Page 103 of Bone’s Choice

“At a table?”

“Sometimes at the bar.”

I looked over my shoulder. Frank hadn’t moved. “Does anyone wake him up?”

“Eventually,” CL said.

“When?”

CL shrugged. “When we need the table.”

I stared at him.

He stared back.

“Wisconsin is weird.”

Kori laughed. “You’ve been saying that since you got here.”

“Because you people keep proving it.”

“We’re delightful,” Kori smiled.

“You have a customer who schedules naps at a bar.”

“He tips.”

“Oh.” I nodded. “Then Frank can sleep as long as he wants.”

“That’s the spirit.”

I dumped the bottles into the bin beneath the bar.

Thursday night had been steady but nothing compared to Friday. I’d had enough tables to keep me moving without feeling like I was running a marathon every time somebody needed another beer.

I liked nights like this.

Busy enough to make money. Slow enough that I could breathe.

And talk. Mostly talk.

I’d been at Bing’s for close to two weeks, and somehow Crystal and Kori had gone from women showing me where CL kept the extra napkins to people I genuinely liked.

I’d spent enough years waitressing to know there was a difference between coworkers you got along with and people you’d actually choose to spend time with when nobody was paying you.

Crystal and Kori were quickly becoming the second kind.

Which was probably why they’d spent the last two days trying to get information out of me.

Information I wasn’t giving them.

Crystal appeared from the other end of the bar and shoved her order pad into the back pocket of her shorts. “Okay.”

I looked at her. “Okay what?”

“We have approximately thirty seconds before somebody needs something.”

Kori nodded. “Probably twenty.”