Chapter 2
Thus, on the second-worst day of my life, I shuffled, zombielike, into Finnegan’s Pub for a second time and plopped a lukewarm bottle of champagne on the bar.
“Uh, this isn’t a BYOB sort of place,” said the bartender.
Oh yeah. I liked her. Free glass of wine earlier. Spiky hair that was aspirational. Only, she might not be my friend, based on the expression on her face.
I couldn’t find the words, and her scowl faded into a concerned frown. “I can tell you’re not the same woman who came in here about an hour ago. How about I take this bottle and chill it for you? Maybe get you something stronger while you wait.”
I nodded.
“Vodka?” she asked as she placed a cocktail napkin in front of me.
I shook my head.
“Rum?”
Shook my head to that one, too.
“Bourbon?”
At my nod, she turned her back to me, and I clasped the bar to steady myself.
Sound and light were both a blur. I couldn’t be sure how I’d managed to drive back to the square or even why.
Nor did I know where my car was. Where had I parked it?
Would my heart ever leave my throat? If it was in my throat, then what was banging around in my rib cage?
“Come back to add insult to injury?”
When I looked to my left to see who’d spoken, I saw John Dalton himself had returned and was sneering at me. Only an hour before, I’d served him with papers. I missed the woman who’d done that. She’d been confident, sexy, so sure of herself.
Truly, I was not the same Stella Stark as before.
With a deep sigh I gave him the meanest stare I could muster. “Dude, I am insulted and injured enough for both of us. Now go kick rocks.”
“You heard the woman,” the bartender said as she placed an Old-Fashioned on the cocktail napkin in front of me. “Move along.”
Her eyes didn’t leave him until he walked out the door. Then she cocked her head to one side to study me. “What the hell happened to you?”
Bourbon was required to answer that question. It burned its way down my throat and pushed my heart back to where it belonged. “I touched a boob.”
Her mouth twitched. “Is that all?”
“The boob belonged to a naked woman sleeping next to my partner. On my side of the bed.”
She whistled. “That’s a hard one. I’m going to guess the champagne was originally for him? Or her?”
“Him. He’d bet me I’d never be able to find that bozo I served with papers earlier.”
She wiped at a spot on the bar. “You run on spite. I like that. Heck, I resemble it.”
I took a sip of my drink. Gradually, bar chatter overtook the buzzing in my ears, as did the gravity of my situation. I wasn’t just without a partner; I would soon be without a home and without a job. “Too bad spite doesn’t pay the bills.”
“Huh. I’ve been running this place on spite for over twenty years,” she said with a shrug before moving down the bar to tend to a new customer.
After another sip, color joined sound. Sure, the interior of Finnegan’s was a bit dark, but enough bric-a-brac lined the walls to distract me from my current situation.
Several Santas nestled in among the liquor bottles along with tiki mugs, action figures, and a creepy baby doll that had to be haunted.
Above me hung a sign for a tire shop that was so old it actually used the word “emporium.”
I sat with my back to the door, a rookie mistake I wouldn’t make again. On the wall to my right hung soccer flags and signs for Irish beers. Apparently, the team of choice for this bar was Liverpool. The quaff of choice? Guinness, Harp, Smithwick’s, Strongbow—you could pick your poison there.
The place reminded me of a Southern Cheers, but no one knew my name.
Yet.
A presence on the other side of the bar had me looking up. My bartender was back.
“What’s your name, kid?”
Kid? I was turning forty in less than a year. “Stella Stark.”
She held out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Stark. You can call me Havisham.”