I wince on behalf of Luke because in the few minutes I’ve studied this girl, I can assume she won’t take kindly to someone second-guessing a decision she made.
“Yes, I’m certain,” she says, gritting through her perky peach lips.
Stress lines cut into Luke’s forehead as he tends to a bottle of Swift Texas Whiskey and pours the girl another glass. Luke will hold a tab if he feels a patron has had too much to drink, but after knowing the man as long as I have, I’m presuming he wants to know why this girl is sitting here, drinking whiskey like it’s a glass of water she just found in the middle of a desert.
“What’s your story?” Luke asks her. I wonder how Luke keeps track of the information he inherits. He’s a good man, always asking people about their troubles, taking them in, digesting the long drawn out stories that could be shortened to a few sentences. He’s good at giving them a listening ear they often need. I’m not sure I could do what he does. He’s obviously going for sainthood.
“I don’t have a story,” the girl says.
Luke directs his attention to the glass he’s drying, giving the girl a minute in case she changes her mind. “I see, but everyone’s got a story, don’t they?”
“No,” she says. “Not everyone. In fact, I just finished a story. It was a horrible, miserable plot in the worst book I’ve ever read. In fact, the story was so bad, no one else should ever read it.”
“Okay then. I can respect that. Do you at least have a name?” he asks.
She glares at him for a minute in between her long drawn out sip of the remaining whiskey in her glass. “Do you ask the name of every woman who sits down at your bar?”
“Well, yes I do. And the fellas too,” he argues. “Let me introduce you to a few of the regulars. That’s Dill.” He points to the guy sitting two seats down from me. “That’s Phillip.” He nods toward the guy on the opposite end of the bar. “And that there is Chance.” Luke gestures to me, and I drop my head, avoiding eye contact. I don’t want her to think I’ve been tuning in to the conversation this whole time. “Oh, and I’m Luke.”
The girl pulls in a sharp breath and presses her lips together into a hint of a smile. “Okay, Luke,” she drones. “Well, I’m August, but we still aren’t friends.”
Luke lifts his palms up in defense. I know he meant nothing bad by his attempt at small talk. “Understood. I’ll just carry on over here, and you—” Luke twists his lips to the side and nods his head in a circle, “just do whatever it is you’re doing over there.”
No one ever turns down a friendly smile like Luke’s. The guy makes more in tips than the techies in the high-rise buildings downtown. I’ve told him a time or two he should take it up a notch and get his behind over to a bar that is friendlier to women. Between his good looks and charm, he’d make more cash somewhere else. Though, I doubt his wife would be too fond of that idea—money or no money.
“Dude, what is happening?” Luke utters, leaning the palms of his hands on the bar-top in front of me. “Did you hear all that?” He’s being quiet, but I’m not entirely inconspicuous. I get the feeling Miss August is giving us a lethal look, but I don’t want to look over and catch any part of that.
“Yeah, something crawled up her skirt,” I mumble beneath my breath.
“Chicks don’t come into this place. I don’t remember the last time I served one. Do you?”
I’m here every night, so I should remember just as well. “Nope, I don’t recall the last time a dame walked in through that door.”
“You look like you had a rough one today. You sure you had a good day?” Luke asks, grabbing a rag from his back pocket to clean up the smudge in front of me.
Luke and I are the same age, went to high school together, and started working on a housing development project down the street to build up a suburban community within the city. When that ended, I kept up with construction, and he landed a job here at Kenny’s Whiskey Bar. He eventually bought the place from the old man he worked for, and after all this time, I finally see how our decisions affected us. I look like I’m rounding forty, and he still has his baby flubber cheeks with doll-like dimples. Luke doesn’t give a shit about his looks, though. He’s never had a reason to care. Annabelle Bloomer snatched Luke up during senior year of high school, and they’ve been together ever since.
“The humidity was high today. The roofing project at Dunn's house was rough.”
“Damn, I don’t miss that crap,” Luke says.
Maybe I picked the wrong job. Hell, I’d settle down with a wife and kids if I worked in a bar too. “Yeah, it never changes. That’s for damn sure.”
“Saw you checking that chick out, August. Want me to get her number for you?” Luke jiggles his brows and pinches a toothpick between his lips.
“Are you crazy, man? She’d probably pull a pistol on you just for asking.”
“Probably,” Luke says. “I love ya like a brother, but not that much.”
“No offense taken,” I say, taking a peanut from the straw basket next to me.
“Funny, Chance. Real funny.”
Another local walks on in through the front door and Luke straightens his posture to greet the guy which offers me another minute to study the scene at the other end. With an elbow propped up on the bar, August leans the side of her head into her fist while she scrolls through her phone with the other hand.
This girl is so out of place here with her long flowery skirt and white shirt hanging off the sides of her shoulders.
“What are you looking at?”
