The Bear's Bartender (Steamy Shifters #8)

1. Lia

LIA

Ihave been in Harlow for exactly forty minutes when I see the sign.

HELP WANTED. Taped inside the front window of a bar called The Maddox, black marker on white paper, curling at one corner like whoever put it there did it a week ago and gave up on hiring.

The lettering is blocky and practical. Not a cute font.

Not one of those chalkboard easels on the sidewalk with a joke and a daily special.

Just the two words and a piece of Scotch tape.

I stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

I'm holding a coffee from the diner two doors down.

I have been in this town for under an hour and I have already been asked twice who I am and told three times that the diner makes a good grilled cheese.

I slept four hours last night on Maya's pull-out couch.

I'm wearing yesterday's leggings and a black tank top and a flannel of Maya's because she took one look at my packing and said you don't own a flannel? and handed me one like it was medical.

I am not looking for a job. I am looking for coffee and a direction.

I stare at the sign anyway.

Thursday was a long day. Thursday I found out from Kelsey-from-yoga that my boyfriend of two years had been sleeping with a woman from his office for at least six months, and I handled Thursday by lighting my old life on fire piece by piece before noon.

I quit my job by email. I texted my landlord.

I put his things in three garbage bags and took a picture of them on the sidewalk and sent it to him with the word Done.

By six p.m. Thursday I had cleared out my desk and sublet my apartment to my coworker Ren who had been looking for a place for a month.

By seven I was in my car with everything I owned in the backseat, driving west on autopilot, and at ten p.m. I pulled over at a gas station and called Maya and said I don't know where I'm going.

She said, come here.

She lives in a town called Harlow that's three streets of storefronts and a hardware store and a diner with a rotating pie of the day.

She teaches fourth grade. She has been telling me since college that I needed to come see her sometime in the vague way people mean it, and apparently my car knew what it was doing because it stopped running on fumes directly outside her house at eight a.m. Friday morning.

I slept three hours, showered, and walked outside at eleven-something to find coffee and to think about what I'm doing with the rest of my thirties.

And now I'm standing in front of a sign taped inside a bar window.

I used to bartend. I did three years of it in college and the year after, and I was good at it—I have the kind of memory that holds twenty drinks in order and the kind of face that can stay pleasant through a man explaining his own divorce to me at two in the morning.

I haven't thought about bartending in four years.

I have a job in marketing. I had a job in marketing.

I have, in the last twenty-two hours, resigned from a job in marketing.

I sip my coffee. The sign is still there. I push open the door.

The bar is dim in that practical afternoon way—not set-dressed dim, just low ceilings and wood paneling and string lights that weren't turned on because it's not night.

There's a jukebox that's older than I am.

There are six high stools at the bar and four of them are occupied by men in Carhartt jackets drinking quietly and watching a basketball game on a TV mounted above the bottles.

The floor is wood. The whole place smells like beer and wood polish and someone's sandwich.

A man is behind the bar with his back to me, reaching up to the top shelf with a clipboard in one hand.

He is enormous.

That's the first thing. Not tall, not big—he's the size of something I would have called made up if you'd tried to describe it to me in a coffee shop.

Shoulders like he had them built for him.

Back that fills the flannel shirt he's wearing like the shirt has been looking for somewhere to live.

I can see the shape of his arm through the sleeve from across the room.

My brain does a small fluttering thing and loses the sentence I was about to say.

He turns around.

I can't tell you what my face does. I can tell you that my coffee has become very interesting and I take a sip of it to have something to do with my hands.

He's—look. I'm not going to be able to describe this right.

Later, when Maya asks, I'm going to say he's big and she's going to say like tall?

and I'm going to say no, he's BIG and then I'm going to run out of words.

Six foot four. Maybe more. Built through the chest and shoulders like a man who has been doing physical labor his whole life, and dark hair cropped short, and a beard that's neat and somehow makes it worse.

A jaw I am deciding very firmly not to look at.

Hands that are wrapped around a clipboard like the clipboard is a prop in someone else's play.

He looks at me.

Not in the normal way. Not the hi, can I help you bar-owner look. He looks at me like he's trying to remember something, and then he looks at me like he has remembered it, and his whole face does this thing where it goes completely still.

It goes on long enough that one of the men at the bar looks up from his beer.

It goes on after that, too.

"Hi," I say. My voice comes out fine. My voice is a professional. "I saw your sign."

"The sign," he repeats. Low voice. Slow.

"The HELP WANTED. Is it still—are you still looking?"

He sets the clipboard down on the bar.

Sets it down like it was very important until it wasn't. He doesn't look away from me. He walks the length of the bar toward me, and I'm aware of how much space his body takes up as he moves, and I'm aware that the four Carhartt men at the bar have all stopped watching the basketball game.

He stops in front of me. The bar is between us. I'm grateful for the bar.

"You've bartended before?"

"Three years in college. One after. I know well drinks, I can free pour, I can count back change without a calculator." I am listing this like a résumé. I don't know why. He hasn't asked. "I'm clean on a background check. I have a food handler's card. Somewhere. I'll find it."

"When can you start?"

I stare at him.

"I—tonight? Tomorrow? I don't really have a?—"

"Tonight," he says. "Five."

"Okay."

"Pays twelve an hour plus tips. Tips are decent. Leon takes weekends, I need the weeknight shifts covered."

"Okay," I say again.

He is looking at me. He has not looked away. I have the feeling of being the only thing in the room, and also the feeling that he's trying very hard to not do something, and I don't know what it is and I don't know what to do with any of this.

"Name?" he says.

"Lia. Reyes."

"Wes Maddox." His eyes go to my left hand. Quick. Then back up. "You're not from here."

"I am as of this morning. I'm staying with Maya Alvarez on Pine. I can probably get an address?—"

"I know Maya." His mouth moves slightly. Not a smile. Almost a smile. "Five tonight. Wear something you don't mind spilling on."

"Got it."

His eyes stay on me. He is trying not to and failing. I've been in this room for under three minutes. I'm aware of every inch of this man's face. I don't know what is happening. My skin is warm. I need to leave.

"I'll be here," I say.

"Good."

I turn to go. I walk to the door. I have my hand on the wood when I think of something and turn back.

"What kind of bar is this?" I ask. "Like what should I—should I know the regulars, or?—"

"I'll introduce you," he says. "Just come."

"Okay."

I leave.

Outside the door I stand still on the sidewalk for a full five seconds. My coffee is cold. My face is hot. Across the street a woman is putting mums out in front of a flower shop and she looks up and waves at me like I'm someone she knows.

I wave back.

I walk the three blocks back to Maya's house and I tell my face to calm down.

Maya is grading fourth-grade math worksheets at her kitchen table when I walk in. She is wearing a Harlow Elementary sweatshirt and her hair is in a topknot and there's a cup of cold tea at her elbow she has clearly forgotten about.

"You were gone a long time for someone who went for coffee," she says without looking up.

"I got a job."

Her pen stops. She looks up at me.

"I'm sorry, what."

"At a bar. The Maddox. I saw a help-wanted sign and I walked in and I think I'm bartending tonight."

"The Maddox."

"That's the bar."

"On Main."

"Yes."

"Lia."

"What?"

"Lia."

"What."

Maya puts her pen down. She pushes her chair back. She looks at me the way she has looked at me for fifteen years,—the look that says she's seen my worst decisions and loved me through them anyway.

"Wes Maddox hired you."

"Yes."

"Wes Maddox the owner."

"How many Wes Maddoxes are there?"

"One." She says this flat. "There is one."

"Okay."

"In thirty seconds he hired you."

"Maybe less."

"Lia."

"What is happening," I say, "with your face right now?"

She's smiling in the way that means she's about to start laughing. She picks up her tea. She takes a sip of it even though it's clearly cold and grimaces.

"Oh no," she says.

"What does that mean? Why are you saying oh no?"

"Wes Maddox has owned that bar for twelve years.

I have lived in this town for four. He has, in that entire time, hired exactly one bartender besides himself, and it took approximately three months of interviews.

His name is Leon. Leon has been there six years.

" She sets the mug down. She is looking at me like I am a dog that has done something remarkable. "He hired you in thirty seconds."

"Maybe he was tired of interviewing."

"He doesn't get tired."

"Maybe he liked my résumé."

"Did you give him a résumé?"

"…No."

"Lia."

"Stop saying my name like that."

Maya leans back in her chair. She crosses her arms. She is about to enjoy whatever is about to happen to me for the entire duration of it.

"What did he look like when he hired you?" she says.

"I don't know what you mean."

"What did his face do?"

"His face didn't do anything. He looked at me and said can you start tonight, and I said yes."

"Mm."

"What does mm mean?"

"It means," Maya says, picking her pen up again, "that I am going to sit right here and watch your life from this kitchen table with great personal satisfaction."

"Oh my god."

"It means I am going to be so smug about it you won't be able to speak to me."

"I'm not anything. I just got here. I'm not—" I make a gesture that encompasses my own face, my entire body, the total wreckage of Thursday, my cold coffee, the town of Harlow, and the flannel I'm wearing. "Look at me. I haven't slept. I am dressed like a woman in transition. I?—"

"Did he look at you like he had time?"

I open my mouth.

I close it.

"What does time mean?" I say.

Maya is smiling. She picks up a math worksheet and goes back to grading it. She doesn't answer me.

"What does time mean, Maya?"

"Five p.m. is in four hours. You should shower."

"Maya—"

"Second door on the right. Towels under the sink. There's a hair dryer but it's temperamental."

I stand in her kitchen for a long moment with my cold coffee.

Outside the window Harlow is going about its Friday afternoon. A truck drives past. Someone's dog barks at nothing. The woman across the street who waved at me is arranging her mums and humming.

I think about the pause. The way his face went completely still. The way he said tonight like he'd already decided, his eyes going to my left hand and then back up to my face like he'd checked for something and found the answer he wanted.

Maya makes a little satisfied noise over her worksheet.

"Shut up," I say.

"I didn't say anything."

"I can hear you not saying anything."

"Lia."

"What."

"Wear the blue top."

I go take a shower.

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