It didn’t make you feel loved. It made you feel lonely.
“What’s the matter with you tonight?” my younger brother, Nick, asked as he peered over his shoulder at me. His blue eyes matched mine in shape and color, and sometimes it really tripped me out to look at them.
When I shrugged but didn’t respond, Frank grinned at me.
“Is it that time of the month?”
I glared at him, not amused at his joke.
Frank used to be a real stick-in-the-mud, the one Nick and I picked on, but now that he was with his girlfriend, he was a changed man. Frank was actually fun again and seemed truly happy, something that had been missing from his life for years. I hadn’t realized how miserable my brother had been until I saw him come to life when he met her.
Looking across the bar, I spotted Frank and Ryan’s girlfriends, Claudia and Jess, sitting together at a table as they waited for the bar to close.
I wanted that. I wanted my girl to be sitting there with them, talking, laughing, and waiting for me. The problem was, I had no idea where the hell my girl was, when I’d find her, or how. I spent the majority of my time here at Sam’s, so if she never walked through those bar doors, how would I ever meet her? And how would I know that she was worth taking the risk for, when I’d all but decided to not date our customers anymore?
Speaking of, dating a customer had worked out for Frank, but I considered that a rarity, something you would expect to happen all the time in this business but usually never did. I honestly had no fucking idea where my girl was, but I definitely knew I wasn’t currently looking at her.
“I’d love to go home with you tonight,” the brunette purred as I handed her the drink she’d ordered.
“Sorry. Can’t.” Without further explanation, I turned my back and hurried away from her, couldn’t get the fuck away quick enough.
Yeah, something was definitely wrong with me tonight.
In my defense, I’d quickly learned that dating the women who came into the bar wasn’t necessarily the best idea. At first, I didn’t see the harm in dating anyone who caught my eye, and before I knew it, I was going out with a different girl almost every night. Okay, going out probably wasn’t the right term. But those women had all been wrong for me, and I knew it the second we left the party atmosphere of the bar.
Eventually, all the women I’d taken out started congregating at Sam’s . . . on the same nights. They argued, fought for my attention, and tried to outdo one another in every way possible. It was only then that I realized I’d created a bit of a problem.
The thing was, these women all knew they could find me here at Sam’s nearly every night, and as a bartender, I had to be friendly and accessible. I hadn’t even considered that reality before it was too late. Frank had warned me that dating customers was a bad idea, but as usual, I hadn’t listened.
None of the women seemed to take into account that the bar was my place of business. They saw it as a fun place where they could find me anytime they wanted, no strings attached. But the truth was that these women waltzed into my office and did whatever they wanted, without a second thought, and I had nowhere to hide when someone I once took out came in and refused to leave. To say that things got uncomfortable there for a while would be a serious understatement.
Looking back, I consider myself lucky that Frank hadn’t murdered me.
Running
Ryan
I loved to run. Aside from bartending and creating new drinks, running was the only thing that made me feel alive. I loved the feel of my feet pounding against the pavement, my chest heaving as I sucked in each jagged breath. Nothing beat waking up to run along the beach path in Santa Monica just as most people were headed into the office.
I ran at the same time every morning, and the handful of faces that passed me on the path had become all too familiar. There was the man who always wore a neon-pink shirt, no matter what. And it wasn’t the same shirt, so “pink guy” had a freaking collection of T-shirts in that color. A few weeks ago, he started waving at me each morning, so I guessed we were jogging friends now.
There was a group of guys who ran together, each of them trying to outrun the other. They were intensely competitive, always racing, and they knew me by name, shouting it one by one as they raced past. It never failed to make me laugh, hearing my name fly out of their mouths as they bolted past me.
The attractive brunette who ran with her twins should have been competing in an Olympic game the way she pushed that giant stroller without toppling it over. She smiled at me too as she maneuvered the beast past me.
And then there was Grant. He was an elderly man I slowed down for whenever I saw him, just so I could jog alongside him. He had the best stories, always talking to me about how romance used to be when he was a kid, and how times had changed. Then he usually called me some insulting name. He had told me on more than one occasion that I was born in the wrong era, and I agreed. We sometimes stopped and had coffee together after our run, him asking me about the bar, and me asking him about the love of his life. His whole face lit up whenever he talked about his wife, even though she was no longer here.
“Help! Someone help!” A woman’s voice tore through the otherwise calm morning, her panicked tone making goose bumps rise on my skin.
I stopped and whirled around, searching for where the shouting was coming from. Swiveling my head, I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
“Help me!”
I zoned in and dashed toward the distressed cry, having no idea what exactly I was looking for. Spotting two people on the ground in the distance, I picked up the pace and pulled my cell phone from my pocket as I ran.
When I reached the woman, I recognized the man she held in her arms. My heart nearly stopped as I took in Grant’s face, his expression pained and his eyes closed.
“What happened?”