“Hey, doll, can I get another Bud Light?” Lydia turned to the customer sitting at the bar and cocked her head, giving him a look. “Uh, sorry. Can I get another Bud Light, please? Ma’am?”
She laughed and got him his beer. She wasn’t answering to doll for anybody, but being too much of a bitch cut into the tips. Over the years she’d learned how to get her point across without driving customers away.
The sound of a glass smashing on the floor caught not only Lydia’s attention, but that of everybody in the bar. There was no heckling, though. Just silence as the nonlocal customer who’d knocked his glass off the table looked at her like a deer caught in headlights.
“You gotta kiss Bobby,” she called to him.
The guy’s eyebrows drew together. “What? Who’s Bobby?”
She pointed at the framed and signed photograph of Bobby Orr that hung on the wall. It had its own track lighting and was bolted to the wall so well it would take somebody hours and power tools to steal it. It was the heart of Kincaid’s.
“You want me to kiss a picture?”
“You don’t have to kiss the glass. Just kiss your fingertips and tap them on his cheek.” She showed him, stopping just short of touching the glass because kissing Bobby for no reason might be bad luck.
The story, no doubt embellished by years and alcohol, told of two young men hired before the bar’s grand opening, back in the day. They’d been setting up the beer mugs the day before they’d opened and each dropped a couple of glasses. One of them, rumored to be a fine young hockey fan, had laughed and kissed the picture of Bobby Orr the owner had just finished bolting to the wall.
“Help me, Bobby, or I’ll have all my wages docked before I’ve earned any.”
After work, one of them had landed in the hospital with a burst appendix. The hockey fan, however, had won enough off a scratch ticket that night to buy a used Camaro. Lydia wasn’t sure how much of the story was true but, since the first morning the bar had been in business, very few had taken the chance.
“You must be kidding.” The guy shook his head. “I don’t really get into the whole jinx thing. Sorry.”
Chad, the young dishwasher, who was already sweeping the broken glass into a dustpan, looked at the customer with big eyes. “You must not be from around here.”
“Hey, it’s up to you,” Lydia called. “But in 2011, a customer broke a plate and she chose not to kiss Bobby.”
“And she died a horrible, gruesome death, right?” the customer asked, his mouth curved up in a smirk.
Lydia shrugged one shoulder. “Not that I know of. But she did trip on the sidewalk outside and need eleven stitches in her knee. And she had to beg a ride to the hospital because it turned out she parked illegally and her car was towed while she was having lunch.”
“Is she serious?” he asked Chad.
The kid nodded. “I didn’t work here yet, but I heard about it. You should just do it, sir. Better safe than sorry, you know?”
With skepticism written all over his face, the customer slowly stood and walked across the bar with everybody watching. Then he kissed his fingertips and pressed them to Bobby Orr’s glass-covered cheek.
A cheer went up and then everybody went back to what they were doing before the glass broke. Lydia winked at the customer. “Refill’s on the house.”
A few minutes later, her phone chimed and she leaned by the cash register to read the message. Strictly speaking, employees weren’t supposed to be screwing around with their phones, but she figured if her old man didn’t like it, he could tend his own bar.
It was from Ashley.
Everything going okay?
Guy called me doll and Bobby got kissed.Just another day at KP.
There was a long pause while her sister typed a response.
Let me know if anything comes up.Ican’t tell you how much I appreciate this.Really.
Having stood behind the Kincaid’s bar while going through a marriage ending, Lydia did have an idea of how much her sister appreciated it. And it was so much worse for Ashley.
Danny Walsh was one of them. Not just a member of the firefighting community—the brotherhood—but he was family. He’d become tight with Scott and Aidan, and Tommy thought the world of him. He was loved and respected, and people were no doubt having some trouble wrapping their minds around why Ashley wouldn’t want to be married to him anymore.
Not that it was really their business but, in Lydia’s experience, that wouldn’t stop them from having opinions. Opinions they’d be all too happy to share with Ashley while she was trying to work. Lydia could handle this, she thought. For Ashley’s sake. And once her sister felt strong enough to step back behind the bar, she’d be free to go.
Based on how her pulse kicked up every time the door opened, that day couldn’t come fast enough. She didn’t want to admit it—even to herself—but she was looking for Aidan, and that little dip of disappointment she felt every time it wasn’t him alarmed her.
