That makes his face crack open in a smile and he sweeps an arm toward the myriad bottles on shelves in front of a highly-polished ice wall. “How may I serve you?”
“Two fingers of scotch. Neat.” I’ve heard my dad order this way at fine bars, so why not?
He pours about two big shots into a tumbler and slides it to me.
I take a sip. The burning feeling does not square with the ice cold chamber I’m in, so I decide to go all-in and just chug it, slamming the glass down on the bar.
“That’s it? Two warm shots in a glass?” I gasp as the liquid feels like lighter fluid pouring into my belly button.
“That’s what you ordered. Want a wine cooler next time? Or a drink with an umbrella in a coconut?”
I glare at him. “Anything that might attract the attention of a bee would be great.”
His eyes go cold, but he looks around the room, then says, “Not in here.”
“Not anywhere in your life, so I’ve been told.”
“Dec never was good at keeping his big mouth shut,” Andrew shoots back, which makes me snort in surprise. If Declan’s too talkative about, well, anything, then what kind of family did they grow up in? The handful of sentences I can pry out of him about his feelings, his past, his mother are the exact opposite of what Andrew’s saying. As the alcohol hits me and fills me with a loose sense of curiosity, I decide that alienating the one person who might give me some insight into Declan McCormick might be a mistake.
A big one.
“He’s pretty good at keeping his own secrets close to the vest,” I say in a conspirator’s voice.
Bingo!
Andrew leans in. “Yes, he is.” This gives me a chance to get a good look at him. He’s wearing a white, collared shirt, a black vest, and a name tag that says “Jordan.”
“Why are you and Declan pretending to work here?” I ask. Not the original question on the tip of my tongue, but right now I’m feeling all squiggly and casual with him. Aside from staring across a board room table at him and hearing about his OCD-crafted life to avoid being stung by a bee, I know nothing about Andrew.
“Your friend set it up. Amanda.” His lips spread in an instantaneous smile that he tries to turn into friendliness as her name pours over his lips, but I’m not deceived. Two questions fight for positioning in me, and the one that wins is:
“Amanda?” I cough out her name.
Brilliant, right?
Andrew pours two more shots in my glass and stares at me, hard. My eyes struggle in the dim light to find Declan in him, but all traces are gone.
Another patron at the bar flags for his attention, and he shrugs an apology, leaving me for a minute to pour a requested Guinness. I sip gingerly from the tumbler and remind myself that this is a job. I am working. My smartphone comes in handy and I pull it out, retrieving the evaluation form from my app and as Andrew helps a second customer with a martini, I answer questions with the background noise of the shaker.
“You look like Princess Elsa,” a slurry voice says to my right.
I look up, disoriented, and find the face of a man about ten years older than my dad. He’s bald, wearing stylish glasses with a black line straight across the top of the lenses, and has an earring in his right ear. Tattoos cover his forearms and he’s wearing a plaid button down. It’s like L. L. Bean, Mr. Clean and Keith Richards climbed into a Vita Mix and got poured out into a Man Mold.
“You’re hitting on me by using Disney movie characters in your pick up line?” I answer, trying to summon outrage as I tuck my smartphone back into my purse. None appears. The whisky just makes me find this all amusing.
My skirt melted part of my bar stool and as I shift, the cloth stays put. My thigh, though, decides to give the female equivalent of The Full Monty. Good thing I’m wearing underpants.
He lifts one shoulder and smiles, revealing two gold teeth. Both canines. “Can’t blame a guy for trying. Great line in a bar made of ice. You got a room here? And a sister?”
“A sister? Why, you have a friend for her?”
“No.” His hungry eyes are trying to tell me something, and as I sip my scotch I try to figure it out.
Can’t.
“Pete, get the hell out of here,” Andrew growls, reappearing quickly. “Quit hitting on people who graduated high school in the twenty-first century. And stop suggesting threesomes.”
“She’s legal. You’re legal, right?”
I’m flattered he might think otherwise, but I’m also trying to process what Andrew just said. Threesomes? “If you think I look like I’m under eighteen, Pete, then you need to get those glasses checked,” is all I can think to say.
Andrew hands him a glass of something clear on the rocks. “Go find someone else to bother.”
“She yours?” Pete barks out, rotating his look between me and Andrew. “Lucky man. You get those thighs wrapped around your head and you couldn’t hear a tornado coming even if it plowed through your building.”
I don’t have a brother. Don’t have a brother-in-law any more. So the look on Andrew’s face doesn’t make sense to me in the moment, though in later years I’ll come to understand it better.
“Get the hell out of here,” Andrew says, eyes flicking up to get the attention of the plainclothes security dude at the main door. His name is Jerry (I checked when I walked in) and Jerry’s there in three seconds.
“I’m a paying customer,” Pete slurs, loose eyes taking me in as I try—and fail—to cover my legs. “Who’s your boss? I’ll have you fired.”
“I’m my boss,” Andrew says as Jerry escorts (drags) Pete out.
Compassion and a kind of wariness coexist in Andrew’s eyes as he looks at me, but seems to struggle to make eye contact at the same time. “You okay?”
He seems more upset than I am. “Me? Yeah. Sure. He’s just another ass**le man who hits on women.” The thigh comment rings through my mind. I don’t know whether to be offended or flattered.
Andrew’s mouth hangs open a bit. Oh. I guess I said that part aloud.
“Would you be offended?” I add, drinking the rest of my second scotch. “If someone said that about your thighs?” I pull out my phone, not waiting for an answer. “Let me ask Amanda. I wonder if her thighs are big enough to block out sound when she’s—”
Andrew turns bright red at the mention of Amanda’s name.
Aha.
“Amanda,” I say.