by Pat Henshaw
His returning grin looked downright wicked. I almost jumped across the table and gave him his first nonmeasly kiss.
“How about Big Guy?” he smirked.
“Okay, BG, works for me,” I laughed back.
3
HE TEXTED me during the morning rush. I’d slept on the couch on the second floor of the shop. I woke wishing I had the hangover and BG’s comfy bed back. My body ached everywhere, and the dust accumulation upstairs was so bad I ended up sneezing and wiping my eyes all night.
“I’m calling Claude,” I warned Felicity. “He’s got to clean the upstairs even better than he does down here. I won’t be able to stand it otherwise.”
I guess I must have said it as an ultimatum, because Felicity gave me a weird look and drawled, “Okay.”
Brad bumped me away from the cooler, grabbed an orange juice, and said, “Got up on the wrong side of the bed, eh, grumpy?”
He skittered back to the register and his customer before I could respond or swat him. He was just the kind of cheeky bastard who rubbed me the wrong way when I had my cranky pants on. Usually I loved him dearly, but today, not so much. Why did we keep him on anyway?
Felicity pulled me back into the kitchen area.
“Okay, I want you to stay here until your face doesn’t scare away customers,” she said, pushing me onto a stool near the freezer. “People come in here this early in the morning because we’re happy and cheerful and we make them feel better. Not because we scowl at them.”
“I’m not scowling,” I muttered.
“No, worse. You’re glaring at them as if you want to shoot them. Not cool,” she said as she turned to go back out to the second register. “Now stay. Chill.”
I stayed and looked at my cell phone as it played the first few bars of Jay Brennan’s “Rob Me Blind.”
“Yeah?” I looked at the text message that Big Guy just sent.
Gotta work 2nite. Meet at bar?
No. No, I didn’t want to go to Stonewall tonight. I was tired and grumpy, and I had to meet with the Realtor this afternoon and sign my life away making a bid on a vacant building that might work out as Penny’s Too.
Felicity came in and put her arms around me. I looked up at her and she shook her head.
“You want to go to my place and take a nap before the meeting this afternoon?” she asked.
It sounded good, too good. I was about to drop.
I nodded. Maybe a nap would turn me human.
“You have a key. Go. We’ve got everything covered here.” She stepped back and made a shooing motion with her hands. “Be free, little bird.”
My phone Jay Brennaned me again.
U there? U good with 2nite?
I nodded at Felicity.
“I’ll see you around four,” I told her. “You’re sure about the new building?”
“As sure as I’ll ever be. We’ve got to put our foot out there.”
“Okay. Later.”
I typed into my phone: Yeah, see you at 8.
I’d have a chance to nap again and get cleaned up. Maybe I could even find time to think about BG’s real name sometime before eight.
A NAP in a real bed and something to eat helped so much. I met with the Realtor, put in a low but realistic bid, and got back to the coffee shop midafternoon, just when the office people were piling in for their caffeine fix. I told Felicity about the bid. The Realtor would be getting back to us in twenty-four hours or so.
Then I drove to Felicity’s, showered again, and dressed to go see Big Guy. Somewhere in the afternoon, I thought about what his name might be, and decided instead of BG—which sounded like that old singing group—I’d call him Guy. It was a perfect enough name for the time being.
Stonewall was chaos when I got there. Guy and another bartender were mixing drinks as fast as they could. I squeezed in at the end of the bar near the hatchway and sat on an abandoned stool there.
I didn’t think Guy had seen me come in, so when there was a lull in the frenetic pace and he was nearly within arm’s reach, I called out, “What’s a guy gotta do to get a drink in this place?”
Guy looked up, grinned at me, and yelled back, “Fuck the bartender.”
A slim man sitting next to me perked up, gave Guy the once-over, and yelled, “Okay!”
Guy’s startled gaze met mine, and we broke out laughing.
The man next to me sighed and slumped over his beer. “I knew it was too good to be true,” he mumbled.
I patted him on the shoulder.
“Maybe next time,” I commiserated with him.
“Right,” he answered glumly.
Guy put a rum and Coke in front of me.
“I’m gonna be a while,” he said, looking at the surge starting to build again. “You don’t have to stay.”
Now he sounded almost as morose as the man to my left.
“No, I’ll stay,” I answered and touched his bare arm. Tonight he was wearing a badge that said his name was Tom. “I like watching you work. So big and manly.”
Guy just shook his head and smirked at me.
“Well, if you get bored, I can just meet you somewhere after we close.” He stuck his hand into his tight black leather pants pocket. “Look, here’s the key to the office. You can wait there if you want.”
Even though I pocketed the key, I shook my head.
“No, I really do like to watch you work,” I told him. “But I’ll keep the key as insurance.”
“Yeah? Insurance?”
“Wouldn’t want you to decide to run off to the back with someone else,” I teased.
“Not happenin’,” he said with a quick, dimpled smile.
Then he was off to the middle of the bar, where servers were trying to catch his eye. There must have been six guys working the tables and a handful or more pushing past the people on the barstools. I didn’t know what everyone else was celebrating, but me, I was celebrating hooking up with Guy/A2/Tom again.
As I sat there, I thought about the new coffee shop. It was four doors down from Stonewall, just where Felicity and I wanted to be. The mall was all well and good, but being where people ate and drank all day was better. Besides, we’d get more adults, fewer kids. We could actually decorate as a serious coffee shop and not a busy-mom outpost.
The rush at Stonewall slowed after a couple of hours, so Guy and I took our drinks, both nonalcoholic, to a table in the back of the room. The bar’s walls were covered with photos and posters, all giving the place a down-home ambiance.
“Who are all these people?” I asked, waving my hands at the pictures on the walls.
“My ancestors,” he answered. “And famous customers.”
“So you own this place?”
“Inherited it from my dad, who got it from his dad.” He seemed shy about telling me this, as if I might mock him or something.
“That’s really cool. So who started this place?”
“Great-great grandfather,” he answered, still not meeting my eye.
I got up and started really looking at the old photos. Presidents, entertainers, all sorts of people had visited this bar through the years.
“Who’s this?” I asked about a man in buckskins standing next to a replica of Guy.
He’d gotten up and had been following me around, not saying anything as I looked at the photos. He leaned forward and peered at the image.
“Great-great-granddad and Buffalo Bill Cody, when the Wild West Show came through here.” Guy rubbed his head and peeked down at me as if checking to see whether I was listening. “Family legend says Great-great-granddaddy bragged he even met Jesse James once, but nobody in the family ever really believed him.”
“Now that’s really interesting,” I said, working my way down the pictures.
When I was finished and had asked him about a few more, we went back to the table, picked up our glasses, and returned to the bar. It was nearly closing time, so Guy had to go back to work.
I sat on my stool, waiting to see what we
were doing after he shut down the place.
The guy next to me was looking at me funny when I sat down.
“So how’d you get to know Tom?” he asked.
It took me a minute to figure out who he was talking about. Tom? Did I know a Tom? Then I had to laugh. Guy was Tom tonight. Right.
“Uh, I came in here one night, was dumped by my boyfriend, and Tom threatened to kill me.” I looked at the guy, who was gaping at me. “It was my birthday.”
“Shit, man,” he stuttered. “He looks big and mean, but to threaten to kill you?”
By this time “Tom” had walked up to us.
“Only because he asked me my name,” he growled.
The guy’s eyes got even bigger.
“But it’s right there,” he pointed. “On your name tag.”
“Yeah, but some guys are a little slow,” Guy answered. “So I just took him home and fucked him raw.”
The guy gulped as I stifled my laughter.
“Well,” I answered when I could without hooting, “it was my birthday.”
Guy and I looked at each other and howled.
When he stopped laughing, Guy leaned over to the man next to me.
“Last call,” he said softly. “Get you anything else?”
“A fuck?” the guy asked, equally soft.
“Sorry, not a chance.” Guy clapped the man on the arm and squeezed.
“Then, no,” the guy whispered, “I’m good.”
As the customer walked, slump-shouldered and sad, out of the bar, Guy leaned in to me.
“Nice guy,” he said. “Maybe I shoulda fucked him.”
He looked at me, and I looked at him. We both smiled.
“I don’t know if it would have cheered him up or not,” I said. “So what’s the plan?”
“Well, I was gonna take you out somewhere nice to eat, then ask you over to my place,” he said slowly. “But we got three parties booked this afternoon, so I had to come in. Then my second bartender didn’t show up tonight, so here we are.”
I nodded. It was all up to him.
“You, uh, wanna come back to my place with me?” he asked with pleading puppy dog eyes.
He didn’t have to try so hard. I was an easy sell.
MUCH LATER, before we snuggled up for the night, he squeezed me and asked, “Oh, yeah, you figure out my name yet?”
“I won the bike,” I answered, stifling a yawn.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, Jesse James.”
I could feel the laughter rumbling up from his waist.
“Nice try, but not hardly.” He hugged me again and pulled me in tighter to his chest. “Get some sleep. You got another guess tomorrow.”
Before I zonked out, I thought how perfect Jesse James was as a name for him, how it fit with the pictures at the bar, and how he’d feel uncomfortable with it as his name. I’d just have to pay more attention to come up with his name.
I wasn’t sure which of the kisses we’d shared was the one he considered exceptionally fine, mostly because I thought they all were. But I was so tired by then, I just snuggled in a little closer, put my hand over his, and nodded off.
4
DAY TWO of the bet dawned bright and cheery. Guy was still asleep when I wriggled out of his hug and stumbled to the bathroom.
I was awake and raring to go. I had to check in with Felicity, who, I hoped, had figured out where I’d spent the night. I had to give her Guy’s phone number as backup in case she needed to find me and I’d left my phone in another room.
I also had to check in with the Realtor and find out if there was a counteroffer on the new place and if I could tell Brian, our banker, that it was a go.
While I was thinking about my upcoming day, I was fiddling with Guy’s outdated coffeemaker. It had been state of the art once, but now was nothing but a piece of junk. I added buying Guy a new coffeemaker to my list of chores for the day. If nothing else, I could get him something that would start coffee automatically in the morning.
I also grimaced at the coffee choices in his cupboard, not to mention the lack of food there. Opening the fridge, I realized he was a few days late in making a store run.
Well, at least in a little way, I could return some of the favors he’d done for me. The gigantic supermarket in the mall was open, so I grabbed a pen and paper, wrote him a note saying I’d be back, got dressed, and made the trip to and from the store in under an hour.
Guy was sitting at the kitchen table, horrific coffee in hand.
“Hey, you don’t have to shop for me,” he said as he got up and took one of the bags.
“No problem. There are a few more in the car if you want to help. I’ll put stuff away,” I answered.
He slipped on a pair of ratty loafers and started bringing in the food.
“I got you some french roast from Penny’s, and eggs and hickory smoked bacon from the grocery store,” I said as he piled the bags into the spaces I’d left as I emptied them. “So I thought an omelet, biscuits, and bacon this morning with decent coffee. Okay?”
I felt him behind me before he put his arms around my chest, his erection snuggled into my butt crack.
“Babe, you don’t have to do this, you know,” he whispered, then kissed my neck.
I turned and hugged him.
“I know. But I’m doing it for me, not for you.”
His eyebrows went up quizzically. “For you?”
“Yeah. I like how you look right now, and I’d be really sad if you lost weight or got deathly thin.”
He started laughing.
“How long do you figure I’ve got?” he managed to ask.
I shook my head, gazing down at his buff body.
“Wow. I don’t know. A couple of hours? A day at most?” I deadpanned. “I’d really hate to have to watch you shrivel up and all. So I’m going to fix you breakfast.”
He stood chuckling as I got the eggs out so they’d be closer to room temperature before I cooked them. Then I quickly measured ingredients and mixed up the biscuits.
“You want to do something, you can find me a cookie sheet,” I said.
“Say what?” he barked. “I don’t make cookies.”
“Ah, now I see part of the problem with your bad attitude.”
“I don’t have a bad attitude,” he growled.
Laughing, I found a large skillet in among his pots and pans, sprayed it down with nonstick, added the biscuit rounds, and left them on the counter until the oven warmed up enough to bake them. Then I used the grater I’d stumbled across in a drawer to get the cheese ready for the omelet.
With everything prepped, I started cooking and baking.
Guy backed off when I wouldn’t let him snag a piece of bacon and sternly told him to wait for the feast.
“Go set the table,” I barked at him.
“Yes, sir.” He saluted.
I grinned at being able to control him. Power is seductive, at least in the morning when I’m trying to fix breakfast for someone. Who would have guessed I liked to order around bears? Or at least this particular bear?
When everything was ready and on the table, including better coffee than I’d originally found in his cupboards, Guy looked stunned.
“Huh,” he said in awe. “Nobody ever made me a breakfast like this.”
Now that was plain old sad. How’d he grown up with no morning breakfasts?
“Your mom never fixed breakfast?” I tried to keep my voice neutral, but even I could hear how appalled I sounded.
“Naw. My mom died a week after I was born. I was too big a baby for her,” he said, helping himself to a pile of biscuits and slathering them with butter. “My dad died not too long afterward, and my grandpa raised me and my older brother. We grew up in the bar.”
His life had been even worse than sad. Two young boys growing up in a bar, being parented by an older man.
“Yeah, mostly Grandpa liked to drink and bullshit with his friends, so when we got old enough to fend for ourselve
s, we did. My brother, who everyone called Little Man, pretty much raised me until he left for the Army in his senior year in high school.” One, then two biscuits disappeared, followed by about half of the omelet.
I played with my biscuit and dragged a fork through my corner of the omelet. I felt like crying. No wonder Guy was such a hardass with the bar patrons. I was surprised he’d been so nice to me. He deserved better than he’d gotten so far.
Rather than make him go over old ground, even though I wanted to know more, I backed off, since we both needed to get to work.
“So where you wanna go tonight?” Guy asked. “I’m gonna try to take off since I didn’t get to last night.”
“Why don’t you meet me at Penny’s when you get off?” I countered. “Whatever you want to do is fine with me.”
“Sounds good. Now get out of the way, so I can clean up here.” He stood and turned with his plate in his hands.
I swiped the plate and glared at him.
“Not gonna happen, Big Guy,” I said, testing out a twink growl. “This was my way of saying thank you for being there for me. So I’m cooking and cleaning. Go get ready for work.”
We had a momentary standoff until he started to grin, then laugh.
“Okay, okay, whatever. I don’t like cleaning up anyway,” he laughed. “You should see yourself,” he added. “You really look fierce when you want to.”
“Don’t you forget it,” I said, putting the plate in the sink. Cleanup wasn’t such a big deal. Guy had a dishwasher and a disposal unit. Swipe a couple of dishes, some flatware, rinse a few cups and glasses. I clean as I cook, something I’d learned as a barista, so I mean, we’re not talking heavy lifting here. I did more work at Penny’s when we first opened and I was out front. Old habits die hard.
THE DAY sped by. The Realtor called before I phoned him. The place was ours if the loan papers came through. I called the banker, who faxed the Realtor the loan information. In between each step, I rang Felicity, who squealed in my ear every time. I understood. I was excited too. Now all I had to do was come up with the look I wanted for the new place.