He pursed his lips.
“I’ve been perpetrating a lie this entire time.”
His eyes crinkled around the edges and his mouth twitched. He looked like he was about to smile, but Vanessa grabbed his arm, and his face changed to straight-up pissed. Hallie watched his throat move as he swallowed, and then he turned around and said, “We need to go.”
Her perfect eyebrows went up. “We’re leaving?”
“Something like that. Come on.”
He led his pretty monster away from the bar, and Hallie mopped up before getting back to making drinks. The entire dustup had happened over the course of a mere three minutes, but it’d felt like an eternity.
The other bartender, Julio, asked out of the side of his mouth as he poured vodka into five shot glasses, “What the hell was that?”
“Just a batshit jealous girlfriend.” She moved to the other end of the bar and took an order for two whiskey sours. “I don’t even know them.”
“Oh, my God, Hallie Piper, I thought that was you!”
Hallie looked up and did a double take. Seriously, universe? “Allison Scott?”
Ugh. Allison. They’d gone to high school together, and she was one of those girls who was technically super nice but always managed to word things in ways that made people feel like shit. Hallie hadn’t seen her since graduation eight years ago, and she definitely hadn’t missed her.
“Oh, my God, you are the most adorable bartender I’ve ever seen.” Allison beamed and gestured toward Hallie’s damp black tank top and black jeans. “Seriously you’re, like, a cutesy-cute drink-maker in a movie.”
Allison was giving total Alexis Rose vibes, and Hallie pasted a smile on her face. “Can I make you something?”
“My boyfriend is one of the groomsmen,” she said, apparently not in want of a beverage. “And when he ran over and said there was a catfight at the bar, I never in a million years would’ve guessed it’d be my super-anal, buttoned-up friend Hallie.”
Did she just call me super-anal? Dear God. Hallie explained, “It wasn’t a catfight, it was more like a misunderstanding between a couple, with me as collateral damage.”
“I caught the end of it.” She smiled, and there was something kind of Grinch-like in the slow, satisfied climb of it. “So what’re you doing these days? Besides tending bar at wedding receptions. Are you still with Ben?”
A man behind Allison held up two empty Mich Ultra bottles, so Hallie grabbed two from under the bar, opened them, and set them down as she said, “Nope. I am living life Ben-free.”
“Oh. Wow.” Allison’s eyes got big, like Hallie had just declared herself a serial killer because she’d had the audacity to break up with the guy who had once been considered their high school’s star running back. She asked, “So what’s your sister doing?”
Hallie wanted to scream when she heard the DJ announce the bride-and-groom dance, because it meant there would be no mad rush for drinks; people loved watching that sappy shit. Allison could loiter and make uncomfortable small talk for as long as she wanted, and that made Hallie daydream about chandeliers accidentally falling from the ceiling and crushing annoying ex-friends.
“Um, Lillie is engaged to Riley Harper—they’re getting married next month. Do you remember him from—”
“Oh, my God—she’s engaged to Riley Harper? He was our homecoming king, right?”
Hallie nodded and wondered if she was the only one who didn’t think of their high school’s homecoming royalty as ours. To her, the king was just some guy who wore the crown at a dance.
“Wow, good for her.” Allison looked impressed. “Does she work?”
“Yeah, um, she’s an engineer.”
“You have got to be kidding!” She gave her chic, bobbed head a little shake. “You guys are like Freaky Friday chicks now.”
“What?”
“You know. You were always the responsible, together one, and Lillie was the hot mess shit show. Now she’s an engineer with a fiancé, and you’re single and waiting tables and getting into bar fights.” She smiled like it was hilarious. “Crazy.”
Allison finally ordered a drink and stopped torturing Hallie, but as soon as she walked away, her words played on a continuous loop in Hallie’s mind. Hot mess shit show. Hot mess shit show.
God, had they Freaky Fridayed?
Hallie spent the next half-hour freaking out in her head while she continued slinging drinks on autopilot. Hot mess shit show. It wasn’t until “Single Ladies” came on that she embraced her inner Beyoncé and remembered that everything was going to be okay.
Because she wasn’t a hot mess shit show at all. Rather, it was just her “winter.”
After she and Ben split up (aka after he realized he didn’t love her at all), Hallie had decided to treat it as “the winter of her twenties.” A cold, dormant season that would lead to a bountiful spring. She’d moved out of Ben’s place and gotten a cheap apartment—with a roommate. She’d taken two part-time jobs, in addition to her career, to pay down her student loans in half the time.
The way she saw it, she was going to take advantage of her man-free time. She was going to live like a peasant and hustle her ass off. They were dark days, her winter season, but soon they would all pay off.
“YOU.”
Hallie looked up, and the guy—Jack—was charging straight toward the bar. He looked intense—serious face, tie hanging untied around his neck—and his eyes were fixed on her.
“Me?” She looked behind her.
“Yes.” He stopped when he reached the bar and said, “I need you.”
“I beg your pardon?” Hallie tilted her head and said, “And what happened to that sweetheart of a girlfriend of yours? Van, was it?”
“We need a bartender in the back.” Jack ignored her remark, looking at Julio and saying, “Do you think you can spare her for a bit?”
Julio glanced at Hallie, trying to gauge her reaction, before saying, “Yes, but I believe the bride scheduled—”
“She’s the one who sent me over. I’m her brother.”
“First of all, don’t talk to him about me like I’m not here. Just because I have breasts doesn’t mean I’m incapable of speaking for myself. Second of all,” Hallie said, irritated by the hot guy’s obvious sexism, “I don’t strip or give lap dances, so if ‘the back’ is code for something creepy, count me out.”
That made Jack smirk down at her, the kind of smirk that made him look both amused and irritated all at the same time. “First of all, I was told that Julio here is the banquet supervisor, so your breasts played no part whatsoever in my choice of conversation partner.”