Page 7 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Bouncer

"So what do you think," Maya's saying, already three steps into a pitch about engagement metrics and posting schedules, and I watch her hands move while she talks, quick and precise, cutting the air into the same tidy sections as her spreadsheet. Ainsley's nodding along, genuinely interested, which isn't nothing, because Ainsley doesn't fake interest for anybody.

"Honestly," Ainsley says when Maya pauses for breath, "some of that's good stuff, and I'll pass it along to Simon's people, see if any of it sticks. But I can't promise you paid work here, not with a marketing team already on retainer."

"That's fair. I can work with a lot of budgets." Maya's already flipping to another tab in her folder, ready for the objection, rehearsed for exactly this moment.

"What I actually need," Ainsley says, tapping her pen against the bar, "is a bartender. We're short three shifts a week, and I've been covering them myself, which isn't sustainable. You said you're starting your business?"

Maya blinks. Whatever's next on her tab isn't built for this pivot. "I mean. Technically. But I'm a marketer, not a bartender."

"Can you make a drink?"

"I can follow a recipe card."

"That's more than half the people I've interviewed this month." Ainsley studies her for a second, the way she studies most people who walk through that door, quick and thorough. "Steady paycheck while you build your client list. We can talk about the marketing stuff too, separately, once you've got a foot in the door here. What do you say?"

I sit still, watching this happen in real time, watching Maya's entire plan bend sideways into something she didn't walk in here for.

"I say yes." The words come out before she's finished thinking them through; I can tell by the small flicker of surprise on her own face right after. "I say yes, absolutely. Thank you."

My gut does something ugly and possessive that has no business existing yet, given that twenty minutes ago I didn't know this woman had a face to go with the voice. She's about to be standing behind that bar at least three nights a week, close enough to talk to, close enough that I'll have to do my job with her in the room, and my job requires a level of focus I'm not sure I've got in me anymore.

"Perfect, you can start Saturday." Ainsley claps once, decision made, already moving on to logistics, training shifts and schedules, and I realize I've got about ten seconds left before this stops being a private problem.

"Archer." Ainsley waves me over without looking up from her notepad. "Come meet our new bartender. Maya, this is Archer; he handles the door and keeps the place from turning into a mess most nights."

Maya turns. Whatever's on her face when she does, a professional smile already halfway assembled, drops the second her eyes land on mine and actually sees me, really sees me, the way she hasn't bothered to yet.

I watch it happen. Watch the exact moment the voice on the phone lines up with the man on the barstool, watch her go through the whole call in about a second and a half, my landlord, my spreadsheet, my voicemail, my texts. Color drains and then floods back twice as fast, pink climbing up her neck and into her cheeks until she looks like she's standing too close to the fireplace.

"You," she says, which isn't a sentence, isn't anything, just the one word her whole nervous system had left in it.

I let the silence sit there for as long as I want to, because some pleasures are worth being petty about.

"Congratulations, Spreadsheets." I lift my soda water half an inch, something close to a toast. "Happy birthday."

Chapter Five

Maya

Behind a bar for the first time in my life, I discover that eight years of marketing metrics prepared me for nothing.

Ainsley walks me through the basics an hour before opening, pointing out the well, the soda gun, the specific shelf where the good tequila lives so I stop reaching for it every time someone orders a margarita. I nod along, take notes on my phone, and feel almost competent until she hands me a laminated sheet with a smile that's trying too hard to look casual.

"House drinks. Figured you'd want it in writing."

The lamination gets me somewhere soft and unprepared for it. Ratios, garnish notes, even a little diagram of how to rim a glass, all sealed under plastic, like she knew exactly what kind of person she just hired.

"You laminated this." My voice comes out thicker than intended.

"I laminate everything. Ask Troy." She shrugs like it's nothing, already moving on to the register, but I catch the small pleased look before she turns away, the look of someone who noticed the plastic sleeve thing wasn't a red flag after all, it was a language, and she just spoke it back to me.

I clip a pen to my apron before my first customer orders anything.

By hour two, I've annotated Ainsley's sheet within an inch of its life. A margin note about ice ratios. A second margin note correcting my first margin note. A tiny arrow pointing to a whiskey sour reminding myself, in block letters, DRY SHAKE FIRST, YOU ANIMAL, after the first attempt sprays foam across the bar top and onto a man who did not order foam with his drink.

"You built a cheat sheet for the cheat sheet," Ainsley says, watching me highlight something in yellow.

"I contain multitudes."