Page 240 of Ashes of Sin and Stardust

“Well, he’s not here. So give me a hug.”

Simon and I talkedfor a while, and then he went to go talk to some cute girl he was trying (and failing) to hit on. I ended up sitting with Megan, who was talking to the barkeep. It took me a few minutes to realize he was her Dom.

“How is everything?” she asked me.

“Ugh, I can’t stand him. He’s so mean. I love it... I’m fully aware that’s confusing.”

“No, that about sums it up, actually. Has he brought out the throat trainer yet?”

“Nope... that sounds awful.”

“It is. But itworks. I have zero gag reflex now.”

“That is true,” Noah said, raising his eyebrows and giving me a drink menu.

“Do you have anything with no sugar in it? I’m in trouble and can’t have sugar.”

“I mean, alcohol has sugar in it...”

I felt my shoulders slump. “I’ll just wait until he gets upstairs and ask him what I can have. He threatened to extend my two weeks of no sugar to a month if he caught me cheating. And that’s just not worth it.”

“Oh, is he here? Is he coming up?” Noah asked.

“Yeah, he’s parking. It’s taking a damn long time though.” I looked over my shoulder at the door. He still wasn’t here yet.

“He probably got stuck downstairs,” Megan said. She slid off the barstool and went around behind the bar, as if it were totally normal for her to be there. “It’s hard for him not to slip into Manager Mode when he goes to any of his restaurants. Here, Sir, I’ve got it. I know you’re busy.”

Megan began pulling out bottles of things to make a drink. Noah was in the middle of three other drinks and trying to cut limes at the same time. He planted a quick kiss on Megan’s cheek as a wordless thanks for her assistance.

“He’s super picky about his drink,” Megan said. “Has he taught you to make it yet?”

“Nope. But you’re not the first person to mention it.”

“I can show you, if you want.”

I nodded. “Could come in handy.” A bargaining chip, maybe. Or a fun surprise when he’d had a hard day. The look of surprise and shock on his face if I just handed him his perfectly made cocktail one day would be just as much fun as any prank, because he didn’t expect me to be good for fun.

Megan talked me through the intricate process of making his drink. He liked sugar mixed into the whiskey, not simple syrup. He liked four ounces of ice cubes, regardless of where the line on the glass was, so the ice needed to be weighed. He liked the dark bourbon cherries, not the sweet maraschino ones. He wanted four dashes of bitters, not the three, not five.

“Damnit,” Megan said as she poured just shy of four ounces of wine into a glass measuring cup. “Sir, do we have any more of the Four Virtues wine?”

“No, that’s the last bottle. Shipment was delayed and should come in tomorrow. Just top it off with Apothic.”

“He’ll notice,” she muttered. “He likes the bourbon barrel aged Zinfandel from this one brand. Mark my words. He’ll notice.” But she did as she was told, added the last two ounces of wine, and dumped it into the cup.

“How would he?” I laughed. “It’s half a shot!”

“Because his palate isrefined,” she said, a hint of sarcasm in her tone. “When he was teaching me to make this drink, he made me make it over and over, and present it to him. Took me a while not to mess it up... and he noticed every time.”

“Yeah but he can see the liquor cabinet from the reflection in the China cabinet if he sits on the far side of the couch, right?”

She looked over her shoulder and hesitated, as if thinking hard.

“I bet he didn’t notice the taste, and he was just watching you, and fucking with you.”

She paused, her eyes widening and her forehead creasing. She glanced up at me in horror. “That is exactly something he would do, too.”

“Well, guess we’ll find out,” I laughed.“He’s a bigger brat than me, so it wouldn’t surprise me.”

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