The Last Drop

by Layla Reyne

  Until he crossed the threshold, walked through the narrow back hallway, past the darkened kitchen, and into the open area at the front of the lower floor space.

  He vaguely heard his father’s loafers peel off the sticky floor and felt his mother’s warm hand on his forearm, but those senses were secondary to sight, smell, and taste. His gaze roamed the large open area, taking in the rotting bar, the crumbling brick walls, and the shaft of rainbow-colored light that streaked through the uncovered corner of stained-glass above the door. He inhaled the lingering smoke, the traces of alcohol, and the ever-present moisture in the decaying wood, drains, and probably also the walls. The soupy, stuffy air bound the ingredients in a cocktail Greg tasted in the back of his throat.

  Along with everything this place could be.

  The vague notion stirring at the back of his mind returned, taking on a more definite shape as the first piece fell into place. “It’s perfect.”

  “I thought so,” his mom smugly agreed.

  “We thought so.” His dad clasped his shoulder. “The building came through one of the brokers I work with. The owner’s looking for a new tenant for the commercial space and the residential unit upstairs.”

  His mom squeezed his arm. “You can work and live here. Like you’ve always wanted.”

  He had always wanted that convenience, and he never again wanted the inconvenience of a griping neighbor. If you lived in a building with a restaurant in New Orleans, you had better learn to live with the smell of boiling seafood. He’d be more than happy to wake up to that comforting smell every morning. Just like he’d be happy to walk downstairs and into his kitchen. His restaurant. It didn’t look like much now—looked like less than much, if he were being honest—but the bones were there, and they were beautiful. Here in this vibrant, funky neighborhood, this place could be a home for him and his restaurant. The multi-color light caught his attention again. It could also be a home for the LGBTQ community. He’d been searching for a way to get more involved, to make a difference beyond just helping out at his parents’ shelters. This was something he could do.

  He turned to his dad, who wore the same proud and pleased smile his mother had flashed earlier. “How long can they hold it?” Greg asked. “I need to find an investor.” He eyed the bar area again. “And there’s someone else I need to get on board.”

  “I can pull some strings. Slow roll the listing. You got some money I can throw at the broker and owner? It’ll help.”

  Greg nodded. “I got some.”

  His mother covered her ears. “I didn’t hear that.”

  Henry laughed, then slapped his back. “I’ll do what I can, but you gotta do your thing, son. Get your money and your people. We can’t hold it off the market for long.”

  Greg rubbed his hands together, ready to put them back to work. Ready to build something new, to take another shot at his dream, and to get back the man he needed to help make it happen.

  Chapter Four

  “Yo, Anthony!”

  “Yo, Tina!” Tony hollered back from behind the bar where he was slicing limes for the garnish caddy. “It’s Tony, for the umpteenth time.”

  “Good luck with that,” Sully said as he dumped a bowl of pitted cherries into one of the caddy compartments. “Twenty years together and she still calls me Sullivan. But if I dare call her Valentina…”

  The leggy brunette strutted out from the pub’s kitchen, her dark curls wobbling in a messy bun atop her head, a brightly patterned maxi dress flowing under her open chef’s coat. “I heard that, mi amor,” she said to her husband. She lifted the bar flip and joined them behind the bar. Stopping on the other side of Tony, she held her phone out to him. “I think this ad is about you, Anthony.”

  “Ad?”

  “Yeah, I was posting in the classifieds section of an LGBTQ meetup app, trying to find this sexy blonde spitfire Sullivan and I hooked up with last month. All blonde hair, blue eyes, and black leather.” She hummed her appreciation, while Sully blushed. “Anywho, I found this instead.” She brandished her phone at him again, smiling. “Just read it, hermano.”

  He washed and dried his hands, then took the device and began to read aloud. “Dear Mr. Manhattan.” A wide grin stretched across his face, making further words difficult.

  “Well, well, well,” Tina said, each word punctuated by a tap of her high heel. “Would you look at that? Someone’s smitten.”

  So smitten that Tony hadn’t slept with another man in nine months. He’d had to force himself to leave New Orleans that morning—the place and the man. He’d wanted nothing more than to stay wrapped in the chef’s big arms, to kiss him good morning, and to run his hands over all that beautiful brown skin, his tongue over the ink he’d discovered on both shoulders. To see his deep dark eyes in the light of dawn and feel what the morning wood he’d been sporting could do. But if he’d stayed long enough to do any of those things, Tony would have never left. He had left, and he didn’t regret that night or leaving, but he was certain no one would live up to such an incredible lay, so he hadn’t bothered trying, even here in San Francisco, one of the most queer-friendly cities in the world.

  Tina smacked her nicotine gum, snapping Tony back to the present. His eyes cut to her, more harshly than he’d intended, and he opened his mouth to apologize.

  She raised a hand, cutting him off, and spat the gum out in the under-bar trashcan in the most unladylike way possible. Tony loved her all the more for it. “My bad,” she said. “Now, read us the rest.”

  “We met nine months ago at a bar in New Orleans,” he resumed. “You were the too cute hipster behind the bar. I was the out-of-work chef acting the Virgin Mary with my too big hands.” Hands that had been deliciously rough as they’d expertly teased Tony, opened him up, and stroked him to climax. He read on before he embarrassed himself. “You blew my mind with your cocktails, then you rocked my world and started it spinning again. I’ve got a gig for you. Dram, Bywater, New Orleans. Come drink with me. Yours, Mr. New Orleans.”

  “Yours?” Sully said, brow raised. “Who was he?”

  Tony’s cheeks heated to burning. “I didn’t get his name. He was a chef who came into the bar I worked at in NOLA.”

  “What’d he cook?” Tina asked, always curious, always interested and eager to learn.

  “I don’t know.” Three flops he’d said. “I think his restaurant had just closed.”

  “Sounds like he’s got a new one. Maybe he wants you to work with him.”

  He handed the phone back to Tina. “He was a good fuck. That was all.”

  “This”—she brandished the device again—“is more than just a good fuck.”

  Sully passed him a handful of lemons. “You gonna go?”

  “It was one night.” He picked up his knife and began quartering the fruit. “I’m not gonna uproot my life for a stranger.”

  “A stranger who is actively searching for you,” Tina said.

  “We can have our favorite feds check him out,” Sully added, “if you’re concerned.”

  Tony shook his head. “Nah, he was a good guy.” He laid down the knife again and split a glance between the best bosses he’d ever worked for. “I can’t just leave you guys in the lurch.”

  “Please.” Tina flicked a hand toward the front doors. “This is San Francisco. I can spit and hit a bartender. I can replace you today.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Gee, thanks.”

  “Love you, baby.” She presented her upturned cheek, which he dutifully pecked. She turned serious and a little sad, though, as she righted her gaze. “How much longer were you here for anyway?”

  He pulled her into a hug. “This is the longest I’ve stayed anywhere in five years. And I never go back to the same place.”

  Sully laid a hand on his shoulder. “Some things, some people, are worth a return visit.”

  “Exactly.” Tina drew back, smiling. She framed his face with her hands and patted his cheeks. “Just a visit. You don’t have to stay there forev
er.”

  Except Tony feared if he got another taste of Mr. New Orleans, that’s exactly what he’d want to do. Stay. Forever.

  Tony drew back the gauzy curtain and stared out the motel room window, past the interstate, to the barren landscape dotted with oil rigs, all of it shimmering with heat. Texas in late April, at dusk, and it was ninety degrees outside. Eighty in here, if he had to guess. He fiddled with the dials on the ancient AC unit, turning it up to high.

  It would have been cooler in the car, but not if he got stuck on the freeway in rush-hour traffic. So he’d stopped for the night at a motel on the western edge of Houston. Better than overheating the car and better than losing hours to traffic. This way he’d arrive in New Orleans midday tomorrow, at a decent hour, rather than God only knew when later tonight.

  Those were the excuses he told himself.

  His gaze glided back to the interstate, toward the city immediately ahead and to the one that lay six hours beyond. His thoughts drifted the same direction, to the gig and the man waiting for him in New Orleans. He could still reverse course to the West Coast or divert to Galveston or drive past the Big Easy to Pensacola, neither a town he’d visited yet. He could keep the promise he’d made to himself five years ago. A promise he hadn’t once questioned until now. For a man he hardly knew. He turned from the window, snatched his keys off the dresser, and grabbed his suitcase. Galveston was looking better and better. He could head down there tonight. Be there in an hour.

  He paused with his hand on the door.

  Or he could sleep on it and decide in the morning when he wasn’t worn out from driving three days straight.

  “Fuck!” He spun on his heel, dropped his luggage, and tossed his keys onto the dresser again. “What are you going to do, Monaco?”

  As if in answer, his phone rang, his sister’s Springsteen ringtone competing with the droning AC. He crossed the room and flipped it down a notch, muting the racket. “Hey, Jules.”

  “Hey yourself. You make it there yet?”

  “Not quite.” He glanced back out the window. “Stopped before Houston. It’s hot as balls, and I needed a rest.”

  “I don’t doubt the first, but the second part of your statement is bullshit.”

  “Love you too,” he managed around a laugh.

  His four-year-old niece giggled in the background. “You said a bad word, Mommy,” she chided her mother.

  To which Julia mumbled, “Shit.”

  Elle giggled and clapped louder. “Again.”

  His sister groaned. “Mother of the year, right here.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Tony said. “She’s growing up in Queens. Not the first or last time she’ll hear that word.”

  “This is true.”

  “Everything good there?” he asked.

  “We’re fine. And you will be too.”

  He plopped onto the end of the bed, billowing his shirt for breeze as the temperature climbed. “But I don’t go—”

  “Back to places, I know. And I know why. But were you going to do that forever? Like, even when you were seventy and a crotchety old New Yorker?”

  He couldn’t help but laugh, remembering their crotchety older relatives in their golden years. Brows bushier, tempers shorter, accents longer.

  “That’d be impossible, Tony,” his sister said, bringing him back to the present. “You were bound to return someplace sometime. Maybe you’ll even come back here at some point. See the life Jake and I have built.”

  He flattened his hand against his chest, against the sudden throbbing behind his breastbone. “Jules, I’m so—”

  “I said at some point, when you’re ready. Until then, we’ll come to you, wherever you’re at. Jake and Elle like the adventure.”

  “Your family shouldn’t—”

  “Our family,” she said. “And you shouldn’t have had to spend all those years at home with Dad while I was at Syracuse. I got my degree, met Jake there, and now we have Elle and a home. You made this life possible. Coming to you, until you’re ready to come to us, is the least we can do. Now, that’s enough about the past.” She huffed—end of discussion—and he could see his sister cocking her hip and swiping her dark curls away from her face. Elle was likely mimicking her. They were two women he was not about to argue with. On to their next mission. Him. “What are we going to do about your future?”

  “I could just stay here. Or go to Galveston.”

  “You want me to scroll up and read you the texts from the last time you tried Texas. Five days, Tony. You lasted five days.”

  He groaned and fell back onto the bed. She was right. Nothing against the Lone Star State, but it wasn’t for him. Not enough places for him on the coast, and the hip factor of Austin wasn’t enough to outweigh the landlocked claustrophobia.

  “This gig in New Orleans…” Jules said, “It’s a good opportunity for your career?”

  Tony smiled and some of the weight lifted off his chest. He loved that his sister, a successful New York lawyer, like their dad had been before his accident, never once cast judgment on his profession. She demanded copies of his bar menus, tried his recipes at home, and was always sending him articles about opportunities and advancements in mixology. She wanted him to succeed and, like a dutiful older sibling, looked out for him.

  “Maybe?” he replied. “I haven’t talked to him yet. Maybe he wants me to design the beverage menu from scratch, or maybe he just wants me to work the late shift.”

  “There are plenty of bartenders in New Orleans. He wouldn’t run a bunch of ads looking for you if he didn’t want more.” She’d checked; the ad Tina had found wasn’t the only one. “He recognized your talent.”

  He tried and failed to muffle the strangled noise that escaped his lips, recalling the mutual “talents” he and Mr. New Orleans had shared.

  “Okay, talents,” Julia teased, accurately interpreting his dying-goose noises.

  “Jesus.” He covered his face with his hand and doubted the heat he felt there had anything to do with the Texas temps.

  But when Jules spoke again, the teasing tone was gone, replaced with warm sincerity. “Do you want to go, Anthony?”

  He didn’t question the immediacy of his answer, the answer right there on the tip of his tongue. He didn’t question the truth of it either. He’d never lied to his sister, and today was no exception. “Yes.”

  Chapter Five

  Greg hammered the last nail into Dram’s new bar and mentally cheered. Not a single broken or bruised finger. When he’d first returned to New Orleans, he could barely hit the head of a nail; his left hand had been nothing but bruises. He was surprised his father—a contractor turned developer—hadn’t disowned him. But like he’d told Manhattan, he’d learned to be a carpenter. Building shelters with his father’s team and building three restaurants. Now on restaurant number four, he was confident enough with a hammer, saw, and blueprints to install his own custom bar—the centerpiece of his new concept. This was gonna be the one. He was even more sure of it today than he had been that day last summer when his parents had shown him the space. Even more sure than the morning he’d woken up alone, inspired yet missing the source of his inspiration.

  “Stop mooning,” a southern-tinged voice yelled over the whir of the floor sander. The machine quieted a moment later, and a plaid bandana slapped Greg in the face a moment after that. “And wipe off before you drip sweat all over the place.”

  Greg wasn’t a small guy by any stretch of the imagination, but the man lumbering his way, Michelin-starred chef Miller Sykes, was a mountain by comparison. The layer of sawdust powdering his chestnut beard, his cutoff denim shorts, and the sweat-stained plaid and gray tee he wore only enhanced the mountain-man image. Which was so far from the truth when it came to his marshmallow of a best friend that Greg laughed out loud.

  “Floors done?” he asked, once he got his hilarity under control.

  Miller gestured toward the dining area. Tables and chairs were a week out still, bu
t it was starting to look real. Feel real. “Gotta sweep this dust out and sand around the bar after we edge it,” Miller said. “But it should be ready for varnish Monday.”

  Nodding, Greg circled the bar through his now functioning bar flip and grabbed two bottles of Gravity Alto Pils out of the mini fridge. He popped the caps and passed one to Miller.

  They tapped the bottle necks, then each downed half in one go. Good stuff. Miller’s next words, however, were not so good. “We gonna talk about the glaring problem?”

  Greg surveyed the fully assembled backbar, walked to the bar flip at the end, tested it, then passed under it and inspected the bar from the front as well. He spread his arms out wide. “What the fuck? I thought I was done.”

  “Building it, yeah.” Miller sank onto the front bay window seat where a six-top table would eventually be situated. Miller, though, wasn’t letting him enjoy that victory. “But you’re six weeks from opening, and you haven’t ordered any of the booze to fill it or put together a bar menu.”

  “I’ll get to it.”

  “Babe, the name of the restaurant is Dram.”

  Greg flipped him the bird. “Next week, I swear, when they’re doing the floors and I can’t do anything else.”

  Miller’s grin was knowing and devious. “You’re still waiting.”

  Greg sat next to him and guzzled what was left of his Pilsner.

  “How long ago did you post the ad?” Miller asked.

  “Sometime after you gave me the tip about it at Christmas.”

  Miller nudged his shin. “Valteau…”

  “Fine,” Greg groaned. “The very next morning.”

  Miller laughed. “You’re such a dork.”

  It both sucked and rocked having a friend who knew him so well.

  Miller finished his beer and stood, snagging the empty from Greg’s hands. “You can’t keep waiting, babe. You need to hire a beverage director.”