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Some of those ladies were disappointed to learn that I wore boxers underneath, but only dimwits went bare under a kilt.
That and the phrase was “True Scot” and, like I said, I was Irish.
I walked down the bar to pour a lager that was ordered up from the floor when I could feel someone staring at me.
Keeping at task and filling a lager glass, my eyes scanned the bar as my ears kept focus on any requests from the patrons sitting at the bar. Finally, my eyes settled on the woman who had been coming into my bar a few nights a week for the last number of weeks. She sat at a high-top a few tables back from the bar, in the same spot she’d been a few other times.
I’m not sure what snagged my attention, to be honest, the first time I’d noticed her. She wasn’t striking like the half dressed women who sat at my bar. No, she wore little makeup on her face and had a crazy mass of curls that looked like she fought to put back in the bun behind her head.
She never came in with anyone, never met up with anyone. It was only just ever her, sitting at one of my high tops, nursing some lager or another. I idly wondered what her story was, and what kept bringing her in. The bar had regulars, don’t get me wrong, but she just didn’t strike me as such.
When her eyes shifted and met mine over the bar and a couple tables, she quickly looked down.
Ah, so she had been spying on me.
She didn’t look the adventurous type, but I had been surprised by women before. Maybe she wanted in on my fun tonight and was just too timid to make a move.
Sometimes it was the quiet ones that turned out to be the freaky-in-bed ones.
Recalling her drink, I poured her another and set it with the lager that had been ordered. When Emily, the quiet but beautiful—and therefore, great for business—barmaid we hired last week came back for the lager, I pushed the extra glass toward her. “High-top four.”
“Sure, Con,” she said with a small smile. I watched as she delivered it, my hands slowly wiping and bunching at the towel at my hip.
When Emily sat the glass down, Curly Locks looked up, wide eyed. I couldn’t hear whatever Emily told her, but before Emily left the table, Curly’s eyes met mine again. I offered her a wink then went back to manning my bar.
One of my bartenders, Greyson Stone, walked behind the bar from the swinging kitchen doors. Yeah, his parents were fuckers for naming him that. “Hey, bossman.”
“What’s up, Stone?” We clasped hands and pulled into one another, bumping chests with our hands between us. Typical greeting.
Stone came to work for Rory and me three years prior, when O’Gallaghers re-opened for business. I needed a trustworthy bartender and while I hadn’t known Stone from Adam at the time, he’d proven to be one of my best employees and a pretty damn good friend. That and he didn’t hit on my sister.
I filled orders as I talked to the man who wasn’t supposed to be working tonight.
“What brings you in tonight?”
“Ah, Rory asked me to cover his last hour.” Stone began going through coolers and chests, making sure all the fridges and condiments were how he liked them. The man was slightly OCD about it.
“What the fuck is Rory doing?” I glanced over at Stone, my peripheral on the lager I was pouring.
“Something about a girl,” Stone said around a chuckle. He grabbed a towel and hooked it into the back pocket of his cargo shorts.
I shook my head. Everyone knew I’d take a woman home at the end of the night, just like everyone knew Rory wasn’t above taking one home in the middle of his shift. “Always a girl.”
“You take a break lately?” Stone asked before his attention was snagged by a customer at the far end.
We split the bar, each taking a side, as the night hit a busy spurt. Thirty minutes later, the rush ended for the moment, and I remembered Curly Locks. I looked toward her table, sure she would have left by now.
But nope, she was still there, nursing the glass I had Emily send over.
“Stone, I’m going to take that break,” I said over my shoulder. I grabbed two bottles of water and, carrying them in one hand, made my way out from behind the bar. I tossed my towel on the back counter by the register just before clearing the bar.
“Hey, Conor.”
“Conor, my man, how’s the night?”
Everyone knew who my brother and I were. Not only had we grown up in this town, but O’Gallaghers had been a prime establishment since our parents opened the doors twenty years ago. Five years ago, the doors closed when our parents decided to do the empty nester thing, traveling around the country in a fucking RV of all things. When I mentioned wanting to take over, I refused to accept the bar as a gift. They went on and on about how it was us kids’ namesake and I should be willing to just take it, but I wanted to give them a sensible down payment. Between Rory and me, we accomplished that in just about a year, and roughly eighteen months after the doors closed, we re-opened.
The patrons who came on Thursdays were generally the younger crowd. And the ladies, of course. I would say that on any given night, I knew at least half of our patrons from either back in school or around town.
