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My team singlehandedly keeps the place in business, officially because it’s the only bar with a full liquor license. The alternative is Drink Up (Big Bear Lake’s founding fathers showed a lamentable lack of creativity in their naming). The bar is only allowed to serve beer, although they bend the rules for those weird beer-margarita hybrids that come in a can. Let’s just say that a pop-top cannot replace the salty goodness of icy cold tequila and leave it at that.
By the time Colt pulls into the driveway at Baby Bear Lodge, however, I’m rethinking my plans for the evening. This is because the man was doing a hundred and twenty not thirty seconds ago. I’ve got whiplash from the slow-down. No ride to the bar is worth this kind of trauma. Colt shoves his cowboy hat back and folds his arms on the steering wheel, laughing like a hyena.
“I coulda gone faster,” he points out. “You need a barf bag?”
Har-de-har-har. Serve him right if I puke into that stupid hat he’s so attached to.
“Fuck you,” I grunt, fumbling for the door handle. I’m sure the ladies love his dimples but right now I just want to punch the shit out of him. If he went any faster, we’d be in fucking orbit right now. I have no idea how Adrian can still be asleep on the backseat.
“Seriously?” The stupid dimples in Colt’s face get deeper. “You ready to take our relationship to the next level?”
I concentrate on sucking in some air. It’s way easier to breathe now I’m not watching the hairpin turns in the mountain highway leap out of the dark at me.
You need someone to jump out of a plane into a fire? I’m your guy. Hike twenty miles into a wildfire and then play hide-and-seek with the flames? Again, I’m totally onboard. I’ve been singed with the best of them, have pushed my luck time and time again. Doing a hundred and twenty down the highway, however, isn’t my idea of a good time. Letting Colt volunteer to drive was a rookie mistake. The man’s a former racecar driver and he thinks doing sixty is like sitting in the slow lane with your thumb up your ass. Some people enjoy the backdoor action but it’s not his thing.
On the other hand, we did get here in record time.
So I settle for flipping him the bird and muttering an amiable fuck off as I swing down from his truck. He can’t even drive a normal truck—his is jacked about a million feet into the air on oversized tires that could crush the contents of your average Walmart parking lot and keep right on driving.
“You need a hand extricating our boy?”
I wave a hand and trudge up the drive. In a moment of genius, we decided that Colt would park at the bottom of the driveway so as not to alert Hunter to our presence. Not that the guy has anywhere to run to—the whole driveway’s blocked thanks to Colt’s monster truck. And just in case I really thought the stealth approach was the way to go, Colt gets busy changing the tunes. I wasn’t the only one miserable on the drive over since I made him listen to what he calls my “classical shit.” Colt claims that’s why he had to drive so fast. I claim he has no taste. Now country music blasts from the speakers, some dude whining about how he can’t live without this girl he just spotted in a bar, his bed, his best friend’s bed—I can’t keep track of that shit.
I hoof it to the top of the driveway double-time. The closer I get, the clearer it becomes that keeping my own noise down isn’t necessary. The Break Up Club girls are screeching and screaming at the top of their lungs as they beat the crap out of a piñata with a baseball bat. The enthusiasm they put it into it would be kinda cute if they hadn’t taped pictures of various guys to their target. I don’t need to be a genius to figure out those are the exes and the ladies are in a homicidal mood. As I watch, planning my extraction, the piñata gives up the ghost, flying apart at the seams and launching streamers, bits of photos, and candy into orbit. I pick a Snickers off my boot. Free snacks are the best. This is better than a movie.
Is it better than the titty bar however?
A small, curvy bombshell tears after a tall brunette. The tinier chick is bundled in a pair of men’s sweatpants and a white wife beater. She could find a job at Tits Up easily because she’s skipped the bra and she bounces left and right in a spectacular display of cleavage. A flannel shirt hangs off her waist. I’ve seen Sarah Jo around town a few times and rumor has it she’s about to start working at fire camp as a cook, but she’s always done an awesome impression of a turtle and practically yanked her head inside her oversized clothes to avoid meeting my gaze. But tonight she’s laughing. Fuck me, she’s practically cackling as she tackles the taller, yoga-pants-wearing gal and levels her.
