Page 1 of Brewbies
Prologue
“No blondes.”
To Ethan Townsend, it was a new rule. In the past, he’d preferred blondes. Complex but sweet. Rare. Known for clarity and effervescence and surprising lack of bitterness.
But lately, blondes had been a real letdown.
Especially when they threw you over for a dangerous, vaguely creepy, morally gray ex-soldier who catfished her for weeks—
“What else you like?” queried the pretty woman in her early twenties who’d been a bit too liberal with the lip filler.
“A full-bodied brown, maybe?” he suggested, perusing the inventory. “Or an Irish red or something dark with good head? What’s your favorite?”
The bartender had a suggestion at the ready, “New nitro-stout on tap claims to be better than a Guinness.”
Ethan rocked back on his stool and snorted. “Big words. Big claim. Now I have check it out.”
This would make his third or fifth beer in about an hour, and he was finally feeling lubed up, for lack of a better term, for the night’s endeavor.
Taking his stein, he noticed the bartender had written her number on a cocktail napkin. He very studiously didn’t look at her while considering.
She couldn’t be older than twenty-two, which, while legal, wasn’t the kind of company he was looking for.
Or who was looking for what he was after tonight.
Sipping on the drink teeming with tiny bubbles, he took a moment to appreciate the dark caramel, molasses, and hoppy beverage that, unsurprisingly,wasn’tbetter than Guinness on tap.
Still, it took the high-percentage Canadian stout to summon courage of the liquid variety.
Now he just needed to aim it at someone.
The courage, not the beer.
For tonight, he’d stolen across an international border to avoid recognition. Not because he was any kind of celebrity, per se…but because an elected county sheriff shouldn’t be prowling around his own citizens, hunting for a quick fuck.
Downside of being a town’s favored son? Exactly zero room to be a man.
A person.
With all the foibles and flaws, desires and downfalls that come with the lamentable human condition.
Not that he’d ever had a chance at a different outcome. Or a say into which family he’d been born.
Scandal was inevitable these days… Heartbreak and loneliness her sad suitors, each jockeying for position to tap-dance on his ego.
Drowning the new ache in his chest with a wave of smooth nitro bubbles, he lasered away any blondes from the pool of pretty women weekend-partying on the sticky dance floor.
Big Smitty’s was less of a dive bar and more of a hole in the wall the size of a grown man’s shadow. The offerings? Local beer and live blues to a small contingency of locals whose morals were too young or too weary to be offended by the establishment. With its all-over grunge vibe and strategically placed slivers of cherry-red light, the bar was a temple to thenow and the next. A small, echoey strip of nowhere for the songs of today to blare from five speakers in a three-speaker space.
Ethan hadn’t marched that far into his thirties yet, and still the music sounded too new for him, not unlike the synthesized, auditory equivalent of a kick in the teeth.
He needed to pick someone up and get out of here before he ground his molars to dust.
Swiveling in the stool he’d dragged up to the bar, he scanned the floor.
Whatwashe in the mood for?
A check-in with his recently-not-so-latent libido became a cause for concern.
