Chapter Three
Gabriel
You’re acting like an idiot,” a gruff voice chirps while I consider the glasses at the opposite end of the bar. I reach for a rocks tumbler, then change my mind and place it back.
“Oh yeah?” I pick up a coupe glass instead, fingers pinched around the delicate rim. “How do you figure?”
“You’re clucking around that poor girl like a mother hen.” Frank, one of the regulars, is slumped in his usual seat, plucking maraschino cherries directly from a container that should be under the bar.
“No one is clucking, Frank. I’m just trying to figure out her drink.”
Frank laughs. “Sure. That’s what’s happening right now.”
A lanky body bulldozes up to the bar right next to him, rattling the glasses. Nate has always given me the impression of an overeager puppy. He’s all energy and long, flailing limbs. Kind, but young and a little bit stupid. I swear I spend more time making sure he stays alive than anything else.
“Shit, Frank. I’d be clucking, too.” He lifts his body, pressing his torso against the counter to get a good look at the woman I left sitting on the other side of the bar. He almost pushes his hand into the ice bin, but I close the lid at the last second. “Look at her ti—”
I grab the bottom half of his face, squeezing his cheeks together until he stops talking. “Think very carefully about how you want to finish that sentence, bud.”
His eyes crinkle, and I release him.
“I was going to say tidy sweater.” He stretches his jaw from side to side. “I love the naughty-librarian vibes. Like she could smack me around with her ruler.”
I roll my eyes and reach for the cherry container Frank is clutching against his chest.
“Order a drink if you want a cherry,” I tell him. I drop it back behind the counter.
“Yeah, Frank.” Nate grins. “Order yourself a cute little Shirley Temple.”
Frank leans back in his chair and pulls out a weathered crossword from the inside of his jacket pocket, grumbling under his breath. “Never had to order a drink for a cherry before,” he complains.
“Gotta keep a roof above my head, Frank.”
Frank is here every Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday afternoon, in the same chair, eating sixty-three cherries from the same container.
The man has never consumed anything harder than a lemonade with seltzer, and yet he doesn’t deviate from his evenings at the bar.
I think he likes the company. As far as I know, he’s on his own here. I’ve never seen him with anyone else.
The space between my shoulder blades itches. I roll my neck against it.
“What are you making her?” Nate asks.
“Don’t know yet.”
“What? You always know what to make.” Nate steals one of Frank’s cherries, a stem poking out from the corner of his mouth. “It’s your very weird and very special gift.”
“Yeah, well. I want to make a good impression.”
Frank frowns at me from overtop his crossword, bushy eyebrows low over cobalt eyes. “Why?”
I pause. “I … I guess I don’t know.”
I don’t usually give too much attention to the women who drape themselves over the bar, trying to catch my eye. But that’s the thing. She didn’t do anything except slip through the door, ease onto a stool with her long, graceful legs, and sit there. Looking all pretty and sad.
Basically, my kryptonite.
“You want to make a good impression because she’s hot,” Nate says, way too loud, trying to leverage himself across the bar again. I push him back with my palm against his forehead. “It’s not rocket science.”
“Stop looking at her.”
He snickers. “Don’t worry. She’s not my type. Too available.” He slides his glass across the bar top. “Fill me up while you’re making moon eyes.”
“I’m not making moon eyes.” I grumble, heroically avoiding glancing over my shoulder.
I’m definitely making moon eyes. I’m a downright dreamy mother-fucker right now, my attention skip-hopping to the end of the bar every ten seconds.
Not that she’s noticed. She’s too busy staring out the window with a frown, fingers toying with the end of the long braid that’s hanging over her shoulder. Her hair is so dark it almost looks purple, blending in against the sweater she’s wearing.
She turns away, and her eyes immediately find mine.
Like a lock, clicking into place. A pleasant shiver prickles down my spine.
My attention drifts from her fingers toying with her braid to the soft swell of shoulder peeking out from the edge of her sweater.
She’s all buttoned up. Covered in dark-colored wool.
Fuck. I don’t know why that does it for me.
I’m still staring like a dumbass, holding a different glass in each hand. A knowing smile quirks at the corner of her lips and I can read the question on her face, almost as if she’s shouted it down the length of the bar.
What’s taking so long?
I immediately grab the cognac.
Frank snorts. “Yep. You’re a goner.” Nate laughs into the top of his beer.
I set the cognac back in the rack with a clatter and reach for the Cointreau. “Don’t the two of you have somewhere to be?”
“Not right now,” they answer in unison, then descend into manic laughter. Frank is never getting free cherries again. He’s officially on a cherry ban, as far as I’m concerned. And Nate—
“Hey, what are you doing with my beer? You just poured that!”
I dump his beer down the drain, then reach into the fridge and grab one of the bottles instead, sliding it in front of him. “I’m down-grading you to a Miller Lite.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you pissed me off, and you no longer deserve the IPA.” I flick him in the middle of the forehead. “Return to your corner, please, before you’re downgraded to one of Frank’s Shirley Temples.”
“I don’t—”
“Shirley. Temple.”
His mouth closes with a snap, and he grabs his beer. He wanders off with a dark look tossed over his shoulder.
“My Shirley Temples aren’t a downgrade,” Frank offers, looking far too chipper. His crossword is back in his coat pocket and his chin is in his hand. “You make a fine drink, young man.”
“Young man,” I mumble under my breath. “I don’t feel like a young man.”
I feel every day of my miserable existence, pressing down against my shoulders like cinder blocks. I’m a look-on-the-bright-side kind of guy by nature, but I don’t know. Lately it’s been hard to summon the energy.
Maybe I should think about a new job. One where I’m not around so many … people. Where there aren’t so many responsibilities clinging to my coattails. Where I’m not one mistake away from something I can’t come back from.
Where I can rest.
Frank tips sideways on his stool, glancing around me to the other side of the bar. “What’s her name?”
I slice a fresh lemon, barely avoiding taking a chunk of my thumb with it. “I don’t know.”
Frank is delighted. “You’re not very good at this, are you?”
“I’m just fine, thanks.” I wedge my cocktail shaker together and give it a good toss. The ice rattles against the tin. “All I’m doing is making her a drink. You can stop with the commentary.”
He plucks another cherry out of his glass and tosses it in his mouth, narrowing his eyes as he studies me.
I keep shaking the glass, holding eye contact.
I’ve seen a lot scarier things than a seventy-eight-year-old man with wispy gray hair and a well-pressed flannel buttoned to the base of his throat.
“You’re starting to irritate me, Frank.”
He snorts. “Finally. I was starting to think your feathers couldn’t be ruffled.”
I laugh. If he only knew.
“As fun as this was—” I grab the glass and pour the frosty drink. Perfect. “Enjoy your cherries.”
I don’t wait for whatever quip the old man wants to leave me with. I boomerang back to the side of the bar where my mystery girl is and place the glass in front of her. She stares down at it, her mouth twisted to the side.
“This is not a martini.”
I try my hardest not to laugh. She looks like I just slid a grenade on a dainty little dinner plate in front of her. “No, it’s not.”
Her eyes flick up to mine. They’re dark brown, shadowed beneath a heavy fringe of lashes. There’s something lurking there, just beneath the bored expression she’s working so damn hard to keep on her face, but she masks it quickly.
She tiptoes her fingers around the base of the glass. “I like to know what I’m drinking.”
“It’s a sidecar.”
The cutest little quirk forms between her eyebrows. “You say that like I should know what it means.”
“Cognac,” I explain with a laugh. “With some orange liqueur and a little lemon. Ah. Hold on a sec.” I reach behind the bar and grab a sugared orange peel, placing it over the rim. “There you go.”
She blinks. “Do I eat that?”
“If you want.”
The longer she stares at the glass in front of her, the more my confidence wavers.
“At least try it before you claim your victory.”
She picks up the glass, her hold awkward, then brings it to her mouth.
Her bottom lip skims the rim, and her eyes flick up to mine, wide and fathomless.
My hands flex against the bar top. It’s not overtly seductive and it’s certainly not intentional, but I’m hyper-focused on the plush press of her lips.
I have no idea what it is about this woman that’s making hot anticipation curl at the base of my spine, but I like it. I like the cracks she’s sending down my fault lines.
She pulls the glass away. “It’s sweet, but also …”
“Not? Yeah, I know what you mean.” I grab a bar rag, just for something to do with my hands.
The tender place between my shoulder blades itches again, settling into a deep throb that won’t alleviate until I’m upstairs later, flat on my back on my living room floor, arms spread wide while I do my best to forget all my many responsibilities.
She takes another slow slip. I watch her like the sucker I am.
“Do you like it?” I ask.
She nods. “You were right.”
I grin. “Don’t be shy. Go ahead and say that again.”
She laughs. “You were right. This is exactly the drink I wanted.” She takes another pull from the glass. “I guess I’ll be keeping you company tonight.”
I immediately want to ask her to say that again, too. But I refrain.