Page 4 of The Bartender's Baby

Dylan, my future brother-in-law, eyed me from under his baseball cap. “Sit down. You’re freaking the kids out.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the dozen or so kids running around the place, playing dress-up and pretending to be cops or whatever. “Is that Finn?”

Liam nodded because, yes, it indeed was his four-year-old son blaring “Wee-oh! Wee-oh!” while waving his hand above his head as if riding on a bucking bronco.

“I can’t sit down,” I said, ripping off my coat and tossing it on the bench.

Jude held his hand up like I was a feral dog. “Slow down and explain.”

I took a deep breath and set my hands on my hips. “Tabby’s pregnant.”

“Tabby, as in your bartender?” Liam asked, and I nodded.

Dylan set his to-go coffee cup on the floor. “Tabby, as in the girl constantly frowning?”

I tossed my hand out toward him. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

Dylan grunted, his mouth in a straight line, save for a tic in the corner. Grumpy motherfucker only started smiling when he’d begun sniffing around my sister.

Liam scratched at his jaw. “So, Tabby’s pregnant? Andnotwith your kid?”

“Not my kid,” I affirmed, hating that fact but not super clear on why. “It’s that real tall dickweed she’s on and off with.”

Jude grinned. “So that’s why you’re wild about this?”

“Of course I’m wild about this. She’s my—” I stopped my pacing, Jude’s words finally setting in. “What do you mean?”

“She’s your what?” he insisted, biting into a cookie from a Tupperware on his lap like all of this was no big deal.

“She’s my bartender, my manager,” I said, snatching up one of the cookies before resuming my pacing.

“That’s it? She’s nothing else?”

“I guess she’s my friend.”

“Mm-hmm.”

I wielded my cookie at him. “Don’t look at me like that.”

Dylan smirked, smug as shit. “You’re so fucking dumb, bro.”

“Why? And you know you’re in the middle of this kiddie freakin’ nightmare of a place, and you’re cursing. You probably shouldn’t be.”

“Oh?” He cocked his head to the side. “You care about that now?”

I shoveled the rest of the cookie into my mouth, chewing vigorously. As if it would make me feel better. Make any sense of the burning in my chest and the spinning in my brain. I finally stopped pacing and chewing to stare at each of my friends in turn. They all watched me warily, as if I might tear off my face and reveal another one. But they’d all lost their shit before. I’d witnessed it, each and every time.

With Dylan, who went from commitment-phobe to borderline obsessed with my sister. I had clocked him when he’d lost it and broken her heart. Merited that shiner.

And Liam, he was the smartest person I’d ever met yet lost all sense of self when he’d met his son’s nanny—and probably soon-to-be wife, with the way things were headed. But I recalled having to talk him off the ledge when things got a bit dicey.

Then there was Jude, the guy who deserved a good woman in his life, maybe more than any of us, and recently got together with his best friend after family drama with his kids. He’d spent weeks trying to balance everything and had the sleepless zombie eyes to prove it for a while.

So how they could sit there like a bunch of assholes, gaping at me as if I were a monkey banging cymbals together, I didn’t know.

“I think you need to take a walk or something and cool off,” Liam suggested. “Settle down.”

I waved him off, jutting my chin to Jude instead. “Why are you smiling?”

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