As far as uniforms went, it was comfortable and understated. Which was a giant step up from the tit-revealing referee striped shit I had to wear at my last job. That was the same bar that offered free shots to anyone who could get a cocktail peanut stuck between our boobs.
I’d gotten fired for breaking some dude’s hand.
And that life event just happened to coincide with the one that brought me to Navesink Bank in the first place.
“How you settling in here?” Toll asked, giving me a brotherly smile that I appreciated more than he could know. I’d worked too many jobs where my fellow bartenders wanted to fuck me, and were either relentlessly hitting on me, or grabbing ass and breaking all sorts of sexual harassment laws.
I think Toll had a thing for softer, sweeter women.
Maybe he might have had a thing for me at first until, on my third night, I’d flown over the counter to slam some guy big-nose-forward into the wall for taking an up-skirt picture of some poor little co-ed who was just trying to slum it for the night before she went back to her safe, comfy home in the nice part of town.
What can I say? When you were the young girl who no one ever protected, you got hard and strong and made sure to protect those other little girls that reminded you of that innocence you’d once had.
“It’s been an adjustment,” I told him, wiping down the bar, and putting the spent glasses in the trays to go into the back for washing. “I’m not used to small towns.”
“Honey, Navesink Bank isn’t exactly a small town. We have, what? Sixty thousand residents.”
“When you’re used to living and working in places with upward of six-hundred-thousand residents, right up into the millions, sixty thousand is small,” I told him.
I mean, was it Bumfuck, Nowhere with more cows than people? No. But aside from the couple of strips in the main area of town, it was mostly just the ‘burbs. The middle class one and the upper class one.
I mean, the place had like two main bars, for fuck’s sake.
Though I did hear about some other hole-in-the-wall dive bar in the back of a liquor store too. From what everyone said, though, it was frequented by the same ten or twenty people and that was it.
So, yeah, it was small.
And while that chafed at me, someone who preferred massive crowds of people who didn’t give a single fuck about you, I had my reasons for being in Navesink Bank.
“I guess that’s fair. It was rough for me here at first too, but mainly because of the club animosity. Now that the incident with my leg shot it all to shit, I’ve come to really like it here.”
“Yeah, speaking of that, did you ever get the bastard who did that to you?”
“I get him drinks all the time,” Toll said, making me stiffen. “You just got him drinks right now.”
“Wait… what? A shot you?”
“Well, one of A’s men, anyway. Wrong place, wrong time sort of thing.”
“And you just… let it go because of that?” I asked.
I mean I was the petty-ass bitch who sent glitter bomb packages to a neighbor who stole one of my boxes once.
I couldn’t imagine forgiving someone who fucked up your leg and your career stability.
“That’s the life,” Toll said, shrugging it off. “You know from the second you strapped on that cut with the one-percent badge that you were risking it all every time you went out in public. Besides,” he said, shooting me a smirk, “did you really think I was going to take on a cartel over a bum leg?”
“You alone, no, but your club. Isn’t that what they’re for?”
“It was a complicated time for the club,” he reminded me, and I thought of the change of leadership that led to the former president no longer having that title, and currently owning a bar instead.
“You have a room upstairs, right?” I asked.
“Yep. Thought you were gonna be my neighbor,” he added.
“I still might be. I asked Danny to hang onto it for me in case I do change my mind.”
“Personal shit, huh?” he asked.
“You could say that,” I agreed.
“If you ever—“ he started, but was cut off by a commotion coming from the front door. “Oh, fuck. Here comes trouble,” he said, making my gaze follow his.
And there they were.
Six or Seven guys in their late twenties or early thirties, each and every one of them more attractive than the last.
And wearing fucking outlaw biker cuts.
Damnit.
My kryptonite, it seemed.
“Who are they?”
“Henchmen,” Toll said, exhaling hard. “They don’t usually come in here,” he added as the crew made their way forward toward the bar.
And then there he was.
The guy walking in last behind his brothers.
The hottest guy I’d seen in a long, long while. Which was saying something because I swear to fuck, every other man in Navesink Bank was practically model-attractive. Damn near every man currently in the bar was wholly fuckable.