ME!
“Ummm, I’m sorry.” I wave Jacqueline over. “I think you mean her?”
Never in my life did I think I’d get mistaken for a supermodel, especially when my nose is most likely in serious competition with Rudolph for whose nose is brighter—even though I’ve got the frozen-snot title on lock. I might have complained for the last hour and a half, but now I will go home and write in my diary (that I will buy on the way home) that today is the best day of my entire life. You know, next to sex with Maxwell and opening day at HERS.
“Ummm . . .” my style sister says as Jacqueline approaches. “I mean, we totally love Jacqueline, but you’re Brynn Sterling, right?”
My head jerks back in surprise and welcome heat floods my freezing face. “Uh? Yeah. I am.”
“Oh my god. I just love you.” She leans in and gives me a dreaded hug that suddenly, coming from a random young woman who knows who I am, doesn’t seem so dreadful. “I’m a senior at Metro. I’m a brewery operations major and you are my idol. What you have done for women in the Denver bar scene has literally been life changing for me.”
“It’s true,” one of the people in her group says. “You’re like her LeBron James.”
“Shut up!” she hisses beneath her breath. “I mean, she’s not wrong though. I was a nursing major. I hate blood and was probably going to fail, but my parents both convinced me it was the smartest option. But then I read the article on you in Westword and you talked about women wanting to have quality beer and a space to go where we were celebrated instead of used. It was my aha moment. I mean, my parents stopped paying for my school, but now I’m studying something I’m passionate about.”
“I . . . um . . . I, wow.” I try to organize the millions of thoughts colliding in my head. “I don’t even know what to say. I mean, thank you.”
I opened a bar.
A cute bar that I love. But a bar. Yes, it’s given me the family and community I’ve always wanted, but I never thought of HERS doing anything besides giving women a night out with good drinks and a fun atmosphere. That’s it.
Never. Not on a single vision board did I imagine this happening.
“No, thank you,” she says.
We both look at her friend aiming a phone in our direction and smile.
“Do you have a pen?” I ask, silently cursing Vonnie for convincing me to leave my purse in her car.
“Ummm . . .” She opens her small purse and starts digging around. “Sorry.” She aims an embarrassed smile my way. “I thought a small purse would help, but I still have the same amount of crap I had in my big purse, just shoved inside here. Ah!” She holds up her hand with the kind of dramatic flair that I really appreciate. “I knew I had one.”
“Okay.” I start to write on the scrap of paper I had crumpled inside of my coat pocket, realizing that we all have smartphones and this entire scene was completely unnecessary. Oh well! Too late to turn back now. “I’m writing down my number and my email. If you need . . . Crap!” I cringe at how ridiculous I sound. “I didn’t even get your name!”
“Dani.” She makes the face I’m sure I just made. “Well, Danielle, but everyone calls me Dani.”
“Well, Dani, if you need a part-time job or internship or anything, please don’t hesitate to reach out.” I hand her the piece of paper. “There aren’t many of us in this industry, so we have to stick together.”
Dani eyes the paper like I just handed her a bar of gold. “Thank you.” She stares at the paper until one of her friends not so subtly clears their throat. “Oh. Right! Um, my friend wants to know if you are . . . um . . . you know, if—”
“Oh my god. Are you really dating Maxwell Lewis?” Dani’s friend asks.
My eyebrows shoot to my hairline. I mean, I know Denver is small and all, but I didn’t realize we were already news. But I think the thing that surprises me most is how excited I am to squeal to the world that Maxwell Lewis is my man. “Yeah, I am.” My lips are so numb from the cold that I don’t even notice I’m biting it until Eloise reappears.
“Soft eyes and a lip bite? She’s definitely thinking about Max.”
Geez! All this crap from Eloise and she isn’t even a freaking Lady Mustang!
Thirty-three
“Are you ever going to tell me where we’re going?” Maxwell asks for the hundredth time.
It’s the first round of playoffs this weekend. But because the Mustangs have Maxwell—and some other quality players, I guess—they won their division and were granted a bye game during the first week. Which is a thing and I totally knew it and Charli didn’t have to explain it to me at all. Because of the bye, Maxwell has the weekend off, and when I found that out, nothing could stop me from ditching my responsibilities and dragging Maxwell out of Denver.
The food drive was a bit of a wakeup call for me, and suddenly, I didn’t feel comfortable talking about him behind the bar, or giving him a quick kiss on the sidewalk. The streets were watching and I got hit with a bad case of stage fright.
“You know what?” I chance a quick glare at him as we hit the base of the foothills. “You’re worse than Ace. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.” I jab a thumb to the back seat. “It’s not a superlong drive, but I brought snacks in case you get hungry.”
He grabs the bag of baby carrots I packed as an afterthought for the hummus I stuck in the cooler and starts eating them . . . without the hummus.
“What are you doing?” I have to beat back the urge to pull to the shoulder of the highway.
His eyebrows scrunch together, the glare off the bright, snow-covered boulders lining the highway blinding him temporarily. “Uh . . . eating a carrot?”
“Yeah, I know.” I roll my eyes, but he can’t see, because unlike him, I didn’t forget my sunglasses. “Put them back.”
He starts to fold the top of the bag over, but doesn’t look any less confused. “You just told me I could eat the food you packed.”
“Not the carrots.” I mean, what is he not understanding? “You can’t eat carrots in the car on a road trip. Eat the chips or candy. Oh! Or wait, there’s a store up a little bit that has fudge, so many different fudges. We can get a sampling of all the flavors. But if you don’t want sweets, we can stop at Coney Island and get a hot dog, the food’s just okay, but it’s shaped like a giant hot dog, so I feel like atmosphere makes up for everything else.”
“What are you talking about?” Maxwell interrupts my rambling just as I was starting to find my way back to the topic.