Second Chance Baby

by Natasha L. Black

  Ducking into the office was supposed to give me a chance to be alone for a few minutes. It was supposed to give me a second to breathe and get my thoughts straight in my head before I had to face the night. But that wasn’t to be. Seconds after I got into the office and closed the door behind me, it opened again, and Matt walked in. He pointed behind himself and stared at me, wide-eyed and openmouthed.

  “What?” I asked, bringing up the materials for one of the games we were planning so I could print them out.

  Ava would be running a couple of the games for us, which I was sure would be popular with the guys who came in without dates. I couldn’t help but notice she had taken the theme to a level designed to keep her tips flowing. Her tight black dress had a white panel with black polka dots down the back, a deep scooping neckline, and spike heels to match. It left just enough to the imagination to keep my mind churning.

  “What the hell was that?” Matt asked.

  “What was what?” I asked.

  “Did you seriously just high-five her?”

  “Is there something wrong with that?”

  “If you really have to ask that, maybe you should take some time to confront your feelings,” he said.

  I shook my head. “There aren’t any feelings, Matt. It’s nice to have her here to help us with the bar, and we’re doing just fine as friends. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Stop lying,” Matt said. “For your own sake.”

  With that, he walked out of the office. I tried to ignore the comment as I gathered up the papers and went back out to the front of the bar. Black lights glowed, music pulsed, and Ava and Jesse poised behind the bar ready to go—it was time.

  I nodded at each of them to make sure they were ready and walked over to the door. As soon as I opened it, a massive crowd filed in. I tried to catch as many faces as I could as they swarmed the space. Some I recognized, including a couple of the regulars who looked equal parts intrigued and out of place. Far more of the faces were brand-new. That was exactly what I wanted to see.

  All we had to do now was give them a good experience so they would want to come back.

  The night was crazy right off the bat. There was no build or slow ramp-up. Instead, we went from empty to crushed in a matter of minutes. I glanced over at Ava. She looked like she was in her element, laughing and dancing as she mixed drinks and filled glasses of beer and wine. She may have come here thinking this was just a filler job to get her through while she was in town, but it looked like she’d found her groove. Her smile lit up the space, as she seamlessly went from customer to customer. She looked like she was having a blast.

  “Mason!”

  I looked toward the booming voice and saw my best friend, Brian, coming toward me. I grinned and grabbed his hand, pulling him in to pound him on the back.

  “Hey! Good to see you. I’m glad you made it out tonight,” I said.

  “Me too.” He looked around, nodding. “This is pretty impressive. I have to admit, I always thought you guys were going for a dive bar.”

  I laughed. “Well, the whole dive bar thing might be trendy right now, but that was more inflicted on us than intentional. We’ve been trying to come up with ways to drum up more business, and my new bartender suggested this.”

  I gestured over to the bar and saw Brian’s jaw drop. He’d been traveling for work over the last few weeks, so I hadn’t told him about Ava working at the bar yet. His reaction was perfect.

  “Holy shit, is that Ava?”

  Ava heard him and looked up. Her eyes widened, and she let out a squeal as she ran out from behind the bar and forced her way through the crowd to get to Brian. He gave her a tight hug and stepped back to look at her.

  “Brian! I can’t believe you’re here!” she gushed.

  “I can say the same for you. Nobody told me you were back,” he said.

  He looked between the two of us with the obvious question in his eyes, but Ava and I both shook our heads.

  “No,” Ava said without elaborating. “I’m just here for a little while to help out my parents. I needed a quick job and snagged this one. Never thought I’d be a real bartender.”

  “Well, you’re a bit more than that,” I said.

  Ava looked behind her at the bar where Jesse was already starting to drown in orders. She whipped her head back to us. “Not tonight. Tonight, the bar calls. Brian, it’s amazing to see you. Come up and get a drink later. I’d love to catch up.”

  She scurried back behind the bar and picked up the slack. From there, the night only swelled. It was loud and busy, with everyone having fun and raving about the atmosphere. For a couple of hours it was so busy I had to go behind the bar to help. Ava and I got into an almost natural flow of making and serving drinks beside each other. I loved how well we worked together, how easily we still fit in each other’s orbit.

  11

  Ava

  “What are you doing?”

  I was still most of the way asleep and had barely even processed reaching under my pillow to pick up my phone. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was aware it had been ringing and I answered it. But my grogginess kept me from totally connecting to the conversation.

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “What are you doing?” Stephanie asked, saying each word slowly and over enunciating the syllables like she thought I’d suddenly lost my ability to understand the language.

  “Sleeping,” I told her, bringing myself up into a seated position. “At least, I was until an annoying sound woke me up.”

  “Trash truck coming around the neighborhood?” she asked. “Somebody’s car alarm?”

  “My best friend calling me at the crack of dawn,” I groaned.

  I’d taken to wearing a sleep mask over my eyes when I went to bed. Working at the bar shifted my wake-sleep cycles, so now I was up far longer into the night than I was used to and had to stay in bed a good portion of the day. I had always been one of those people who couldn’t sleep with any light around, so sunlight coming through my windows meant I wasn’t getting any sleep. Now I nudged my mask out of the way and rubbed my eyes.

  “Your best friend is waking you up at the crack of eleven thirty,” Stephanie said. “Come on. Get up. I want to grab lunch.”

  I wanted to argue with her and tunnel myself back under my covers, but I knew I needed to get up. Even with my late hours, I usually didn’t let myself sleep this late

  But that day was different. The black-light night had me at the bar hours later than I usually was, so I didn’t even topple into bed until almost sunrise. I decided I was going to go into work at an almost normal time. Which meant I could meet up with Stephanie for lunch. I asked her to give me an hour, and she told me where to meet her. Hanging up the phone, I had to force myself out of the bed before I just fell back over and went back to sleep.

  A shower and putting on my makeup woke me up enough to get moving for the day. By the time I got to the restaurant and sat down at the table with Stephanie, I felt like a functional human being. She grinned at me.

  “So, tell me all about it,” she said.

  I looked at her strangely. “Tell you all about what?”

  “The black-light night,” she said impatiently.

  “You were there,” I said.

  “Not for the whole thing. And it was so crushed in there, I barely even got a chance to see you. I want to know how it worked out. Did people like it? Did they have fun? Did the guys say it was a good idea? What did Mason think?”

  All the words tumbled out of Stephanie’s mouth like they were a single sentence, and it took me a few moments to break it all up into the individual questions.

  “The party was really great. People seemed to enjoy it a lot and think it was fun. They wanted to know when the next theme night is going to be, what the theme is. The guys were ecstatic about it. They couldn’t stop talking about how many people were there, and how effective the theme idea was.”

  “And Mason?” Stephanie asked, sipping her water th
rough a straw.

  “Why are you so interested in Mason?” I asked.

  She gave me a withering look. “Maybe because I saw how the two of you were kind of flirty, and how you were talking a lot. It seems like you’re working together really well.”

  “Okay, you can stop right there. Yes, we were talking. Of course we were. I work at the bar he owns. And, yes, we work really well together. That’s because we know each other and can cooperate effectively. But that’s it. Mason and I are just coworkers now. That’s it. It is all it’s going to be. Everything else that might have been between us is in the past now.”

  “But, when I was watching you…” she started, and I held up my hand.

  “That’s it,” I said. “Coworkers. And I wish you would just quit asking all these questions. I’m perfectly fine with the two of us working together, so I think everybody else should be, too.”

  “But you don’t know how Mason feels,” Stephanie said.

  The girl just didn’t know when to stop. Granted, I told her I didn’t want her asking all those questions anymore, and technically she didn’t ask a question. She made a statement. At least, part of a statement. I couldn’t really get mad at her for that. But I could stop her in her tracks.

  “Actually, I do,” I said. “I heard him talking to his brothers, and he said there will be nothing more going on between us. Obviously, we’re on the same page. It’s just everybody else who keeps skipping ahead a few chapters.”

  A waiter started toward the table, and we snatched up our menus, burying our faces in them so we looked like we didn’t forget we were in a restaurant and supposed to be eating.

  “You’re just going to accept it?” Stephanie asked when the waiter walked away, and she lowered her menu to look at me.

  “I not only accept it, but I agree with it,” I said. “Okay?”

  Stephanie held up her hands in surrender. “Fine. I’ll drop it.” She picked her menu back up. “Have you been thinking about the next theme night?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Everybody was so pumped about it, I think the best thing to do would be to just jump right into another one. It’s going to keep that energy up and draw in more people. So, I’ve got to figure out which theme to do next. We came up with a lot of ideas, but I want to do something that’s different than the black-light theme. Something that will be appealing but might attract a different group of people, too. The more people we can make feel comfortable and at home at the bar, the more popular it can get.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “I was thinking either country night, and we could do line dancing and have barbecue and stuff. Or a classic-car night where people could bring in their old cars and show them off in the parking lot. Then the inside could be more ’50s themed,” I said.

  We kept talking about the theme nights for the rest of lunch, then made plans to hang out again soon. As we were walking out of the restaurant, my phone rang.

  “Hey, Mason,” I answered.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Stephanie give me a look. She might have been trying hard to stay out of it while we ate, but just hearing his name come out of my mouth brought her right back into her nosiness and insistence.

  “You still haven’t given us any of your direct deposit details, so your paycheck is ready for you to pick up,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I keep meaning to do that. Sorry. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll grab it while I’m at work tonight.”

  “Sure, see you soon,” he said.

  I hung up and looked over at Stephanie. She was looking at me with hopeful anticipation in her eyes.

  “He was just letting me know my paycheck is ready,” I said. “So much romance and seduction I don’t think I can handle it.”

  Stephanie rolled her eyes. “Okay, enough of the sarcasm. I get it.”

  We parted ways and I headed for home to get ready for work. Even though I had intended on waiting until my actual clock-in time to get there, I didn’t really have any reason to wait. Once I was dressed, I headed to the bar. Mason was the only one there when I walked in.

  “Where is everybody?” I asked.

  He looked at me from where he was leaning against the bar, going over some papers. “They’re in the back waiting on the delivery truck. It’s easier when they help unload because then they can just put things away rather than having everything piled up on the counters for them to put away later.” He flipped through the folder in front of him and pulled out my check. “Here you go.”

  I walked up and took it from him. “Thanks.”

  Putting the check in my purse, I started toward the back, but he straightened up like he was going to say something, so I hesitated.

  “I was thinking about running up to the pizzeria and grabbing dinner before our shift starts. You maybe want to go with me? I’m going to grab a couple of pizzas for all of us. Hopefully, we’ll have another busy night tonight, and this way we were at least have something on our stomachs to keep us going.”

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  Mason smiled at me and came around the bar. We walked over to the door, and he held it open for me, gesturing for me to go ahead of him. As we drove along, he pointed out things throughout the town that had changed.

  “Do you remember that little ice cream shop we used to go to?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I love that place,” I said.

  “Well, it’s a comic bookstore now,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said, making him laugh.

  “The grocery store was sold a couple of years back. It’s actually owned by a chain now.”

  “That’s kind of disappointing,” I said.

  “A little,” he said. “But the Fullers were already in their nineties. None of their children or grandchildren live around here anymore, and nobody was interested in keeping up with the store. So, they figured it would be best if they sold it so at least the town could still have a grocery store.”

  “I guess that makes sense, but it won’t be the same without Mrs. Fuller’s fruit cakes every winter and her coconut bars in spring,” I said.

  “Well, then it might make you feel better to know she sold those recipes to the grocery store’s bakery. They still make them, and sometimes she even goes in and whips up a few batches herself when Mr. Fuller starts aggravating her,” Mason said.

  I giggled. “That sounds like her.”

  I was drawn into him talking about all our old neighbors, pointing some of them out as they walked down the streets. He told me about the ways the families were changing and everything that was happening in town. Our conversation flowed naturally and was so lively it felt like it was only a few seconds before we pulled into the parking lot of the pizzeria. It still smelled just as incredible as I remembered it.

  As we stood there waiting, I tried not to think about all the times Mason and I had come here on dates when we were younger. It was where everybody gathered, and the booth where we always sat was still there. Soon enough, I was sitting back in the truck with the pizzas stacked in my lap and we were driving a different route back to the bar so he could point out other things to me.

  “Remember that old movie theater?” he asked.

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Please tell me that hasn’t been taken over by something, too.”

  The vintage movie theater was a throwback to many generations ago, and one of my favorite places in town.

  “No, it’s still there. Still doing midnight showings of cult classics.”

  “Good,” I said. “That would be a disaster.” I looked around and let out a sigh. “It’s so strange. Everything around here is so familiar, yet so different at the same time. It definitely feels like coming home, and yet I’m constantly discovering things that have changed.”

  “That’s what Jordan says,” Mason said. “When he talks about coming home, he says he just knows everything is going to be so different.”

  I looked over at him. “How is Jordan?”

  “He’s good
, considering.” I listened as he told me all the things Jordan described about being away and what he had been going through while he served. “A lot of it has been really hard on him. He’s really excited to be coming home. And the rest of us are looking forward it to him jumping in and working at the bar with us.”

  “I’m sure that’ll be good for you,” I said.

  Mason looked over at me, and I glanced his way, our eyes meeting.

  “You know we’re going to keep you, right?” he asked. “Jordan coming home doesn’t change that.”

  I didn’t really know how to answer, so I didn’t. A few seconds later, we pulled back up at the bar. Mason got out and came around to take the pizzas out of my lap. He was only inches away from me, and I could smell his cologne. I lifted my eyes to his, and we stared at each other for a breathless moment.

  My stomach fluttered, and a warm feeling rose in my chest. It felt like he was going to kiss me. I drew in a breath, but he stopped. He took the pizza boxes out of my lap and stepped out of the way so I could climb out of the truck. We went inside and joined his brothers, all of us eating together before the shift started. I tried to tell myself it was a good thing he hadn’t kissed me. That would have just complicated things. But I wasn’t really convincing myself.

  12

  Mason

  Anyone who ever thought pizza wasn’t sexy had never seen Ava with a stack of them in her lap. I thought I was doing well with shoving down any attraction to her and pretending she was just someone who had come to work at The Hollow. Then I just had to invite her to come along with me while I picked up dinner. Why I did that was beyond me. I didn’t know what possessed me into thinking being alone with her in my truck, reliving all the memories from when we were young and happy was a good idea. It was like I was testing myself.

  This would be no big deal, right? I could totally handle sitting there with her, pointing out all the ways the town had changed since she left it. There would be absolutely no issue in going back to the restaurant where we used to cuddle up close in the back booth and nibble our way through double slices as slow as we could just so we could spend more time together.