulders.
His hair was light brown and looked like he'd run a hand through it on purpose.
He was clean-shaven, smelled good, and looked, frankly, like a man doors opened for.
He raised one finger without looking at me. "Negroni. Light on the Campari, half ounce of Punt e Mes instead of the Carpano, orange peel expressed and dropped, no cherry."
I stared at him and tilted my head.
Who the hell orders a drink like that?
I made it.
I made it specifically to spec because I was a professional, and if you make it wrong on purpose, it just gives them more to talk about. I slid it across.
He picked it up, sniffed it, and took a sip. Then paused for a second.
His gaze drifted to the side, lips parted a fraction before he breathed out slowly.
"I'm sorry. I think—could I get that again? I said half an ounce. I think you went a little heavy on the Punt e Mes. And the orange peel—you expressed it, but I think I'd rather—I'd rather have it on the rim, actually. Not dropped."
I closed my eyes for one second, and I opened them.
I made it again.
I made it watching his face the entire time, which was deeply unwise of me because his face was annoyingly pleasing to watch. I twisted the orange peel against the rim of the glass with what I'll say was unnecessary aggression. I slid the new glass across.
He sipped. He nodded. "Perfect. Thank you."
You're welcome, you absolute menace.
He didn’t leave. Instead, he stayed at the bar, taking a slow sip of his perfect drink as he looked out at the room. Then he turned back to me.
"Could you also recommend something strong? For after. Something with—"
"I'm going to close the bar," I replied in a calm voice.
He blinked. "What?"
"Sir, if you order a drink a specific way one more time, I'm going to close the bar. I don't care if there are four hundred people here. I'll close it, I'll go home, and I'll explain it to my boss tomorrow with a song."
He stared at me for half a second.
Then he laughed.
He laughed loudly—actual laughter, not the polite breath-through-the-nose that rich people did at parties—and his shoulders dropped a quarter inch. He picked up his perfect Negroni, he tipped it at me, and he slid off the stool.
"Noted. I'll behave."
He walked away and crossed the room toward the family by the windows. The woman in cream turned and smiled at him. The lighter-haired guy clapped him on the shoulder. The dark-haired man looked up from the woman in green and nodded once.
Oh.
He was one of them.
Of course, he is, Sabrina. He smelled good. He had cheekbones. He ordered a Negroni with seven adjectives. He wasn't going to turn out to be a substitute teacher.
I poured myself a glass of soda water, and drank it standing up.
A man came up to the bar a minute later. The dark-haired one from the windows. He didn't say hello. He didn't smile.
"A glass of the white. Anything that's already cracked."
I made it in under thirty seconds, and I slid it across without looking up.
He took it and walked away.
The whole family must order their drinks like they're sending people to the gallows. Lovely.
A few minutes later, the Negroni guy was on the raised platform at the front of the room, holding a microphone.
I almost didn't track it—I was halfway through a pour of pinot for a woman who was trying to tell me about her sommelier course in Tuscany—but the room went quieter.
Somebody at the front had cleared their throat. I looked up.
It was him, up at the mic, easy as anything, thanking the patrons, announcing the highest bids of the evening, doing the tidy work of a host. He was good at it, he was confident with it, and he spoke loosely enough that you forgot there was a script.
Huh. Board member, maybe. Or family, doing the family thing.
He paused, and grinned. "Now my brother has something he would like to say."
The dark-haired man from the windows walked up onto the platform.
The woman in green walked up after him, her face going through three things in two seconds—recognition, then panic, then her hand coming up to her mouth like she was trying to hold the moment in.
The dark-haired man took the microphone.
He didn't say much. He said he'd been trying to think of the right place to do this for a month. That he realized the right place was wherever she was. He said he loved her, and he’d love her forever for the rest of his life.
Then he got down on one knee.
The room gasped—collective, half sentimental and half secondhand panic. The woman in green was crying before he'd finished her name.
I watched her say yes. Watched him slide the ring onto her finger.
The whole room erupted in joy. The lighter-haired guy yelled something toward the side of the platform. The older woman in cream pressed a hand to her mouth, while the sandy-haired guy whooped like they were at a football game. The string quartet started up with something cheerful.
I looked away.
I wished her luck. I genuinely did. She looked like a decent person. She didn't deserve for her marriage to crash within a year, like these usually did. She could be one of the ones it stuck for. Maybe. Sure. Probably.
I went back to pouring pinot for the woman from Tuscany.
Sabrina, stop being like a bitter widow at a wedding you weren't invited to. Pour the wine. Smile at the lady. Let the rich people have their moment.
The next hour blurred—wine in, wine out. The tip jar was getting heavier. A man who tried to pay in fifties told me to keep the change. A woman asked me where I got my shoes. Discount Shoe Warehouse, ma'am, two-for-one in March. She laughed like I was joking. I let her.
The room thinned. People started drifting toward the doors with their coats over their arms. The string quartet went into the tireder repertoire—slower songs, less attention required. I started wiping down bottles I wasn't going to use again tonight.
I was so tired I could feel it in my eyelids.
I was thinking about the cab ride home, whether Mrs. Park had left a plate covered with foil on the stove, whether Bonnie was actually asleep or just lying there in the dark with Pickles on her chest, listening for the door.
I wondered what I was going to say to her in the morning if she asked about the surgery, and late autumn wasn't an answer I knew how to put into a sentence a kid could accept.
Then he sat down again.
The Negroni guy was back at the bar.
He looked tired around the eyes. He'd lost the jacket somewhere—sleeves rolled to the forearm now, top button undone, hair messier than it had been an hour ago. He didn't order. He just sat.
"What a night, huh?"
"What a night," I agreed.
"Honestly," he said, and he half-laughed, "I hate these events."
I stopped wiping the bottle. Set it down and leaned a hip against the back counter. "Yeah?"
"Too much. Too suffocating. I'm not sure how long I can deal with it." He rubbed the back of his neck. The hair on his forearm caught the blue light from the bar. "And the foundation—the foundation is its own kind of hell. The only good thing about it is that it actually helps people."
He was definitely a board member, a brother, a brother-in-law, or whatever the family attachment was. Either way, one of them was sitting across from me, telling me he hated it. One of them agreed with me.
I leaned across the bar.
I dropped my voice. "Can I tell you something? But you have to keep it between us."
His eyebrows went up. He leaned in. "I can keep a secret."
"I heard the owner of this whole foundation is just a trust-fund baby. Daddy gave him all the money. The whole thing's a vanity project."
He laughed.
He laughed loud—louder than the first time, loud enough that a couple at the nearest table looked over with offended faces. His head went back, hand came up to his chest, and he laughed long enough that the couple at the nearest table turned around twice.
I let out a low chuckle myself. Okay, fine. He's not the worst. I'll downgrade him from most annoying man of the night to—
He stopped laughing. Wiped one eye with the back of his hand, and extended the other hand across the bar.
"It's nice to meet you. I'm Mr. Cross."
The bar dropped out from under me.