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I sat in my mother’s Pontiac Grand Am in the parking lot of Shooters Saloon (AND SUSHI,as the handwritten sheet of yellow construction paper duct-taped to the window would tell you), wanting nothing more than to turn around and go home. I pushed past the worries of running into faces I’d spent decades trying to forget and focused on simply blending into the crowd.
That was the plan, at least. A plan I must have forgotten about when getting dressed. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I’d worn a pair of tight gray slacks with a white button-down shirt and a gray sports coat. A pair of overpriced black leather shoes with pink slashes against the sides completed the look.
I was on a mission, and apparently, that mission was to look like a fool, as Shooters was little more than a dive bar. Still, I had my plan, and it was a damn good one. One might go as far as saying foolproof. And, God, I needed it to work. I’d applied for over two hundred jobs over the last seven months. I’d done nine interviews, each ending abruptly after we reachedthatquestion.“What was your reason for leaving your last job?”Stupidly, I’d assumed the potential employers had seen the news article about my selfie scandal and decided my resume was proof enough of my abilities. I had been wrong.
I needed this job.
For introductions, I would shake his hand firmly, but not so firmly that he felt intimidated. I would butter him up, complimenting him on his attire and telling him he looked like he belonged on the cover of Forbes, not in some tiny little shithole like Shooters. He would be mesmerized.
For drinks, I would stick with a scotch, and I would sip it slowly, pacing myself. I’d rattle off a few of my many accomplishments in passing. He would be hooked.
After we ordered appetizers, I would casually mention that I was on the market again. I wouldn’t outright ask him for a job, though. As desperate as I might have been, I refused to come across as pathetic.
When the evening was done, we would revel in our newfound bromance. I’d tell him I hadn’t had this much fun in ages, and that I’d love to see this become a more common occurrence. Obviously, he would agree. Who wouldn’t?
Every single hope of a pleasant evening fell by the wayside when I stepped out of my mother’s car. A man wearing jeans that clung far too tightly to his voluptuous ass was being led away from a super-sized pickup truck by a woman. The woman had crimped red hair, an unnecessarily modest blouse, and a skirt with hideous ruffles at the hem. She looked like something out ofNineteen Kids and Counting,and he looked far more attractive than he had any right to.
Gray Collins was on a date.
He was on a date at a dive bar, accompanied by a woman with tragic hair.
Whipping around on my heel, I rushed back to the safety and seclusion of my mother’s car, waiting five minutes before exiting, hoping they’d already found some darkened corner to canoodle in.
When I entered the saloon, I kept my head low. Sitting on a barstool at the entrance, a woman with a cigarette hanging from her lips stared at me as if my very existence offended her. Her dangling death stick was half ash. Somehow, those two inches of ashes remained solidified, unfaltering. I offered her my ID, but she just stared at me, her eyes journeying up and down my body, and said, “Really?”
I scowled at her and searched her chest for a name tag. There wasn’t one.
“You can stop staring at my tits now,” she said.
I scoffed at her and lifted my arm, displaying a small rainbow flag tattoo on my wrist. “Bite your tongue.” Turning away from her, I searched the room for Kate, and then for Gray.
Kate and Jeff spotted me first, waving their hands in the air to flag me down like overzealous tourists trying to hail a taxi for the first time. They were drawing far too much attention to themselves. I rushed to their booth and hurled myself into the seat, sinking in so low I could barely see over the table.
“Oh my god, put your hands down!”
“Your face is the color of a tomato right now. What the hell?” Kate said.
“He’s here.” Sweat was already soaking through my shirt, and it took everything I had not to slide under the table and hide.
“Who’s here?” Kate craned her neck, peering around the room in search of the mystery man.
“Gray. Sorry, I just ” I hunched as low as humanly possible, grabbing a menu from the table to shield my face. I lowered the menu and scanned the room. “Why is he in a bar? He’s an evangelical fanatic, for God’s sake.”
The layout of the bar did nothing to help me with my mission of remaining incognito. It was a large, open room, removing the option of simply hiding from him. Along the front wall were seven booths, back-to-back. Directly in front of those booths was a dance floor. Past the dance floor were six pool tables, one of which had been repurposed as a dining table. There was a bar by the front entrance and bathrooms toward the back. I should have been able to see him. There was nowhere for him to hide. For a moment, I thought I’d gone crazy. That I must have simply conjured him up in an over-imaginative round of wishful thinking.
Not that I wished to see him.
It was around this time that I remembered my plan. Still holding my menu against the side of my face to shield me from view, I reached across the table, extending my free hand to Jeff. He laughed and reached across, taking my hand and giving it three firm pumps. He clearly hadn’t taken the time to hone his handshaking skills because he practically shattered mine into shards of bone beneath my skin.
“Christ, that’s a hell of a grip you’ve got there. I think you may have dislodged a knuckle with that one,” I said.
“Can you dislodge a knuckle? Is that a thing?” Kate asked, glancing down at her hand.
“And by the way, that’s some outfit you have on. You look like you just stepped off the cover of Forbes.”
Jeff glanced down at his Old Navy t-shirt and then up at me without saying a word.
“Are you hitting on my husband?” Kate asked, arching an eyebrow at me. “Can’t say I blame you. I did good, right?”
