Page 11 of The Promise Of You

I can’t wait for her call to be over.

I glance at Chris’s live streamed show. He’s doing good, but we’re still far away from the ending, the judging.

It’s going to be a long night. Colton is in the studio. They only allowed one guest per contestant, and I ‘volunteered’ to not go.

What can I do to get her to look up?

“What?” she cries into her screen, tapping her earbuds again.

“You need to get laid! Tonight!” the voice comes out of her phone, full volume.

Hallelujah.

three

Chloe

It might be a numbers game, but I like to know the basics of the industry I’m going to be working in. So I booked myself a food conference in Boston that lasts several days and covers everything from finance to marketing to, well, food itself.

I left my U-Haul at Aunt Dawn’s, drove back to Massachusetts, and now it’s the night before the conference and I’m sitting at the hotel bar, on the phone with Fiona who’s in her hotel room after another concert. It’s already tomorrow for her, wherever she is.

We’re trying to have a chat, but my earbuds keep going in and out of sync with the phone, and it’s getting annoying. I should hang up, and I tell Fiona as much.

“You go, girl!” she says, then brings her face so close to her phone it looks distorted on my screen.

But I barely hear her when she adds, “You need to get laid! Tonight!” She has her screaming face on, but her voice sounds muted to me.

Oh crap. Crapcrapcrap!

I fumble with my phone, but it’s too late. The damage is done. Everyone within a large earshot heard what Fiona thinks I should do with my night. The bartender jolts, and it’s like everyone in the bar freezes to see what I’m going to say.

Including the hot-as-sin man sitting four stools down.

He’s not dressed in the usual conference attire. Instead of a suit or dress pants and a blazer, he’s wearing black jeans and black leather boots, and a dark cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms, one of which is tattooed down to the back of his hand. Since I got here, I’ve been eying him—discreetly I hope—and I can’t say that my mind didn’t jump to him when Fiona blurted her now very public suggestion.

To my horror, his green eyes slice sideways to me, his mouth twitches, then he drops his gaze to my legs and takes a sip of his drink.

But before I can figure out what to do or say, his gaze flicks back in front of him.

He slams his glass on the counter. “Shit,” he growls, jumps down from his stool and rounds the bar. I freeze as my eyes narrow on the bartender dropping a lime, holding a knife in one hand, his other hand gushing blood, the gash profound. “I’ll call you back,” I tell Fiona and hang up. Hot-as-sin is running the bartender’s hand under water, then wrapping it in a rag that I hope is clean, then he leans through a door at the back and barks orders.

“Shouldn’t we call 911?” I say when he gets back.

“Paramedics in a hotel bar isn’t a good look.”

The bartender nods his agreement.

A young guy comes out of the back, wearing a long white apron and a skull cap. He takes one look at the bartender’s hand and winces. “Yeah, let’s go.”

The bartender seems to hesitate. From where I am, he’s bleeding out. What is he thinking?

“I’ll cover your shift, man,” hot-as-sin slash awesome guy says, and it hits me.

The bartender needs his tips.

A discussion follows between the three about the floor manager being gone for the night, keys change hands, and codes are scribbled on paper napkins. Seemingly halfway satisfied, the bartender leaves with the prep cook for an urgent care place, and hot-as-sin is clipping a name tag that isn’t his on the dark shirt that hugs his muscles in a way that should be illegal.

“D’you actually know what you’re doing, or is bartending on a bucket list of yours?” I say in a voice that’s way more assured than I’m feeling.

---