Chapter 20 The Best Dive Bar in Denver
The Best Dive Bar in Denver
Morgan looked around as they entered the unassuming brick building.
From the outside, Oscar’s Tavern wasn’t too different from any other rather shabby local bar.
Inside, though, the place was jumping, which for not even seven on a weekday evening was pretty good.
The chalkboard for the pool table had a long list of names, and the place was abuzz with conversation and shouts of laughter.
Two bartenders worked the small bar, adeptly dodging around each other, seemingly by telepathy.
The Park Grille was Morgan’s sort of bar. From Heidi’s rapt expression, Oscar’s Tavern was hers.
“My turn to get the drinks,” Morgan said.
They found a high table near the shuffleboard. The server hustled over. “Whatcha want?”
“A Corona, please,” Heidi said.
“Do you have a wine list?” Morgan asked.
“White—dry or sweet—red, pink,” the server said.
Morgan blinked. “Then I guess I’ll have red.”
“It’s good,” the server offered. “Not boxed wine.”
That was setting a low bar, but she nodded. “That’s fine.”
“You can explain the rules of shuffleboard while we watch these guys.” Heidi nodded in the direction of two heavyset twentysomethings engrossed in a game.
“There’s nothing to it. You both start from the same end, shoot your pucks. The aim is to get closest to the far end without them falling off. When you’ve shot all your pucks, only the person closest to the end gets all the points. First to fifteen. Or twenty-one.”
“My sort of rules.” Heidi watched as the first guy released his puck and it sailed in a gentle glide along the sanded surface to rest on one side of the two-point scoring zone.
Morgan pretended to study the bar. Heidi’s immersion in the shuffleboard game meant she could process her near miss at the Park Grille. Her stomach churned—what if all her ex-colleagues had come along as she and Heidi had sat at the bar? Asked her where she was working?
Her stomach turned over at the thought. If only she was the sort of person to laugh off a failure, turn it into a joke, shrug it away as unimportant—as Heidi seemed to be able to do.
But she had never been like that. And even if she was, this disaster was something she couldn’t just blow off.
The server returned with two Coronas and two large glasses of red wine. She set them on the table. “Happy hour. Two for one.”
“Cool.” Heidi picked up her bottle and tapped it against Morgan’s glass. “I like this bar.”
Morgan took a sip of her wine. The server was right—it wasn’t anything she’d put in her small cellar, but it was perfectly acceptable. Pleasant, even. She took a larger mouthful.
On the shuffleboard, one player knocked off two of his opponent’s pucks.
“Good shooting!” Heidi called.
The guy high-fived her as he waited for his next turn.
Would she have been able to bluff her way through any questions from ex-coworkers about where she was working?
Probably not. The Denver finance world wasn’t that big—had she pretended to be working somewhere, one of them would have known someone who knew someone there, and she’d have been forced to admit that, no, she didn’t know Rufus or whoever.
She took another mouthful of wine. And that would have gone south fast. Lies uncovered.
Pity in her ex-coworkers’ eyes as she was forced to admit that she was unable to get another job.
And Heidi would have known exactly why she needed a roommate.
Why was the last thing making her so uncomfortable? Heidi was just that—a roommate—and there was no reason her opinion of Morgan mattered. Except, somehow, it did.
Heidi was unapologetic about who she was.
No pretensions. She was open about working in a bar, that her ex had defrauded her, that most of her clothes came from the thrift store.
If Heidi had secrets, she wasn’t very good at keeping them.
Or else she was, and hers were buried so deep that Morgan had no idea.
The shuffleboard players were now best of three.
Heidi turned to her. “Want to play doubles with these two when they’ve finished?”
“Sure.” Her glass was nearly empty. When had that happened? She drained it, then pulled over the second glass.
Heidi crushed the lime inside her bottle’s neck and took a mouthful of beer—she was still only halfway down the first bottle. “Look at the food here.” She nodded at the server wending her way through the tables with two fat burgers and a basket of fries. “That looks awesome.”
“Are you still hungry?”
“I wasn’t until I saw those. Ten-dollar burgers during happy hour. I’ve just found my new favorite place. We should come back again.”
“Maybe they need staff?”
“I might ask. Not now, though, not when I’m drinking.” Heidi tapped Morgan’s arm. “Thanks for bringing me here.”
“Technically, you brought me. This one was your idea.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” She rubbed Morgan’s arm and rested her head on Morgan’s shoulder for a second. “I have good ideas sometimes.”
Her soft hair tickled Morgan’s chin, the red streak prominent when Morgan looked down. The clean smell of Heidi’s shampoo filled her nose.
It was the warm hug that was a bit more: Heidi’s hand running up and down her forearm sent trickles of heat down her spine. Heidi’s head on her shoulder made her think of her best friend in college—now married and living in Wisconsin—her closest friend. When had she lost contact with Rumi?
The shuffleboard players ended their game and started the tiebreaker.
She and Heidi would be playing soon. But right now, with Heidi’s head on her shoulder, a bar where she would never meet her ex-colleagues, and some more-than-half-decent wine, she didn’t care.
This was the moment, and the moment was good.
Heidi raised her head, and Morgan missed the warm weight of it.
Heidi sighed, long and deep, and reached for her beer.
“What were you thinking that made you sigh like that?”
“Serena. Wondering how long before Brandon finds her. I so hope she’s somewhere gorgeous. Maybe Portland. I’ve never been there. Actually, I’ve been very few places over here, and the ones I have been to—San Diego, Denver—have been determined by someone else.”
“Are those the only places you’ve been?”
“Do airports count?” She sighed again. “Didn’t think so. I guess you’ve been everywhere?”
“Not really. I’ve only lived in New Jersey and Colorado. Holidays in Vermont as a kid. Mexico in college. I’ve had a couple of short trips to Europe. Skiing, of course—”
“Of course.” Was that sarcasm in Heidi’s voice? “I bet you’re a black run skier. Me, I can just about bumble down an Aussie bunny run, which is nothing compared to what you have here.”
“Blue runs, mainly. I like to cruise, not be terrified.”
Heidi nudged her shoulder. “Your green runs would terrify me.”
Somehow, that seemed surprising. Heidi seemed to grab life as it happened—hadn’t she just packed up and flown to the States without much thought?
Although she did get a green card—that took a lot of planning.
She nudged back. “Somehow, I doubt that. I bet you snowboard, not ski, and that you just launch off into space and assume you’ll figure it out as you go. ”
Heidi blinked. “I’d like to learn to snowboard, but I think you just figured me out. I’ve always been told I’m too impulsive, like it’s a bad thing.”
Was it? Somehow she didn’t think so, at least not for Heidi.
For Morgan, however, well, that was different.
She was the steady one. The one with responsibilities: career, home, mortgage…
Aunt Linda. She swallowed. She’d pushed the reality of Linda’s situation to the back of her mind, but it couldn’t stay there.
She had to bring it forward, think it through, juggle her budget again, and then persuade Linda to accept her money.
For her kids’ sake, yes, but mainly for her.
“Hey, girls, you’re up.” One of the shuffleboard players came over. “You want to play with each other as a team or mix it up?”
Morgan glanced at them. Uh, no. “With each other.”
“I’m Conor, and this is Logan,” the taller and broader of the two said.
They introduced themselves, and Logan gestured. “Ladies first.”
Morgan took one of the blue pucks and aimed up the middle. She overestimated, and it skidded off the end into the gutter.
Conor’s first shot balanced on the left-hand edge of the two-point section.
Heidi stepped up. “Like this?” she asked Morgan.
“Don’t grip so hard,” Morgan said.
At the same time, Conor said, “Hold it tighter, then release.”
Heidi arched a brow, and nodded at Morgan, making a show of loosening her grip. Her puck skidded along the wood to stop just into the one-point section.
“Good call,” she said to Morgan. “Thanks.”
Conor huffed a breath but turned to watch Logan. He took a minute to line up, and his shot glanced off Heidi’s puck, knocking hers into the gutter before Logan’s puck came to a stop on the three-point line.
The game continued. And there was muscle memory, Morgan found, even for something as simple as shuffleboard.
Her fingers automatically found the best grip, the correct amount of force.
Heidi, too, was finding her stride, although she was more erratic.
A perfect four-point shot, the puck hanging off the edge of the back gutter was followed by two shots that spun straight into the channel.
Conor and Logan won all three games easily.
“Would y’all like to go again?” Conor asked. “You were just getting into it.” His gaze caressed Morgan from head to toe, lingering on her breasts and thighs.
Right there was why there was no way. She summoned a smile. “I’ll sit this out.”
Heidi shot her a sideways glance. “Me too. Thanks, guys. That was good. Might see you again sometime, and we’ll have that rematch.”