“Just give it a shot. We’re here in Norris.”
I straightened up and looked around. “This is a town?”
“By local standards, yes. It has a gas station and a stop light, so yes, it’s a town. The bar’s called O’Dowd’s.”
“That doesn’t sound very promising.”
“You’ll like it. If you can’t trust your occasional chauffeur, who can you trust?”
“True.”
He pulled into the parking lot of a dark-colored, freestanding building. There was a smattering of cars in the parking lot, but it wasn’t even dinnertime yet, so I hadn’t expected it to be crowded. “When should I come back?” Evan asked.
“Three hours,” I said. Any longer, and it would be more like going AWOL, not just taking a break. “Wait, do they have a dart board?”
“Yep.”
“Four hours.” Maybe I could get a picture of Aiden and tape it to the board. The car stopped and I hopped out before Evan could get out and open the door for me. Instead, he rolled down his window.
“Have fun. Go crazy, if you want—you’ve got a designated driver.”
“Will do.”
“I’m serious,” he said, his eyes kind. “If you don’t have a smile on your face when you get back in the car, then you haven’t had enough to drink. Everyone needs an escape now and then.”
I waved as he drove away, thinking about what he said. Yeah, escapes were necessary, but coming out west was supposed to be my escape. And now I needed an escape from that escape. I laughed to myself as I pulled open the heavy wooden door. If the bartender wasn’t some wise and wizened elder, but in fact some young dude who wouldn’t stop hitting on me, I was going to need an escape from my escape from my escape.
But as my eyes adjusted to the dark interior of O’Dowd’s, I spotted the bartender and sensed we were going to get along just fine.
“What do you want to try this time?” Kylie asked an hour or so later. She was a year or two younger than me, had blonde hair and blue eyes, and made a mean mojito.
“Surprise me.”
Kylie nodded and turned away to peruse the bottles lining the back wall. Evan was right, she was easy to talk to. I’d already learned that she was starting graduate school in the fall and that she’d lived in small towns her whole life. But mostly, we’d talked about my issues. Well, most of them. I’d signed the NDA, so I couldn’t talk about the movie—even if I didn’t know what the hell it was about—and I also hadn’t mentioned Aiden. I just told her that I’d suddenly met up with the stepbrothers I’d never wanted to meet and that it wasn’t going well.
After that, I mostly complained about the pretend job they’d given me.
Kylie set a colorful drink in front of me. “Tequila sunrise.”
“I think I read that in high school English class.”
She laughed. “I think that might’ve been To Kill a Mockingbird.”
How nice to meet someone who got my sense of humor. And she made good drinks, too. Kylie was definitely getting a big, fat tip.
“How come this place is so empty?” I asked after sampling her latest work.
“Well, for starters, Norris has a population of 612.”
I studied the red liquor at the bottom of my glass. “That’d do it.”
Kylie gestured at the ten or so other customers. “This actually is pretty good for us, well, at least until Friday and Saturday night. It is hump day, after all.”
“It’s Wednesday?”
The bartender frowned. “Do I need to cut you off already?”
“Probably,” I said. “But to be fair, I wasn’t sure what day it was when I walked through the door.” Had I really only been out here for a few days? The very slow days without any real work to do made it feel like longer. After another gulp of my drink, I mentioned that to Kylie.
“Maybe just think of this position as a stepping-stone to something. Something better, I mean,” she said.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but let’s face it, it doesn’t sound like it could get much worse. Try to think of it as just a temporary thing. This is where you are now, but it’s not where you’ll always be. Like me working here.”
“Bartending isn’t your lifelong dream?”
“Hell no. But I’m going back to school in the fall, and I need the money.”
“Are the tips any good?” The other customers, mostly older men, didn’t look to be rolling in dough.
“Eh… not really. Some of the men who come here are my father’s old friends. Somehow, the fact that they knew me as a toddler means, in their minds, that they don’t have to tip me very well. I’m just Fred’s kid. And yet…” She trailed off, making a face.
“Yet they still hit on you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, shaking her head. “I just don’t get it. It’s like they think, yeah, she’s my friend’s kid, but since she works at a bar, she must want to sleep with me.”