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“How about Slunto?” He gave me a wink.
“Absolutely not.” We both dissolved into laughter.
“Shut up!” Tom’s voice bellowed, only causing us to laugh harder. When we calmed down, Sergio went back to badgering me.
“Unless you can come up with something more appropriate, I’m going with Kate. Now. Fast forward. After we met. Get to the part where you finally let my man Eli love you.”
* * *
Then:
I awoke to the sound of my phone ringing somewhere beside my head. “What?” I mumbled into it.
“Cee, you were supposed to be here half an hour ago. Where the fuck are you?” Elijah’s voice jolted me awake. I looked to my right. Son of a bitch. Things got out of hand last night. Myles, one of my bar regulars, was sound asleep beside me and this was not my bed.
“Shit. Sorry. Be there in ten.” Christ on a bike.
I grabbed the uniform I wore at work last night off the floor and put it on. It smelled heavily of the tequila that had been spilled on me, but I had no time to get clean clothes as my house was twenty minutes in the opposite direction.
I needed to pee but needed to leave more. Making my way to the door, I noticed that someone had blocked me in the driveway. I assumed the car belonged to Myles, but he lived with a roommate and last night was just fuzzy enough that I didn’t remember the car that I followed to get here last night. There was a set of keys on the table by the door. I hit the unlock button on the fob and the lights on the car behind mine flashed.
Is it stealing a car if you leave one behind in its place? Gray area.
I was late for work. I could’ve moved the cars all around, or I could just drive this one. This one works.
Ten minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant where I worked. I hopped out of the borrowed car and ran to the back door to curious looks from the kitchen staff. I breezed past Elijah as he chopped something rather aggressively and made my way to the bar to uncover the bottles as if I had arrived on time.
As I rushed to pull out the stuff I needed for the day, I saw Eli emerge from the kitchen. “Those are your clothes from last night, and that’s not even your car. What the fuck, Cee?”
“Ugh. Please. Like you’ve never done the walk of shame?” I rolled my eyes at him, the action causing instant stabbing pain behind my eyes.
“Not into work. Whose car is that?” He hitched his thumb over his shoulder.
“Possibly Myles’s. Maybe his roommate’s? I’m not entirely sure. It was behind mine and, as you pointed out, I was late.”
“You reek of tequila.”
“Cindy spilled a margarita on me at some point last night. You know I don’t drink tequila. It makes me fight-y.”
“Oh, I believe you. I know all too well that you wouldn’t be standing at all if you had tequila. You look rough.” His brown eyes softened a bit. I took in his clean t-shirt and jeans, knowing he had been at work for hours. I would be covered in food by now. His tattooed arms peeked out of his shirt and, if he were anyone other than my best friend, I’d probably drool over them. Okay, sometimes I totally drooled. He had a baseball cap on backwards, covering his short dark hair, and he’d shaved that morning.
“I think it was gin? I don’t remember.” My head was pounding, and I desperately needed water. I grabbed my ice bucket and took it out back to fill it. Eli trailed behind me.
“You don’t seem to remember too much this morning. You sent me a random text at two a.m. telling me you weren’t coming home because you, and I quote, ‘had dick on the line.’” He scratched his chin. “Now that I think about it, I should’ve realized you were wasted. You know I don’t like it when you go out drinking with random barflies after work.” He pulled a Gatorade out of the fridge next to the ice machine while I scooped. When I finished, he picked up the bucket of ice and handed me the Gatorade. I hated that he was being nice to me in that moment.
“It wasn’t a random barfly. It was Myles. There may have been other people there. I got after it last night.” I saw his look of disappointment at my confession. Sighing, I added, “I have one fucking night a week in which I don’t have to be a mom. He asked me if I wanted to get drinks at his place. I’d had a few during my shift and it sounded like a good plan. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten laid, Eli.” All of this was true.
Myles was a regular at the bar. He came in a few times a week with a bunch of buddies. He’d asked me out a few times, but I’d always turned him down. Between the promo gin I sipped in the walk-in, the crazy dinner rush, the spilled tequila, the Friday night trivia crowd, and let’s face it, my sexual dry spell, I went with it. No regrets. Well, I regretted not having clean clothes, a hairbrush, makeup, or a toothbrush, but it was worth it.
“I’m just saying, a random one-nighter is how you ended up with a kid.” Eli had a valid point, but I wasn’t about to let him win this round, so I threw a lime wedge at him. “You can throw all the fruit you want at me, the fruit I cut for you because you were MIA, but you know it’s true.” He shook his head at me with a smile. “I have to go do my job. I’ll send out food for you.”
Eli retreated to the kitchen. I chugged the Gatorade and finished setting up the bar. I do not deserve that guy’s friendship. Sundays I worked from opening until after the dinner rush died down. I was about to do the ten-hour shift in dirty clothes with a raging hangover. The day didn’t seem promising.
I made a quick trip to the ladies’ room to tame my hair and wash off yesterday’s makeup. When I returned, there was a burger sitting at the table where the employees took their breaks. Grease and fluids, the keys to hangover recovery.
About an hour into my shift, Myles showed up, taking a seat at the bar. Unlike me, he looked well-rested and not a bit hung over.
“Hey, what’s up?” I set a napkin down in front of him.
