“So good, Brynn,” she says in her usual, muted voice.
“Yeah it is!” We do an air high five. “I’m naming that one Peter’s Angel. Wait . . . no!” I shout like she’s not right in front of me. “Fuck Peter. This is your drink. Model Behavior!”
“Oh my god.” Poppy jumps up and down, almost spilling her creation all over my potion recipes. “Do you remember that movie? You guys have to come over later and we’ll watch a young Justin Timberlake be bamboozled by an artsy high school student!”
“If there were a game show that revolved around random shit, you’d be the fucking queen,” Vonnie says to Poppy, tossing a couple of cherries into her Shirley Temple.
“Do you not remember Marlee? She’s a trivia freak. The two of them together could rule the world.” If world domination were dependent on Disney original movies and pointless trivia.
“Please warn me if they are getting together. I’m not sure I could handle that.” Vonnie laughs, but I can see it in her eyes that she means it. “Anyway, the bar looks great. You can’t even tell anything happened.”
And there it is.
The thing I wanted to avoid for the rest of my life.
“It really does,” Poppy pipes in, admiring the handiwork my dad and Mr. Harper spent all night doing.
“Thanks. I’m lucky my dad lives around the corner and that Marlee’s will do anything to get an inside scoop.”
“What even happened?” Charli sits up, miraculously cured from her earlier bout of drunkenness and gloom. “Max is legit the nicest person I’ve ever met, and I’m including you bitches and Shawn in that statement. Something had to have happened.”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” I put my nose in the air. Hoity-toity is my go-to attitude for things that make me uncomfortable. “There was a check under the door the next morning and I cashed it before he could change his mind. Plus, because I had free labor, I now have enough to take a trip to the Container Store.”
And I don’t feel the littlest bit guilty about not giving him the leftover funds. I mean, I had to open late while everything was being finished, so I’m calling it even.
I still don’t understand what happened. I thought we were finally getting to the place I’d been fantasizing about for years, and then, bam! A glass whizzed past my head.
Whiplash and rage don’t go well together.
“The Container Store? I’m coming!” Poppy invites herself. “Ace and TK have started collecting football and baseball cards, and if I come home to my dining room table covered in them again, I’m going to scream. Plus, I saw some blogger organize her pantry and I want to try.”
“Look at you, Holly Homemaker, being all domestic and shit,” I tease, and duck to avoid the piece of ice she throws at my face. “What? It’s cute.”
“I can’t stand you. I don’t know why I still come here.” Her eyes narrow. Someone who doesn’t know her as well as I do might be intimidated, but Poppy is all bark and no bite.
I open my arms wide and make my way toward her retreating, giggling form when synchronized gasps pull my attention. I look at my terrible taste testers to see them all staring at the door with their jaws on the floor. I follow their eyes and when I see what they see, my vision swims in front of me and my fingers go numb.
“Speak of the devil and he shall appear.” Vonnie breaks the silence first. “You have to give it to him, that’s a brave-ass man.”
I won’t give Maxwell Lewis shit.
Brave? My ass. A jerk? That’s closer. A thoughtless psychopath? Spot on.
All these years, I thought he was sweet and shy. While all along, he was probably just hiding his asshole tendencies.
I don’t have to do anything to secure the scowl on my face, just the thought of him makes it appear. Seeing him has my blood boiling and fists clenched. I thought I never wanted to see him again, but maybe what I really needed was a satisfying face-to-face. I brace and start to mentally prepare my most vicious tongue-lashing yet, but then, in true Maxwell fashion, he doesn’t say anything. Instead he makes eye contact and quickly moves to occupy one of the few empty tables I have left in the very back.
What. The. Actual. Fuck?
“What the fuck?” I say to the confused and possibly relieved (Jacqueline is just pure relief) faces staring back at me. “What just happened?”
Charli opens her mouth to talk, but before the words come out, the front door crashes open and Aviana glides through in her five-inch pumps, a small camera crew trailing behind her.
“I’m here, bitches!” She pulls her glasses off in a way I thought was only possible due to movie magic and flips her long, glossy, advertised-on-Instagram hair over her shoulder, finally taking in the expressions of her “bitches.” “Oh shit. What did I miss?”
Nobody says a word, but four fingers point to the table in the back occupied by one stupid, but still hot, jerkface.
“Oh shit,” Aviana breathes, then turns to the camera crew. “Start rolling, this could get good.”
Fucking Lady Mustangs.
Three
Stalker.
Merriam-Webster defines the verb “stalk” as “to pursue quarry or prey stealthily.”
I wonder if the behavior of the mopey, annoying, but still-hot guy ruining the entire vibe of my bar for the last week fits under that definition.
“Are you going to say anything to him today?” Paisley whispers into my ear as she passes behind me.
Paisley has worked at HERS since it opened. She said she applied because she was in desperate need of a job, and she stayed so she could watch Real Housewives on big screens at work. Now she works here because the football player drama is better than Jersey season one and New York season nine combined.
She thinks I’m next.
She’s wrong.
“Nope.” I don’t look up and it’s not because my stupid, traitorous eyes will find Maxwell Lewis no matter how hard I try to avoid him. I’m just really focused on putting the limes in the cute new acrylic bins I bought at the Container Store.
I mean, it’s not like I have some secret love for him or anything.
Not at all.
I hold a mean grudge; it’s gonna be a while before he’s off my shit list.
But even my hatred can’t change the fact that he’s smokin’ fucking hot. And him showing up and rubbing his biceps and really nice ass in my face at work is just another thing for me to hold against him. As if trashing my bar wasn’t enough for him.