Page 11 of Thirst For Me
She shakes his hand so reluctantly, I might have to grant her free drinks for life. “Sierra Daniels.”
“Sierra,” he says, “like the truck?”
She discreetly pulls a face at me, like:Is anyone educated in this town?
I fill him in. “Sierra means ‘mountains’ in Spanish.”
He leans on the bar next to her. “Your family speaks Spanish?”
I wonder if he’s actually interested, or just faking it to annoy me.
“Nope.” She picks up the shooter and gives it a sniff. “My parents happened to be backpacking in Spain when I was conceived, and my father thought the word was pretty.”
“Sounds romantic,” he quips.
“Oh, yeah.” She throws back the shooter. “Decidedly more romantic than when he ditched me and my mom three years later. Wow. That is good.” She slams the shot glass down, then waves her thumb over her shoulder, toward the bride. “But hey, maybe she’ll have better luck in that department.”
“Or maybe not,” Jace says. “Statistically.”
Sierra frowns a little, that vaguely haunted look returning. Leave it to Jace to really run a conversation into the ground.
“Trust me,” I tell her, “Jace knows even less about relationship statistics than he does about relationships.”
He laughs.
But Sierra seems distracted now, her mood regressing to where it was when she stepped out of my office. She watches me load the shooters onto a tray, drumming her fingers lightly on the bar.
“You know what?” she says with forced brightness. “Put those on my tab, please. And hit me up with another one of these heavenly ciders when you get a chance?” She holds her glass up in cheers. “It’s five o’clock somewhere, right?”
“Actually, it’s almost five o’clock right now,” Jace provides helpfully as she takes a swig.
“May I?” she asks me, holding the cider out as if to add it to the tray. “I won’t even drop them. Probably.”
“Go right ahead.” I give her a small smirk, trying to steer us back to where we were before Jace interrupted. “They’re on your tab, right?”
Doesn’t work.
She just says, “Thank you,” puts her cider on the tray, and whisks the whole thing away. I watch her walk over to the other girls, carefully, and put the tray down on one of their tables to a round of cheers. She pulls up a chair and sits down.
Jace watches her go, too, and says to me, “I’m sorry,” not sorry at all. “Did I just ruin that for you?” Then he smiles, the fucker.
“Always.”
Abby comes out of the kitchen with the guac and flatbread I ordered for Sierra, just as Oscar, my night bartender, shows up for his shift. I put in a few more orders of appetizers for the bachelorette, on the house, tell Abby to keep their water glasses full and, if they stick around, slow their service and try to get them to order dinner.
“Let’s go,” I tell Jace, rounding the bar.
“What, we’re not even gonna have a beer?”
“You already had a beer. You’re cut off until you square up on your never-ending tab.” Same thing I tell him every time.
He just chuckles and follows me out to my truck.
“I can feel you grinning.”
“You’re in quite a mood,” he notes as we climb in.
“I never took you for a Rod Stewart fan.”
