Page 1 of Baby for the Bartender
ONE
maggie
Juniper Fallsin late September was pretty.
It was aggressively, almost rudely pretty—the kind of pretty that felt very personal when you were having a bad night, like the town was showing off on purpose.
I walked with no destination in mind, which was a new experience for me. I was a person who had destinations. I had a planner. I had highlighters and sparkly pens. I color-coded things.
I had a five-year plan that had, as of approximately forty-five minutes ago, become completely worthless.
Bryce wasn’t coming.
five years. We’d been together five years—since the first week of freshman year at Amherst, since before I knew anything about anything—and forty-five minutes ago he’d called and said he wasn’t coming, and that was it. That was all of it. five years and a second bedroom I’d picked out on purpose and a future I’d been so sure about I’d moved to a town in Vermont I’d never seen before just to start building it.
Gone.
I curled my hands into fists and kept walking.
I should have gone home. I really,reallyshould have gone home.
Instead, I turned right, off the main drag.
And that was how I ended up in Juniper Falls’s only dive bar: Rick’s.
I did not drink. Bad things happened when I drank. Usually, I would just have a single, fruity drink that made me feel floaty and happy and that tasted like sunshine. I hadn’t actually been in a divebar since college.
And now I was here. Wearing sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt.
At a dive bar alone.
It was pitiful.
Very unbecoming for the local kindergarten teacher.
The bar was dim and mostly empty, which was the first thing that went right all night. A couple in the back corner too busy inhaling each other’s tongues to notice me. An older man at the far end of the bar staring at a hockey game on the TV mounted in the corner. No one I recognized. No one who would report back to Principal Daniels that Miss Laine had been spotted alone at Rick’s in her pajamas on a Thursday night.
I slid onto a barstool and let out a breath.
The bartender had his back to me, doing something with bottles on the shelf. Tall. Broad shoulders. Dark hair going a little gray at the edges. I had approximately three seconds of thinkingooh, maybe he’s cute, oh my god, Margot Laine, you just got dumped, what is wrong with youbefore he turned around.
I stared at him.
He stared at me.
It was like…seeing a teacher at the grocery store. I mean, it was kind of like that—different, I guess, since I was the teacher in this case. But…he was in a place he wasn’t supposed to be—orI was, I wasn’t sure—and for a truly humiliating moment neither of us said anything.
Garrison Nash.Nell’s dad.Standing behind the bar at Rick’s like he worked here.
He…wait.
He definitely worked here.
Or—owned it?
Why did he own a place namedRick’s?
“Mr. Nash,” I blurted out.
