I nod and reach for the next glass to fill. Molly picks up the ciders, which are poured without spilling a drop, and plops them on her tray. “Be back for the G and T.”
I reach for the glass for the gin and tonic and bend to scoop some ice into the glass. Chase lurches over the bar and wraps his hand around my forearm. “Stop!”
Our eyes lock. He looks nervous. “I’m just scooping up some ice for the drink.”
“Never put a glass into the ice trough,” Chase warns. “Use the scoop. Always. If the glass breaks or chips in there, which can happen, then you have to empty the whole thing. All the ice is useless.”
Oh. Shit. That makes total sense and I can’t believe I’m too stupid to think of it. I feel my cheeks redden, like a tool. Chase slides back down onto his bar stool, letting go of my arm, and I quickly put the glass on the bar top and use the metal scoop that’s right there. Crisis averted. Chase just probably saved my job because that would have been a big mistake on a busy night like tonight, and I’ve had too many little ones to forgive a big one. I finish making the drink and as Molly puts it on her tray Murph bounces back. He surveys the bar area and smiles. “All good?”
“Yeah. Can I run to the bathroom now?” I ask. I don’t even have to go, I just want to get away from Chase and Jason and anyone who witnessed my near screw-up. But mostly Chase.
“Yeah, in fact, take fifteen,” Murph says and looks out over the crowd which is shifting. The drinks groups are starting to thin out and so we’ll likely have a lull in a minute. “You’re overdue for a break.”
I mumble a thanks and without looking back, I head off, making my way out of the bar and to the street. I have no place in particular to go, I just want some fresh air. I walk past the windows on the bookstore side, and around the corner, where I stop and lean against the brick wall. “Bowen.”
My name is called just as I was about to close my eyes. I turn and see Chase walking towards me. “Hey.”
He walks over all casual, calm, and confident. Three C words I used to be familiar with before I started working here. He smiles. “You’re beating yourself up, aren’t you? Over an averted disaster?”
“I take my job very seriously.” It’s not exactly an answer.
He stops directly in front of me and runs a hand through his hair. It’s ridiculously perfect despite him raking his fingers through it. The man issofucking hot. I’ve never really thought about my ‘type’ much before. Now I feel like I could write it down. It’s old money confidence meets bold sexual curiosity, wrapped in a sculpted body with devil may care hair and eyes of the purest blue. Unfortunately, that type seems to know he deserves more than a poor farm boy who can’t scoop ice without a tutorial.
“I get it.” Chase breaks the tense silence between us. “You’re new and no one told you the little details. Seriously, crisis was averted. Unlike when I did it at my cousin’s engagement party.”
“You bartended at your cousin’s engagement party?”
Chase shakes his head and that confident smile I find so attractive slips a little. “No. I got rightfully smashed at my cousin’s engagement party. Was annoyed at the length of time it was taking to get my seventh scotch on the rocks and slipped behind the bar to do it myself.”
“Oh.” I cringe for him. That makes his smile grow stronger.
“Yeah. Dunked my crystal tumbler into the ice trough and it broke.” Chase shakes his head slowly. “Best part? It was being held on a boat. A yacht. But a yacht without another way to get ice so the whole damn vessel had to cruise back to the dock and someone had to run off and fetch bags of ice from the gas station”
“Oh man.”
Chase shoves both hands in the front pocket of his suit pants. He obviously came right to Vino and Veritas from work because I don’t know why else he would be dressed so formally. Marketing and PR firm owners wear suits, right? Anyway, he looks even hotter in a suit than he did in jeans and a T-shirt on stage last week. The man clearly doesn’t have a bad look. And now he’s trying to make me feel better with tales of his own shortcomings. Which makes him pretty fucking awesome. “Thanks for saving me from the same fate.”
Chase shrugs and his eyes twinkle in the glow of the nearby streetlamp. “Even if you’d done it, your fate wouldn’t have been as bad. That happened almost two years ago and there hasn’t been a family event since where my aunt hasn’t brought it up.”
“Sorry.”
He shrugs. “You don’t look like a guy who would let that bother him.”
“Neither do you,” I counter.
Chase’s blue eyes drop to his dress shoes. They look like they cost more than the eleven-year-old car I drive. “I won’t care, eventually.”
A silence settles over us and I pull my phone out of my back pocket and double check the time. “I don’t want to leave Murph hanging for too long.”
“Thanks for not leaving us hanging,” Chase says. “The band.”
“That’s hardly a chore. I love playing and getting paid for it will be great,” I say and realize we’re both making this way more awkward that it has to be, so I decide to just say it. “And don’t worry about the other night. I get it was, like, a mistake or a one-off or whatever. No worries.”
I push myself off the wall in order to make my way back to the bar but he takes a quick step to his right so he’s blocking my path. And he’s close enough that I can smell his cologne, which smells as rich and sensual as his loft looked. “I should have called you.”
“Not if you didn’t want to.”
“I wanted to.” Chase’s eyes are suddenly everywhere but my face. He’s looking to his left, his right, and over both my shoulders, before his gaze lands on my face again. The three Cs he’s been exuding since he met me — confident, calm, casual — are replaced with a different C. Concern. And suddenly my only boyfriend, Trevor’s face, dances through my memory. “It’s just I’m kind of a one-night stand guy. More than once becomes a thing and I don’t do things… relationships. I mean I would but can’t because… I don’t really know if—"
