“Did you see him yet?”
Mia grinned as I practically slammed my tray onto service bar, rushing to skewer cherries for all the Manhattans she was stirring for my latest table. I processed her question at a three-second delay because I was desperately trying to remember what my giant party of businessmen had just asked me for.
“Nuts!” I snapped my fingers when I finally remembered. Off the weird look Mia shot me, I giggled. “I’m sorry—did I see who?” I asked breathlessly.
“Mr. Ass.”
“Mr. Ass?”
“Mr. Angry Sex In A Suit.”
I squinted at her. “Shouldn’t that be Mr. Asis? Or A…sias?”
“Don’t ask me, your fellow waitstaff made it up,” Mia laughed, stirring the amber mixture of whiskey and vermouth with a long metal spoon. “I just go with it because he is one absurdly fine piece of ass.”
“I thought you weren’t into the suit-wearing type. In fact, I distinctly remember you saying that men aren’t attractive unless they’re sweating through a dirty T-shirt while chopping firewood.”
“And I stand by that, but Mr. Ass is an exception because he is criminally hot, and he always looks so stern and serious and… mean.” Mia’s stirring slowed as she bit her lip and squ
inted wistfully into the distance. “I’m into it.”
I burst out laughing. “Well, I’m not really into mean guys, so he’s all yours.”
“Actually, he’s nobody’s,” Mia corrected, snapping right out of her dream state. “He’s been coming here for years now, and none of the girls have been able to get him to look at them for more than the second it takes to order his drink,” she said, smirking as Lana marched over. “Not even Tits McGee over here.”
Lana huffed and stuck her nose in the air.
“Funny you mention that, since it’s all changing tonight,” she said, pushing me aside to grab some napkins off the bar. “He’s different tonight and I’m pouncing, so get ready to pay up, bitches.”
As soon as she came, she went, and when I cocked an eyebrow at Mia, she gave a snort.
“There’s an ongoing bet about which of the girls is gonna finally get his attention,” she explained, pouring my drinks into their cute little glasses. “My money’s on Jasmine the hostess. Mostly because she isn’t a raging bitch.”
“Well, in that case I’m Team Jasmine too,” I laughed before taking off with my drinks to my section.
I was pretty much Team Whoever Mia Likes since she was the only reason I landed this killer side gig a couple weeks back. Aside from being my roommate she was the head bartender here, and basically my tall, gorgeous, potty-mouthed guardian angel since I arrived in New York. Five weeks in and I was still thanking my lucky stars that I found her with that extremely sketchy-looking apartment listing she put up on Craigslist. It had just been a two-sentence description with no pictures at all, which gave it “big time serial killer vibes,” according to my friend A.J, but I still went for it.
Because for me, it was a risk worth taking to execute The Great Escape—which was what my brother Adam nicknamed my plan to finally move away from home.
I’d started hatching it senior year of high school, since the day I pled—literally on my knees—for Mom to let me dorm at college. To let me have just the tiniest taste of independence. She was the town’s most notorious helicopter mom and at seventeen, she still dictated what I wore out of the house, what I watched on TV, how I decorated my room.
For the record, it was all pinks and pastels.
Because all my life, I served as nothing but her precious little doll. Her do-over child who was raised to be perfectly quiet, polite, obedient—basically everything Adam wasn’t. He was unmanageably wild, I was exceptionally docile, and that was just how it was in our family.
Which was why I wound up commuting daily from our home in Jersey to my classes at Parsons School of Design. Three hours back and forth every day with a 9PM curfew—just to ensure that I wasn’t out drinking or partying like every other kid my age. And if I ever caught anything later than the 8PM bus home from Port Authority, Mom would grill me for hours, search my purse, smell my breath, and if it was an extra special night, change the WiFi password before reminding me in a fit of tears about the torture she went through raising Adam, and how she refused to let “another Adam” happen again.
So… yeah.
I love my mom—I swear I do—but I was more than ready to move by the time I graduated college, which meant I was more than happy to chance it on Mia’s super-sketchy listing.
And thank God I did.
Because now, after four years of secretly busting my ass by working two, sometimes three jobs during school to save up and move out, I was finally, finally my own woman. An adult who made my own decisions, paid my own bills and had my own rush hour commute to a job at a company I’d wanted to work for since I was fourteen years old. I was—at long last—living the life I’d been dreaming up and plotting out in a little notebook since I was that painfully sheltered, over-protected child constantly holed up in her bedroom.
And it all started with Mia Zamora choosing me to live with her at her bomb-ass apartment in the East Village—which was why I was still, on pretty much a daily basis, thanking God Almighty for her.
“Hey, babe?” she called to get my attention, whistling me back to service bar once I finished dropping off the Manhattans at my table twelve. “These are the IPAs for your table ten but before you drop them, will you drop this check real quick at Mr. Ass’s table? Lana was supposed to like twenty minutes ago, but she’s too busy trying to seduce him right now.”