Summer Bender Read online

  Summer Bender

  By Jennifer Lucia

  © 2017 Jennifer Lucia

  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  Visit the author at www.jenniferlucia.com

  For D.J. and H.S., my biggest supporters.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Hey darling, why don’t you pour me a whiskey, and while you’re at it, pour yourself one too. We can take a shot together and see where the night goes.”

  I rolled my eyes at our drunk bar regular, Fred, who was winking at me. “Fred, you’ve had one too many shots already, and way too many beers to count. Hannah has already cut you off. You know we bartenders like to back each other up.”

  “Oh come on, sweetheart. Just a half a shot,” Fred wheedled. He continued drunkenly winking at me, but it came off as more of a squint involving both eyes. I shrugged, arms crossed, and he sighed with defeat at the stony look I was throwing him. “Okay, Jamie, if you won’t give me a shot, at least give me a kiss.” He puckered his lips and leaned over the bar. I forced a laugh and walked away. I can’t wait to quit tending bar.

  If there is one thing that every female bartender knows, it’s that the best way to maximize your tips is to flirt. Flirt hard and flirt often. Laugh at things you don’t find remotely funny. Smile coyly when the drunk guy asks you if you’re single after his fifth shot of Fireball. Pretend to consider answering when a patron asks you when your shift is over (but make sure they don’t actually find out- safety rule number one). Bend over the bar just a little too much when you’re picking up the money for a tab. That sort of thing. It’s not the most feminist of statements, but there it is.

  If there is one thing that I know, it’s that I am really freaking terrible at flirting. I have been a bartender for the past six years, so it stands to reason that I should be pretty awesome at flirting. I am not. I’m kind of awful at it, and not in an endearing, “Oh my god, I’m so awkward, manic pixie dream girl” kind of way. Zooey Deschanel, I am not. I am more of a clammy hands, literally tripping, and sneezing-in-your-face kind of flirt- and that’s when I’m even bothering to attempt to flirt. Most of the time I roll my eyes and avoid the bar guest who is trying to flirt with me. It’s gotten me a bit of a reputation as unattainable, which illogically seems to make men want to try even harder.

  Hannah Leekie, my best friend and fellow bartender, is amazing at flirting. With one whip of her hair over her shoulder, she has men wrapped around her finger. I envied Hannah her flirting skills. Hannah is a statuesque redhead who calls to mind images of Jessica Rabbit. She was gifted with natural sultriness. I’m as tall as Hannah, but without those va-va-voom curves. My hair could be described as murky brown, at best. My eyes don’t twinkle, they squint. My signature move is to walk into tables while I’m looking down and thinking about something else. I wouldn’t really describe myself as sexy. Cute, yes. Bitchy? Occasionally. Sexy? Ha.

  I will admit, Hannah’s flirting came in handy when we share our tips, which was pretty much every night we tended bar together. It usually worked like this- Hannah worked the bar guests and talked to them all night, charming the pants off them. I did all the easy stuff- take care of the people who are talking amongst themselves, fill ice, pour beers, restock, wash glasses. Basically, anything to avoid getting stuck in a long, boring conversation with another drunk guy who thought he was God’s gift to women. Our symbiotic system came in especially handy when it’s the end of a shift and we’re comparing credit card receipts.

  Tonight was a slow Friday night, Hannah and I were the only bartenders on at Bender’s Bar. We had an hour left in the shift before we’d close everything up and call it a night. Fred had just left with a pout and a crappy tip after I declined his advances for what feels like the millionth time. We were left us with no bar guests. I decided to look over our credit card receipts to get a feel for how much money we made that night. I didn’t think it would be much, considering how few people had wandered in that night.

  “10 on 15? 5 on 5? 20 on 10?! What the hell are you doing for tips like these?” I looked over at Hannah, mouth agape. Hannah shrugged at my raised eyebrows.

  “I can’t help that I’m a really good bartender.” She grinned and winked. I laughed and rolled my eyes. I’m sure that the exorbitant tips had little to do with her “excellent bartending” and a lot more to do with her sashaying around and bending over the bar in a low-cut top.

  I groaned, looking at my own mediocre tips, and shuffled all our receipts together. At her quizzical expression, I explained, “This way we don’t know who got which tips.” I shot her a winning grin, and she laughed.

  “Riiiight. I’ll be playing on my phone over here, waiting for any strays who might wander in,” Hannah said.

  I nodded at this and sat down on a glass rack in the corner of the bar with my favorite book to wait out our last hour with. I’d already done the bulk of our closing duties, and there wasn’t much left to do. If anyone walked in, Hannah would take care of them. I was only staying until close with Hannah in solidarity. I got three chapters into my book and was about to meet the dashing hero of the story when I was interrupted by Hannah’s low, “Psst. Jamie.”

  “Hm?” I said distractedly, not looking up from my book.

  “That guy is totally checking you out.”

  I looked up from my book and snorted. I seriously doubted anyone was checking me out as I squatted in the corner of the bar, balancing on a glass rack and with my face buried in a book. I swung my head around looking for the guy in question, but I didn’t have to look far- there was only one person in the bar. I had been so absorbed in my book that I hadn’t noticed him coming in. I looked the man over, assessing. He was tall, from what I could tell. Broad shoulders, shaggy jet black hair swept over his forehead, muscular forearms, big hands. Hm. Not bad. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if this bar guest flirted with me, though I doubt he would look twice at me if I were standing next to Hannah. Feeling my self-doubt creep back in, I looked up at Hannah.

  “Who, that guy? He is not checking me out.” I glanced at him again. He was staring into his half-empty beer, frowning. Every so often, he’d look around, inspecting the bar. He didn’t seem to find anything to his satisfaction, though, because that frown remained. “Although I really wouldn’t mind if he were. He’s cute- in a dour, humorless kind of way. You think he’s military?”

  Hannah snorted at this. “Who cares? He’s hot, and he’s definitely checking you out. Every time I look over at him, he’s looking at you while you read. He looks back down at his beer when I look over there, like he doesn’t want to get caught staring. Go see if he wants anything else! Another IPA, a shot, perhaps some boob grabbing.” Hannah waggled her eyebrows. I rolled my eyes at Hannah’s suggestion, but at her insistent shooing, I sa
untered over to the guy in question. I tried to put a little swing in my hip as I walked by. I swung a little too far and swiped some shot glasses off the cooler. Thankfully, they fell into the adjacent trashcan and not onto the floor. I plucked them from the trashcan and placed them back on the cooler. Play it cool, Jamie. He definitely didn’t see that.

  “You doing alright over here?” I asked, rubbing my hip in pain. God, that really hurt. I’m going to have to check for bruises when I got home tonight. I looked expectantly across the bar. I aimed a friendly smile at the lone customer, waiting on a response. He grunted and nodded towards his beer. Okayyy, perhaps another IPA will lighten him up. I went to the tap, poured him another IPA, and set it down in front of him. Another grunt. “So. How’s your night going?” No response. I lingered, shifting my weight from foot to foot. The silence grow more awkward with every second I stood there. I wonder if he had seen the ever-so-graceful bump into the cooler earlier. I doubted it, since he wasn’t giving any indication that he had even noticed my existence until I came over to pour him a beer.

  I tried another tactic. “Man, I love this beer. It’s just hoppy enough without being overly bitter. And you know how some IPAs taste a little like potpourri? Not this one. It’s just right.” I plastered a wider smile on my face, hoping this would engage him. “Maybe I’ll have one too! You know what, this one is on me.” I set it in front of him, my smile deranged at this point.

  The guy finally looked up at me, gave me a thin-lipped smile, then waved his phone at me as if to indicate he was busy and didn’t want to be interrupted. Jerk.

  I shrugged internally, having tried my best to flirt, and headed back to where Hannah was looking at me with interest. “So? Did you get any good vibes from him? A number, perhaps?”

  I laughed softly. “If he’s actually interested, he has a funny way of showing it. He literally didn’t say a word to me during that entire interaction. Just did a caveman grunt and then ignored me. I even tried to talk about beer with him, but he dismissed me.”

  “Well, did you offer a boob grab?” I shot Hannah a wry look at this, and Hannah winked. “Well that’s where you went wrong, duh. Offer boobs, and the boys will come.”

  “Ah, it’s not so slow around here that you need to offer up your bodies for money, ladies.” We both jumped, looking guiltily around. Sometimes our conversations could get a little off-color without considering who could overhear us. The owner of Bender’s, Joe Bender, had walked up behind us while we were talking, holding a stack of papers. At least it was Joe who had overheard us and not anyone else. Joe had an equally dirty mind and could hold his own with us. Joe was a former surfer who had started the bar when he was in his early thirties, and had worked there every day since opening. The past year or two though, he’d spent more and more time in the office, and way less time behind the bar.

  Joe winked at us as Hannah swatted him on the arm. “Which lucky fella gets to squeeze your honkers tonight?”

  At our shared groan, Joe laughed and asked, “Has anything exciting happened tonight while I was in the office?”

  “Oh nothing,” Hannah said. “Just figuring out how Jamie’s going to get into this guy’s pants.” I elbowed Hannah, who laughed, and Joe frowned.

  “What guy?” he asked, looking around and only seeing Mr. Stoic, who was peering over at us. He quickly looked back down at his phone when I caught his eye. Oh god. What if he had heard any of that exchange? I considered this. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. It could inspire him to jump over the bar, grab me by the neck, and passionately kiss his way down from my throat to my breasts as I threw my head back- “I hope you don’t mean that guy sitting at the end of the bar.”

  “Yeahhh,” I said, wrenching my thoughts away from the mental image of Hunky Silent Guy doing some quality boob-grabbing. “What’s wrong with that guy? Well, besides his winning demeanor and sunny smile, of course.” I laughed at my own joke, expecting at least a chuckle from Joe. Nothing. Tough crowd, I thought, still giggling softly. My silly mood dissipated at Joe’s frown and the awkward silence that ensued.

  Joe looked at us with a pained expression that I didn’t understand. “Well, I had hoped to have a little more time to tell you, but...” He sighed, as if searching for the right words to say. Both of us looked at him expectantly and leaned forward slightly. “Okay, I guess I’ll just come out and say it- that’s your new boss, Logan Mays. He came here from New York yesterday.”

  “New boss? You’re hiring an assistant manager?” Hannah asked, leaning farther forward in interest. She leaned sideways over the bar to look more closely at Logan Mays. She was trying to check Logan out covertly, but wasn’t succeeding. He looked back at her with a puzzled look, then looked back down into his beer. Hannah quickly straightened up and nudged Joe with her shoulder. “So, did you hire help because old age finally caught up to you, Joe?” she teased.

  “I’ve decided to sell the bar.” He shook his head sadly as both Hannah’s and my mouth dropped open. Joe had opened Bender’s in the late eighties. Even if it hadn’t been very busy lately, it was a local institution. I had been coming here with my parents since I was a kid, and Joe was the one who hired me for my first job here when I was sixteen. I couldn’t imagine working at Joe’s bar without Joe.

  “It’s just not turning a profit anymore. I’m old, I want to retire, and I’m tired of owning a failing bar. Mr. Mays is a restaurant flipper. He takes failing bars and restaurants and turns them around for profit, kind of like that TV show, you know the one. He offered me what is honestly double Bender’s worth. I’m gonna take it while the offer is still available, and retire to Florida with Linda.”

  Linda, Joe’s long-suffering wife, was the only other bartender who worked at Bender’s with us. She had started as a bartender when Bender’s first opened, fallen in love with Joe, and had been dealing with Joe’s long hours and business obsession ever since. Joe and Linda moving would leave just Hannah, me, and a girl who works one day a week as a very lean bar staff. We’d probably have to hire new bartenders to help us out.

  I tried to wrap my head around all this new information. New bartenders, new owners, new work vibes (well, I’m just assuming here, but considering how friendly and cheery Logan Mays wasn’t, this seemed like a safe bet). Maybe Bender’s would shut down. Joe did say Bender’s was failing. I would need to start looking for alternate employment if Bender’s was deemed too far gone to save. I might even have to actually start writing the novel I’ve been putting off for six years. Well, maybe not. I could just keep tending bar somewhere else while I avoid doing adult things like pursue work actually related to my degree. What if I never got around to writing the book that has been tumbling around in my head for years, too jumbled and anxiety-ridden to make it paper? Am I going to tend bar forever? If I were going to be a lifelong bartender, I wanted it to be at Bender’s- not at a TGI Chilibee’s, or a country club, or (God forbid!) a retirement home, making Rob Roys and Manhattans for the geriatric set. What if I became a geriatric bartender?

  Joe grabbed our shoulders, startling me out of my existential spin-out. He pivoted us around and steered us towards Logan. Apparently, Logan had heard Joe breaking the news to us, and had since abandoned the pretense of being a bar guest. He had gotten up and was currently standing behind the bar. He was staring down at the brown, clogged drain below the triple sink, with what I was starting to suspect was a permanent frown. “Ladies, may I introduce you to your new boss, Logan Mays?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hannah gave Logan a tiny wave and said “Sup?”

  Logan Mays inclined his head in greeting. He extended his hand to her for a handshake, which Hannah accepted. Turning to me with the same hand extended, he said, “I trust you do not make it a habit to offer ‘boob grabs’ to every male customer? I would like to make this place a little more upscale than that after I take over. I don’t want our primary clientele to be fourteen year old boys.” His wry smile softened the rebuke.

  I
groaned slightly, dropping his hand, and slapped my forehead in mortification. Maybe I’ll live this one down sometime in the next fifty years. “Oh god. I am SO sorry. Hannah is just...Hannah. I wasn’t seriously going to offer up my breasts to you.”

  His eyebrows shot up and he hid a smirk. I shot him a smile that was really more of a grimace than anything. “I promise to keep the ladies to myself and just flirt more subtly for tips. Not that that method really worked on you.” I watched the smirk disappear completely from his face and realized I had gone too far. I tried to backtrack. “Not that I’d even really flirt for tips anyway. I’m usually the picture of professionalism, I swear.”

  I grabbed his hand one more time to demonstrate my strictly professional handshake. He looked at me as if I were crazy. Okay, so no flirting with the boss- all business, no play with this guy from this moment on. Noted. Although… he was so tall that I had to lean my head back to look into his face. I had assumed he was tall when he was sitting at the bar, but I hadn’t figured for how tall he really was- he had to be 6’4” or 6’5.” He had the most arresting blue eyes I’d ever seen, punctuated by his black hair, and set in a face that was tan and lightly marked with laugh lines around his eyes-and what I could only assume were frown lines around his mouth.

  I looked up at the clearing of a throat and realized I was still holding his rather large hand in my own much smaller one- and staring up at his face for an embarrassingly long time. He looked down pointedly at our still-joined hands. I let go quickly and averted my eyes with a sheepish grin, feeling my cheeks reddening. “Sorry.”

  “That’s quite all right.” He looked at me again, opened his mouth as if to say something, and then shook his head. He cleared his throat, and after a moment, said, “Well, I guess the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. I was trying to covertly surveil the bar before I was officially announced, but this is okay, too. I did manage to see what you ladies do on slow shifts; that is to say- not a lot. If I’m going to be taking over, I need to see some improvements in the next few weeks. I’d like to see a deep bar clean happen, I’d like to drive some business in and increase sales, and I'd like to see the worker productivity increase by quite a bit. There’s a phrase I love to live by- ‘If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean.’ I suggest you ladies adopt this as your own personal mantras. Things like playing on your phone or reading while you could be cleaning or restocking aren’t very good uses of your time, or mine. Keep that in mind, and we shall all get on quite well.” After his speech, he looked around at us impressively.