One
Twenty-two years old, newly divorced, about to be a first-year nursing student, and I had forty-nine dollars to my name. My life was a fucking mess. My first night waitressing at Mickey’s Motorcycle Bar in downtown Phoenix was the one ray of sunshine in the recent perpetual shit storm of my life.
“Thanks for hooking me up with this job,” I told Angela. I was too embarrassed to admit that this job was my first. By age twenty-two most people had at least three or four jobs, but not me. Bryce wouldn’t let me work, so this was my first real taste of freedom since our divorce.
“Girl, of course!” She bopped on her heels excitedly. Angela was a mouthy brunette Latina that I’d been best friends with growing up. She was wearing tight jeans and a cleavage top, complete with drawn-on eyebrows and YOLO tattooed on her wrist. “You picked a hell of a night to be your first. All the cocktail waitresses are being auctioned off to have a drink with patrons for charity.”
Fear spiked through me. A drink? Like a date? Even a fake date for charity with a sixty-year-old man was enough to send bile up into my throat. I wasn’t ready for a date. Not now, maybe not ever.
“Cool.”
I really needed this job. I’d have to push down my issues and deal.
Angela showed me how to clock in and handed me a waist apron. “Girl, I missed you. You went to that fancy school and got married and we all thought we’d never see you again.”
Angela was good people. We grew up together in the less desirable part of South Phoenix. Even though we hadn’t spoken in years other than liking each other’s social media pictures, she’d offered to help me the second I reached out. She had a heart of gold, and to be honest, she was the only friend I had, the only one I could call.
“Yeah … sorry. Life got … crazy.” Mild panic flooded my system just thinking about the last six years with Bryce. Who the fuck gets engaged at sixteen, married at eighteen, and divorced by twenty-two? What had I been thinking?
I hadn’t been thinking, that was the problem. He’d lavished me with expensive gifts, trips to Europe, and charmed my pants off. What sixteen-year-old from the ghetto wouldn’t marry the rich class president of a fancy private school? He knew what I needed and he gave it to me, climbing right up into my soul and parking there.
Letting his black heart bleed all over me to infect my every waking moment.
“Hailey?”
Fuck.
“Sorry. Nervous about my first night,” I lied.
Get your shit together.
Angela smiled. “Girl, don’t even worry. The tips at this bar are insane. If you get to work any of the biker club tables, you’re walking out with a hundred bucks for sure.”
A hundred bucks—double what I currently had. It sounded like heaven. I tied my apron around my waist and slipped a pen and pad of paper in there.
We made our way out of the back room, into blaring rock music and cigarette smoke, and stepped behind the bar. “Mickey!” Angela popped up on her heels and gave the bar’s owner a kiss on the cheek. He was a big-ass dude with a beer belly, over six feet tall and in his late forties. I guess you would need to be big and scary-looking to run the most popular biker bar in South Phoenix.
He was shaking a drink in a steel mixer. “Hey, doll.” His eyes then roamed over to me. We’d met for all of six minutes when he’d offered me the job on the spot. He seemed like a nice enough dude. Although he did tell me tonight would be my trial run. ”Fuck up too many orders, or go too slow, and I’m going to have to cut you,” he’d said.
“Hey, Hailey. Excited for your first night?” He popped the top off the steel tumbler with one hand and poured the amber liquid into a glass.
I nodded, giving him my best smile. “Totally.”
Upbeat. Peppy. That’s what cocktail waitresses were, right? Not fucking divorced twenty-two-year-old hot messes. I could do this.
He grinned. “Good. I’m going to stick you with Angela all night to train. You’ll just be her shadow. Get her whatever she needs.”
I nodded and he pointed to a banner that had been taped up against the raw brick wall.Auction to Benefit Local Homeless Shelter. “You okay with having a drink with an old geezer for charity?” he asked in a light tone.
I gulped, hugging my arms, but smiled. “Of course.”
If Bryce and I were still together and he knew I was having a drink with another man, even to benefit charity…
I had to stop thinking about him, about my old life. I’d broken free of that toxic fucking relationship and I needed to move on.
“Alright, let’s work the room. We have some time before the auction starts,” Angela told me.
I nodded, creasing my shirt before wiping my palms on my jeans. Why was I so nervous? I was a grown-ass woman, I should be able to handle bringing beers to some crusty old bikers. But these weren’t all crusty old bikers. Some of them were hot and dangerous-looking. I scanned the room. Mickey’s was a small but beloved local bar. It was skinny but long. There was a stage at the front, to the left when you first walked in. When there wasn’t a local band playing, a rock station blared out of the speakers. We had twelve four-top tables and two eight-tops for bigger parties.
