Page 2 of Accidental Abduction

“Bar closes in two hours. I’m the last man out tonight.” Typically, I traded schedules with the other two barbacks, alternating who covered the weekends. But since I wanted to celebrate Halloween off the clock in a few days, I’d been on weekends for the last three weeks to make up for it.

“Can’t you sneak out early?” she whined, cocking her head to the side. Her lashes fluttered, and she pushed out her bottom lip into a pout. A move that’d once worked on me, but I wouldn’t let her manipulate me into being a shitty boss because I cared about my employee’s opinions of me. “You never have time to come hang out with me anymore. You were a lot more fun when you didn’t take everything with the bar so seriously.”

I knew I was disappointing her, but this bar meant financial security, and I had to take it seriously if I didn’t want to let everyone else down in my life. My parents were expecting me to keep the business alive, my sister depended on her income waitressing to cover the expenses for her online classes and art supplies, and my employees depended on the money they made in tips. If things started falling apart because I wanted to spend more time with my girlfriend, everyone would suffer.

“Viv, you know I can’t. I’ll get off at three like normal.”

“But I’ll be too tired to stay up by then.” My temples throbbed at the shrill tone of her voice. I hated she couldn’t just take no for an answer. I’d never come into her job during work hours and expect her to drop everything to keep me entertained. Just because she worked in an office during the day didn’t meanmyjob duringmywork hours was any less important.

“Then maybe I’ll just crash in my office.” Sundays were typically when I did inventory before our weekly food delivery, so it’d be easier if I didn’t have to drive back and forth. When I’d first taken over the bar, I’d lived upstairs, but when Hazel finished art school and moved back home, I’d bought a place a few blocks away, so she didn’t have to live with our parents.

Viv narrowed her eyes, turning to scan the room for my sister. “You’re not planning to stay in their apartment, are you?”

“No,” I sighed, reaching up to re-situate my black hat on my sweaty hair. The fact that she immediately went there added to my simmering irritation. “I’ll stay on the couch in my office. Downstairs. Not upstairs.”

Charley and Hazel shared the modest two-bedroom apartment above the bar now, and it was almost unrecognizable from when I lived there. My sister was girly as fuck and had painted enormous flowers on most of the walls in the living room.

I wasn’t their landlord, our dad technically was, but I made sure the girls had everything they needed. And served as their handyman if anything went wrong.

“I wanted to talk to you about something.” She looked upset I wasn’t making myself available to her, but I had responsibilities beyond making her happy. Sometimes it felt more like I was an accessory for her to parade around than her partner. Her partner who was a grown adult with an adult job.

“After I’m done with inventory, putting away the shipment and getting next week’s orders in, I’ll come to your apartment.”

“I guess that’s fine,” she sighed, but I knew she was pissed at me. I’d blown her off a lot lately. She expected me to drop everything at a moment’s notice, but this bar was my future. My father hadn’t kept the place running for twenty years by cutting out early and shirking his responsibilities.

Before I could dwell on how I could diffuse her attitude, the front door of the bar opened and a dozen more college students joined the melee.

“You want a drink? We’re slammed, and I need to get back to work.”

Viv shook her head, her face pinched in anger. But I shrugged it off and blew out a breath. When I looked back up, she was already absorbed in her phone while I escaped to the other end of the bar to serve my new patrons.

She’d been irritated with me for months after I told her I didn’t want to sell my house to move into something newer together. I’d considered it, but I kept weird hours and didn’t know how she’d cope with that. I also didn’t want to move in together just because we’d been together for a few years.

Things had been casual between us when we started dating, and just never stopped, but she’d been hinting she wanted more lately. I just wasn’t sure I could give her more.

She hadn’t protested my job when we met. She’d even mistakenly thought that I was just a bartender, not the owner of the bar. My dad had still been involved in the day to day back then, and when he finally retired and I stepped into his shoes, she hadn’t been happy that it meant I wasn’t free whenever she called me.

As I watched her overly manicured fingers fly over her phone screen, I tried to find traces of the girl I’d fallen for. I wasn’t sure she was there anymore beneath the carefully curated surface of the woman she’d become.

Hudson

Lifting a crate ofpotatoes, I carried it into the cold storage room off the kitchen and stacked it on a shelf by the door.

I stretched, rolling my shoulders before I leaned back, groaning as my back popped. Things had settled down before the last call, but I was too old to sleep on couches anymore. After spending an entire shift on my feet and then tossing and turning on the couch in my office, I was fucking tired. Plus, I desperately needed a shower because I still smelled like a bar.

“We’re old as fuck,” my best friend, Reid, groaned as he joined me and plunked down a crate of tomatoes. “Why can’t you have one of the bartenders do this shit?”

“Because they willingly took on extra shifts this week so I could take a few days off.”

“Aren’t you in charge? You make the schedule, so if you want to take days off, just make them work.”

“We both know it’s not that easy,” I laughed, stepping around him to go grab another crate from the stack by the back door. “You just gonna push one of your regulars onto another artist?”

“My situation is different. People are particular about who they want permanently inking something onto their bodies. Most people don’t give a shit who’s pouring their drinks.” He paused, smirking at me. “Unless it’s Charley. She might poison my drink.”

“It’s the principle of the thing. If I want them to keep working for me, I need to walk the walk. Bailing on shifts doesn’t exactly foster a good working relationship or respect.”

“Being a workaholic doesn’t exactly foster a good romantic relationship. How’s Viv dealing with you working sixty hours a week?”

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