Chapter 1
Adrian
The woman with the clipboard arrived at six-thirty.
This was a problem for several reasons.
First, my shift didn't start until eight.
Second, I was still holding a pastry box and had flour on my shirt.
Third and most importantly, she walked through the front door of Barbacks with the focused energy of a general who had studied the terrain and found it acceptable and was now prepared to occupy it.
The woman was maybe thirty. She had dark hair, somewhere between brown and black, pulled back into a tight ponytail so tight that made her eyes stretch back.
Oh, and she wore a sash that said "Bride Tribe" in rhinestones.
Behind her marched thirteen more women, also sashed and bedazzled, moving like some very loud, half-drunken human amoeba.
They spread across the center section of the bar, claimed every available stool and two-thirds of the high tops, and began taking photos Benji, Jacks, the bar, the gay flags dangling from the ceiling, and, oddly, the ceiling itself.
I leaned against the doorframe of the back entrance and watched all this happen.
A moment later, Benji fled the bar and appeared at my elbow. He looked like a man who had suddenly and inexplicably found religion—or lost it—I wasn’t sure.
"The first pair of them arrived twenty minutes ago. You saw the rest just now," he said quietly.
"It's six-thirty."
"I know."
"Benji, there are—" I counted. "Fourteen women in our gay sports bar."
"Fifteen if you count the bride, and I think we should count the bride because she's wearing a veil and a sash and a button that says, 'Last Ride, Make Me Beg.' She has a crazed look in her eyes that scares me a little."
The bride was twenty-five at most, already working on what appeared to be her second drink, possibly her sixth. She radiating the specific energy of a woman who had been told this was her last night as a free woman and had taken that information far too seriously.
"Why are they here so early?"
Benji pressed his lips together in the expression he wore when a story was almost too good to tell.
"I asked Ms. Clipboard that exact question.
Very professionally, she informed me, and I'm quoting here, that they heard our food was 'super sick' and the bride wanted to eat before they continued bar hopping. "
"The bride."
"Madison’s her name. Apparently eating here was her personal request." He paused. "It was not on the schedule."
I glanced toward Courtney. She was standing very straight at the edge of the group, clipboard pressed to her chest.
"She doesn't look happy," I said.
"She is not," Benji confirmed. "But Madison is the bride and Courtney is the MOH. There is a hierarchy to these things that even a laminated schedule cannot override, kind of like a Brit trying to tell the Queen ‘no.” One simply doesn’t do such things.” Benji said the last bit in the worst British accent any Asian man has ever attempted.
Then he added, "I respect it, honestly. True leadership is adjusting to the terrain. "
"How long does it take fifteen women to eat?"
"Never mind. I probably don't want to know," I said.
Benji opened his mouth. Then he closed it, as Jacks stopped on his way to the back, empty ice bucket in hand. “Hey, Adi, ready to shake your snake?”
I shook my head and tried not to chuckle. Jacks was adorable, like a giant, gullible, lovable, muscled teddy bear; but bless his heart, he could be thick at times.
“Hey, Jacks. You know it,” I said, side-stepping snake talk. "Where's Finn?"
"Office," Jacks said, nodding his head toward the back.
"Does he know?" I asked.
Jacks shrugged. "He knew when they walked in. He went to the office approximately forty-five seconds later. Fucking coward."
I craned my neck to glance at the office door. It was closed and probably locked.
"He abandoned us, didn’t he?" I asked.
"He absolutely abandoned us," Benji agreed. "Mark's here though."
Mark sat in his corner booth with his laptop open and a glass of iced tea in one hand.
He was staring at his screen while occasionally sneaking a peek at the assembled ladies.
The grin that crawled across his lips spoke of profit margins and revenue models on a sports-free Saturday that was usually more of a break-even affair.
I set my pastry boxes on the bar and called through the kitchen pass-through. "Hey, Rod."
Our resident chef appeared, his head careful not to poke far enough through the pass-through to be seen by our boisterous guests.
He homed in on the pastry boxes, squinted cautiously at the bachelorette party occupying the center of the bar, then looked back at me and released the longest sigh in the history of breathing.
"Guava's yours," I shrugged and nodded toward the boxes. "Rest is for everyone else."
Rod stretched an arm through the pass, snatched the guava box, and vanished faster than the Road Runner being chased by poor ole Wile E.
Ms. Clipboard found me before I could escape to the back to change.
"Excuse me," she said. "Are you the performer?"
I looked down at my flour-dusted shirt then at her. "Yes, ma'am. That’s me."
"Wonderful." She scanned me head to toe then made notes on her clipboard, grunting like a mechanic assessing a ticking noise. I got a good look at what was attached to the board while she wrote.
There were printed sheets and laminated tabs.
For a bachelorette party.
I was suddenly very afraid of the evening to come.
"We have you scheduled for nine, nine-forty-five, and eleven, with the option for an additional set at midnight if the bride’s energy warrants."
I sucked in a breath. "Who made this schedule."
"I did. I'm Courtney. I'm the MOH." She said it the way people said job titles. "I've been planning this for eight months. Barbacks was a last minute addition and appears to have capture the bride’s heart even more than her groom."
"Courtney," I said. "I work here, but I'm not booked for any event specifically. My sets are for the whole bar."
Her eyes narrowed as she began clicking the button on the end of her pen.
I held her gaze.
She clicked faster.
"Alright, the whole bar will be watching," she said pleasantly, and clicked her pen three more times. Then she made a note on her clipboard, spun on a heel, and returned to her group.
I went to find Benji who'd deserted me somewhere between clicks. He was making drinks for four of the sash contingent with the delight of a man exactly where he wanted to be. Jacks had still not returned from the back, the little chicken shit.
I waited until there was a gap. "Courtney has a schedule."
"I know,” Benji nodded without looking back. “She showed it to me. It's typed and laminated."
"She has me down for four sets."
"That’s what I saw." He added something to a shaker. "On the bright side, they're ordering consistently and tipping well. The bride told me this is the third bar they've hit, which means they have a timeline and will eventually leave."
"When?"
"Courtney said ten-thirty at the latest." He shook the drink. "She called it a 'hard out.' It's on the schedule."
"She told me there might be a midnight set. I don’t think they’ll ever leave. Courtney even amended her schedule to reflect that."
"Courtney," Benji said, with far too much admiration, "is a force of nature. I respect her completely. She may become my new bestie. We'll see how the night goes."
I shattered Rod's sigh-record at that.
With one final glance at the women, I snuck away to change; but before I made it past the counter, the bride caught my eye. A grin split her face, and she wiggled her fingers in greeting. I gave her a respectful nod in return.
“Jesus, take the wheel,” I muttered.
The back room was quiet, which was the thing I usually loved about my pre-shift hour.
While the bar settled into itself, the hum not yet at full volume and the whole evening still theoretical, I could prepare in peace.
I changed into my work speedo, drank half my orange Fanta in one go because the situation called for it, and stood at the mirror for a moment and assessed the evening before me.
Fifteen bachelorette party members.
Courtney with her laminated schedule.
A bride already on her second drink — probably her fifth — at six forty-five in the evening.
And a bar filling up with regulars who would either love the intrusion or abandon us for one of the other bars down the street. It would be my job to keep the boys in their seats no matter what craziness our rhinestone-covered friends threw at us.
Fine.
I had danced in worse conditions.
I had once danced through a fire alarm test. I’d performed ballet during a power outage that lasted four minutes.
One memorable night, some dude brought an emotional support parrot into the bar.
The bird screamed vulgarities every thirty seconds throughout my second set, but I never missed a beat.
And trust me, nothing says professional performance like a parrot screaming "sloppy pussy" every time I shook my butt.
When I returned to the bar, the bachelorette party had reorganized themselves into a configuration that placed the bride directly in front of the bar with a clear sightline to the performance area, which Courtney was photographing from three different angles for documentation purposes.
Yes, she'd brought three tripods and three cameras.
An hour and fifteen minutes later, most of their food was gone, their tables were cleared, and the women of the bachelorette party had crossed from pre-game into something considerably further along the spectrum.
They were also decidedly drunker.
The food had been declared ‘super sick’ by unanimous vote, and much to my chagrin, the bar hop plan was being discussed in the past tense.
Madison sat leaned forward on a stool at the bar telling Benji her entire love story from the beginning.
Benji was listening with his elbows on the bar and his full attention because Benji genuinely wanted to know.
I was fairly certain I was witnessing the bonding between a gay and his new gal pal.
Benji had literally gone from bride’s maid to bride while I was changing.
With barely a glance back, Benji handed me a fresh Fanta as I passed the well.
"She moved the garnish trays," I said, scanning the bar top.
"I put them back," Benji said.
"She must've moved them again," I countered.
"I know. We're in a negotiation. It's sensitive.
" He gave the bride a “give me a second” finger then turned back toward me to whisper, "Also, Madison's been watching your Instagram for two years and she's very excited.
You'll probably have to sign her boobs before the night's over.
I have a permanent Sharpie standing by. You should personalize it so it's special for the groom on their wedding night. "
I wanted to laugh or chuckle or whatever one did when told he had to sign women's personal parts, but I was so numb at that point that nothing came out.
I looked at Madison.
Madison waved at me with both hands, her eyes like blinky full moons.
I waved back.
We were literally three feet apart with only a bar counter between us . . . and we were waving. This night just kept getting better.
"You're a pro. Just keep saying that. You've got this," Benji said.
"Right. Pro. Got it," I said, accepting a shoulder pat from my sadistically grinning coworker and resisted the urge to toss some of my precious Fanta in his face. That would’ve been a waste of good rocket fuel.
The bar was filling around the bachelorette party by then, our usual Saturday crowd arriving, finding their spots, and doing the brief recalibration that gay guys did when they discovered a large pack of women inhabiting their sacred ground.
Most adapted, and a few of the regulars caught my eye across the room, offering expressions ranging from sympathy to utter amusement.
I was doing my final check of the bar surface when the front door opened.
The motion caught my eye, and I watched a man I'd never seen before stride in.
He was wide across the shoulders, wore a dark henley, and had bushy brown hair that looked like it had very strong opinions of itself.
The dude, probably in his late twenties, stood just inside the entrance for a moment, taking in the room with a single unhurried scan.
He registered the bachelorette party occupying the center section, clocked me standing on the bar edge doing a pre-shift surface check, and found a stool at the far end, well away from the rhinestones and laminated schedule.
Then he picked up the drink menu.
Jacks went to him, took his order, and returned to his table a few minutes later with something amber in a short glass. The guy settled into his stool and draped one arm over the stool back beside him, looking every bit the owner of the bar rather than a new customer.
That’s when Courtney appeared at my elbow.
"Eight minutes," she said.
"My set starts at eight-thirty, Courtney."
"I've moved the timeline up slightly to account for energy optimization." She checked her clipboard. "The girls are ready."
"Energy optimization?" I blinked rapidly at Benji.
Benji stifled a grin and looked at the ceiling.
"Fine," I said.
I downed the last of my Fanta, tossed the can in the recycle bin, and rolled my shoulders.
The moment I stepped onto the counter, the bachelorette party produced a noise that was, conservatively, eighty percent of the room's total sound output despite being less than fifteen percent of its occupancy. They managed to hit a frequency that made dogs bark from across the Tampa Bay.
Madison clasped both hands under her chin like the love-struck puppy she was.
Courtney documented everything from every angle.
The other sashes squealed and waved their drinks in the air.
From the far end of the bar, the man in the dark henley watched. He looked like a guy who’d ordered a quiet drink on a Saturday evening and received something considerably more complex—and was, despite the curl forming at the corners of his mouth, not entirely unhappy about it.
I met his gaze for just a second before the music pulled me in. His grin widened as he raised his glass approximately an inch.
I did not smile.
I was a professional.
But it was close.