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Sure, sweetie.
I had half a mind to call my mother and apologize. I didn’t even know for what.
“I got it.” I nodded firmly. While I was definitely overwhelmed and unsettled, authority wasn’t a problem. I wasn’t insecure by nature, and I had no issues putting my foot down.
Improvise, adapt, overcome.
Oorah.
Two minutes before the doors opened, the DJ took to the stage in the back of the club, and the whole place lit up. What’d once been black and nondescript, from floors to ceiling, became an electric light show in purple, green, and blue.
“Have a good hunt tonight!” One of the bartenders I hadn’t been introduced to crossed the dance floor to get to the bar on the other side.
“Are you kidding me?” Juan laughed. “We have the straight guys over here. We’re going home rich.”
I flicked a glance at Roe, and he smirked. He’d shared a theory on the way here tonight—that straight men drew their own crowd in a gay club. Something about a fantasy chase. Was he right? Was that a thing? Was that why we’d been hired on the spot?
“Sixty seconds!” someone hollered.
Roe and I stayed in the background as instructed. The first hour, we’d take orders through Juan and Ricky.
I rolled my shoulders, mildly uncomfortable in my tee. It was a simple black T-shirt, but it was a size or two too small. I could guess the reason…
At least I felt right at home in my own jeans, and nobody had told me I couldn’t wear my ball cap. I kept it on backward, as usual.
Roe was a jeans-and-tee kind of guy too.
“Opening the doors!”
Right as someone uttered those words, music began pouring out into the club, and Juan poured five shots of vodka. He handed Ricky one, downed one himself, extended one to Roe, and I got two.
Huh?
“You look like you need an extra.” He winked.
Heh. Maybe he was right.
I threw back the first, then the second, and made a face as the taste burned its way down my throat. Vodka wasn’t necessarily my poison, but I wasn’t too picky. Not on a night like this anyway.
Let’s make some money.
People welled in like an expanding sponge, and the first drink orders came shortly after. It was eleven o’clock, so guests were arriving in various states of intoxication, whether they’d slammed drinks at home or come from a bar. I was put on two-ingredient patrol, presumably because Roe fit right in where I didn’t. He’d bartended a little bit in college, and he was a social butterfly. He didn’t stay in the background for long before Ricky brought him up to the front line.
It was comfortable in the back, where I mixed gin and tonics, vodka cranberries, Cuba Libres, Jack and Cokes, screwdrivers, and martinis. But that wasn’t why I was here. If I kept my back to the club the whole night, I’d go home almost as poor as I’d been when I’d arrived.
Get it together.
I heard Roe laugh at something over the pumping music, and I looked over at him. He was talking—or yelling—with a patron at the same time as he was mixing what looked like a negroni.
For fuck’s sake. Why was I so chickenshit? Clearly, I needed this crash-course edition of exposure therapy. It wasn’t like the guests were gonna crawl over the bar and attack me. Hot guys were a dime a dozen; I wasn’t some grand prize. If anything, I was ridiculous.
I blew out a breath and closed my eyes temporarily. Come on. I could fake it at the very least. I wasn’t such a homebody that I couldn’t enjoy a night out. I was even a decent dancer, and I didn’t mind pop music—despite that I preferred rock, both the hard variety and the country variety.
A Katy Perry remix morphed into a Lady Gaga remix, one of Nikki’s favorite songs. By the look of it, Roe was a fan too. But I already knew that. Having spent fifteen hours on the road with him, I didn’t need him to tell me he liked pop stars and dance music.
After bringing Juan the last four gin and tonics and one Jack and Coke, I asked him to promote me to three-ingredient cocktails and a bit more customer interaction.
“On one condition!” he hollered. With a wicked grin, he poured me two more fucking shots. “You gotta loosen up, sweetie!”
*
“Buddy, how many shots did you do tonight?”
I didn’t wanna think about it. I swallowed against the nausea crawling up my throat and rolled down the window. “They seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Gay men had bought me drinks tonight. I hadn’t declined as much as I should have.
I groaned and leaned closer to the window, and Roe drove like a fucking lunatic.
Fucking hell, I couldn’t close my eyes for a second unless I wanted to throw up in his truck. My skin prickled uncomfortably, I was running hot and cold, and saliva pooled in my mouth like it did before I got sick.
