Chapter 2

Most of the time, Alex the Shit Alex would find someone and cozy up to him. He’d always go home with me, but still. My boyfriend said I should be friendlier, get to know the natives, show them what city guys were like, on and on.

I sighed. No love hit me in the face, only alcohol fumes.

I focused on the bartender who said he might have to kill me. He’d never threatened me before. Usually we got along real well. So it had to be a joke. Right?

Why wouldn’t he share his first name with me? He’d carded me before. He knew I was aware some people had shitty given names. After all, my real first names are King and James. But I just tell everybody to call me Jimmy.

Bartender Alex was a real cutie—a bear, a bear wearing his uniform of a leather vest over a white T-shirt and ass-tight jeans. Tonight he’d added a scowl, though. He was acting like he didn’t want to serve anyone, even harmless old me. He had a really bad attitude going as he kept glaring over to where Alex was tonguing somebody who wasn’t me. My usually friendly bartender would look at me, sigh, and shake his head, which didn’t help my heartache any.

This old-timey bar was located in a Northern California foothills nowhere, a suburban oasis east of San Francisco. A cluster of old mining towns circled a fashionable oasis of Home Depot and a mall with clothing boutiques, ear-piercing kiosks, a food court, a movie complex, and other gotta-have things. The mall sat in a ring of a gazillion look-alike housing complexes that were sprouting up like mushrooms around it. The mall also serviced four dying mining towns and tiny Stone Acres, all left over from the Gold Rush and passenger train days.

Stone Acres was different because it had turned the wood and brick buildings along its main street into a touristy “Old Town”. A couple of restaurants, a few souvenir shops, some essentials like a hardware store, hotel, farm and ranch supplier, sheriff’s office, municipal park with a bandstand, post office, barbershop, and this old saloon looked almost like they had during the late 1800s.

Stonewall Saloon had been in the bartender’s family for generations. Or that’s what someone told me. Maybe the bartender.

My best friend Felicity and I had moved here from the Bay Area and got a good deal to open a coffee shop called Penny’s in the mall.

Speaking of which, where was Felicity tonight? Shouldn’t she be celebrating my birthday with me?

I looked down at my phone to see the time. Oh, yeah, the last movie hadn’t let out yet, so Penny’s was still open.

“Just one more,” I begged the bartender everyone called Stone. I refused to call him by the saloon’s nickname. “I won’t even ask about your name again,” I added with a slight burp, or maybe a hiccup.

He just stood there, shaking his head and frowning.

I gave him sad cat eyes, you know, the kind Puss in Boots gave Shrek. My friends say I do it really well. It didn’t seem to be working on him.

I sighed. The alcohol stench again went from my mouth through my nose. My stomach rumbled louder. Nobody and nothing was a happy camper tonight.

“Aren’t we friends?” I asked. “I thought we were friends.”

Okay, maybe I was whining now.

“Can I see your keys?” he snapped.

“Huh?”

“Your keys? Let me see them, Jimmy.”

I fumbled with my pockets. My wallet and a couple pieces of paper fell on the floor. I bent to pick them up while trying to dig out my keys. I tripped and landed on the floor. I grabbed my wallet just as my keys popped from my pocket. Both went flying. The bar floor smelled worse than my breath. My stomach was getting unhappier by the second.

A sturdy hand under my arm helped me up.

“Alex?” I asked.

“Yeah, sport. Let’s get you a ride and on your way home.”

“I can drive. No problem.” My words came out a little mushy but, I thought, understandable. Maybe not.

Wait. Did I even have my car or had Alex driven us in his? I looked around, trying to find him in the crowd. Had he left with the other guy? Just like that? Would he leave me?

The hand under my arm was gripping me too tight now. I tried to shake it away.

Did I really want to go back to the apartment Alex and I shared? The one I’d been paying most of the rent on recently? Alex’s big surprise was to dump me at a bar? What the hell?

“I need just one more beer. Juss one more.” I blinked up at the bartender. “Oh, yeah. And your name, plish. Um, yeah, pleash.”

“Not happening, Jimmy, my friend. You’re going home.”

“Can’t go home. I don’t wanna see Alex. I’m done with him,” I said to the hand that had pulled my arm next to my mouth. “Going to sleep in the car. Sleep it off. Off it sleep, A2.” I had a car somewhere, right? I could just sleep in it. Off it sleep, I will.