CHAPTER 1
A Not-so-Happy Valentine's Day
Valentine’s Day is a bad day to be working at a dive bar.
All the loved up couples are at fancy restaurants or eating home cooked meals in domestic bliss. The singles, meanwhile, head to their local dive for two main reasons: to drown their lonely sorrows at the bottom of a glass, or to pump in some liquid courage to try to get laid.
Either way, it makes for a messy night when you’re the one slinging the drinks.
No judgment on either variety of patron. God knows I’ve been on both paths on Valentine’s Days past.
Yes, I’ve cried into my cups over countless shitty exes.
Yes, I’ve woken up in someone else’s bed on February 15th after a few too many tequila shots, spending the night before looking for love and settling for an encounter where I could pretend someone touching me meant they cared.
“Maddie girl, why aren’t you out with some nice young man tonight?”
I look up at Sylvia’s question. She’s an old timer here atMad Dog’s. That’s the biker bar my dad owns and practically my home away from home. I grew up hanging out at Dad’s office when I was little, doing little chores here and there when I was old enough. Then waitressing. Now bartending.
What a meteoric rise.
I’m not one of those fancy mixologists that works in the bougie hotels downtown. The fanciest thing I mix up most nights is a Jack and Coke.
Tonight, nobody’s even bothering with the Coke.
I pour Sylvia another shot of whiskey and slide it across the bar.
“I’m done with men,” I tell Sylvia.
Her grey eyebrows shoot up. “At your age? Nah, honey. You gotta get it while the getting’s good.”
“That’s the problem,” I say. “The getting isnotgood. What you get these days is an emotionally unavailable manchild who thinks jackhammering a girl for fifteen minutes straight is her one-way ticket to orgasmic heaven.”
She sighs. “I guess men never change.”
I pour myself my own shot of Jack. “Ain’t that the truth.”
“But at least the handsome ones are something nice to look at while they’re doing it,” she offers.
I clink my shot glass to hers. “I’ll drink to that.”
As I drink, I make my own private toast in my head.
A toast to being older and wiser. To spending Valentine’s Day earning cold hard cash instead of wasting my time and energy on some loser who’d just as soon drain it from me.
It’s a damn good thing that I’m older and wiser now. Damn good that I’ve sworn off men forever.
Because when the door swings opens, and the handsomest blue-eyed devil I’ve ever seen walks inside, my stomach does a little flip.Thatoh shit, I could totally have his babyflip that’s gotten me in so much troubleover the years.
Luckily, not the actual baby-having trouble yet. Thank God for condoms.
But because I’m older and wiser now, I ignore that tummy flip. I look back down at the limes I’m slicing like I barely notice him, like he’s not the hottest guy I’ve ever seen in my life.
After all, it’s Valentine’s Day. He could be here meeting a girlfriend.
Or a boyfriend.
Hell, knowing my luck, he’s here meeting his polyamorous situationship, of which I’ll be asked to be a part of for one night to spice things up.
