Life’s a bitch, and then ya die.

Or at least, that’s what my mama used to say when I was a kid, not long after Daddy would say or do somethin’ ignorant—which happened much more often than either of them would ever admit. Whether it was a stubbed toe or somethin’ much more sinister, like gettin’ passed over for a promotion because your colleague had boinked your boss, my parents’ answer for everything that went wrong was: life’s a bitch, and then ya die.

As I rolled over in my otherwise empty bed and got blasted in the face by the mid-morning sun, I couldn’t help wondering if maybe they were right about that. Being confronted by the lump in the mattress where my ex-boyfriend, Scott, used to sleep next to me—on Valentine’s of all damn days—didn’t make things any easier.

It’d already been a year since Scott left, tossed me in the trash like a candy wrapper after he’d finished eatin’ all the sweets inside, and it still hadn’t stopped stinging, either. As dysfunctional as we were as a couple, I did love the guy, and every morning after he’d left I expected to wake up and realize it’d all been a nightmare or that I made it all up. Sadly, the pain in my eyes from the sunshine outside assured me it wasn’t make believe. I was, in fact, alone. On Valentine’s Day. Lucky me.

Still, I couldn’t let it ruin my day. I had a job to do, plenty of good friends, and many blessings, big and small, to count. After Jason, my best friend, relaunched his family bar, business had been booming and I’d gotten a pretty penny of a pay raise as a result. I’d been the fry cook, and occasional bartender, for the last few years, but I’d never once gotten a raise or even thought to ask for one because things were so rough financially. The addition of Dan, Jason’s fiancé, to the mix had really spiced things up here in good ol’ Beauclaire. Gettin’ hitched to a country music star has a way of doing that, I guess.

So, I took that attitude with me into the shower and scrubbed myself clean, hoping if I scrubbed hard enough maybe all the gunk in my head would come out too, wash right on down the drain with the rest of the nastiness comin’ off me.

Afterward, while I whistled, I threw on my best plaid shirt—one of the dozen or so I owned. I couldn’t tell if it was clean or not, but it smelled more like pine than piss, which was good enough for me. Once it was on, I stepped into my workboots, still caked with grease from my shift the night before, and went on my merry way out the front door without thinking twice about it.

One of the nicest things about living in a tiny, country town like Beauclaire is that pretty much everything is in walking distance, catered to the town’s favorite activity: drinking.

My walk to the bar was fast, since it was only a few blocks away, and I found myself smiling a few times as I walked, despite how crummy I’d felt before. The sun was shining, high up in the sky, and though it was humid for a February day, it wasn’t unbearable thanks to the winter chill. A few isolated pockets of snow hung out in the shadows of buildings from the last snowstorm, and that’s kinda how I felt too like I was trying to get outta the light, so I didn’t have to face the things I didn’t want to face.

Little did I know how accurate that was when I turned the key into the front door of the bar, Second Chances, and stepped into a mess. Jason and Dan, lovebirds and owners of the bar, had been working the store themselves the night before. I’d had the night off—their version of a joke, putting the single guy home alone the night before Valentine’s, I reckon—and the place looked like a bomb had gone off inside.

I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t like either Jason or Dan to leave things like this, so I could only assume that meant there’d been some, well, extracurricular activities going on in here after the bar closed—not that I judged ‘em for it. Like I said, they were lovebirds, recently engaged and drunk on love while the rest of us were drunk on disappointment. Damn, that was dark, even for me.

Anyhow, I was determined not to lose my relatively upbeat mood, so I set about straightening the chairs and putting everything back in its place and lugging out the dishes that were sitting clean in the kitchen. I still hadn’t quite gotten used to the layout of the place since the bar had been remodeled earlier in the year, but I put everything where I thought it made sense to and left it at that.

I’d just finished cleaning out the first of the bar’s two fryers when I heard the door open again, and Jason’s voice billowed in.

“Mike? Mike, you here?” he called.

“Yeah, I’m in the kitchen with my head in the fryer,” I said as I wiped the grease on my apron and stepped through the swinging kitchen door to meet him. He smiled at me, looked around the room, and shrugged his shoulders in some half-assed attempt at an apology for leaving this mess to me to find.

“Sorry about the state of the place, things got a little hectic last night, and we were both, uh, more than a little tired,” Jason said.

“Yeah right, I ain’t buying that bullshit for even half a second,” I said, though I couldn’t stop the smile spreading across my face. It was impossible for me to be mad at Jason—he was my best friend after all—and despite my shitty lot in life, I was happy for him and Dan. They hadn’t yet tied the knot, and they ran from pretty much all discussion of it faster than a pig from the butcher, but maybe that was because they were afraid that putting a ring on each other would flush their sex life down the toilet.

If my relationship with Scott was any indication, they were probably right. We weren’t married, but we’d been together so long we might as well have been, and our sex life had turned about as boring as Beauclaire itself—but I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about Scott. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. The bastard.

“Okay, you got me,” Jason said, scratching the back of his head. I’d opened my mouth to fire back, something real sarcastic-like, when George, Jason’s older brother and the third owner of the bar, stumbled through the door looking like he’d had a longer night than all of us combined.

“What the hell’s the deal with the congregation here? We holding an impromptu church service or somethin’?” George asked, looking from Jason to me and back again.

“Oh, no, we were just talking, that’s all,” Jason said.

“Well good, because the three of us got a metric shitton of stuff to talk about, so mosey on with me,” George said and didn’t wait for either of us to answer before he charged across the bar and flung open his office door. What was it with that guy and flinging doors open and shut, anyway? Jason shrugged at me, looking like he genuinely had no idea what was going on, and set off in the same direction, me right at his heels like a little yappy farm dog.

“Have a seat, this might take a while,” George said as he sat down behind his desk, nodding at two stools he’d had hauled into the office weeks ago. After the remodel, the bar had no use for the ugly, torn, and sad little shits, so he gave them a new home. Fitting, I reckon.

I sat down, looked at Jason and furrowed my eyebrows at him. It didn’t sound like it was gonna be good, and for a moment I worried I might be about to lose my job. But they couldn’t fire me, not after all that we’d been through, and not with me being best friends with Jason and all—friends don’t let friends fire friends, right?

“Don’t get your panties in a wad; it ain’t nothing to be scared about. I’ll keep it real simple: I want to bring on somebody to help us. Judging from the state of the place this morning, it’s pretty damn clear to me we need it,” George said, looking only at Jason as he spoke. My heart dropped down into my stomach, though I couldn’t explain why. Did they really need to hire somebody else? We were managing the place just fine, me, Jason, Dan, and George. I mean, hell, things got a little backed up from time to time, but that’s a good kind of problem to have, ain’t it?

“Why do we need it?” I asked.

“Oh, come on, don’t tell me you didn’t see the sorry state of affairs when you walked in here earlier today,” George said, fixing his eyes on me.

“Well, it damn sure ain’t my fault the place looks like this,” I said, volleying over to Jason. He sighed and slumped forward on his stool.

“I can back him up on that one, it was all me—with more than a little help from my lovely fiancé,” Jason said. “But that’s beside the point. George is right; we can’t really keep up with the level of business we’ve seen since the remodel. I’m kind of amazed at how well things are going.”

“That’s all fine and dandy, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I give up my hours and my money to some bootlicker off the street,” I said, and Jason chuckled.

“It’s not a zero-sum game, Mike. Just because we add somebody to the schedule doesn’t mean we take hours away from you. That would kinda defeat the purpose of hiring someone else, don’t you think?” Jason asked. He had a point, but I didn’t appreciate the way that he was talking to me like I was an idiot. I’d gotten more than enough of that in my lifetime—from my mama and daddy all the way down the line to Scott, so I damn sure didn’t need it from my best friend.

Something about this didn’t sit right at the bottom of my stomach. It kicked and squirmed like I’d downed a mug full of old, warm beer that’d been sitting on the counter long past its prime. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I knew I didn’t like it.

No matter how many high-falutin’, million-dollar words Jason used to describe it, it sure felt to me like he'd thrown me to the dogs. Then again, maybe I was stubborn. Sure as hell wouldn’t have been the first time I’d been accused of it.

“Y’all got somebody in mind?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. I didn’t have a lot of friends in Beauclaire—matter of fact, I didn’t have a damn one outside of Jason and the rest of the bar crew—so I couldn’t imagine myself buddying up with somebody new very easily. Then again, maybe whoever they found would fit right in, like a John Deere on a farm, and all of my hullabaloo would’ve been for nothing.

“Not yet. I’m fixing to put a sign up in the window today. I just wanted to talk with y’all about it first, let you know what’s going on, so you weren’t caught with your pants down,” George said. That sounded like a disaster in the making. I was born and raised in this town, and I knew damn well that there weren’t very many people that were worth their weight in grits when it came to doing an honest, hard days’ work—especially not the kind of people who would be attracted to working in a bar.

“Well hell, does that mean I’m at least gonna have some sorta say in this?” I asked.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jason said, and I scoffed.

“Why the hell not? I been here longer’n either of you bozos. Your dear old daddy Jimbo hired me when y’all were still suckin’ on your momma’s round and rosies, so why shouldn’t I get a say?” I asked, my face burning.

“Well, I don’t know how else to put this, but you can be a little… much sometimes,” Jason said, looking away from me as he spoke, which only poured more piss in my Cheerios.

“Awright, now you’re just fucking with me, ain’t you?” I asked. “Where’s the hidden camera? Is this going to end up on some dumb Internet broadcast where everybody gets to laugh at Beauclaire’s version of Shrek?”

“No, come on, it’s not like that at all. We just want to make sure we hire somebody who’s qualified; not somebody picked because you thought they wouldn’t annoy you. I mean, come on, man, pretty much everyone annoys you,” Jason said. He wasn’t wrong, so I shrugged.

“Besides, this isn’t personal, we just gotta make a good decision for all of us,” George said. “I told you he was gonna spout off like this,” he added, his eyes narrowed it, Jason, as if it were his responsibility to control me.

“Spout off like what?!” I shouted, popping up off the stool I’d been sitting on.

“Come with me,” Jason said, diffusing the situation as he got me by the arm and more or less pulled me out of the office—which might’ve been funny to watch had I not been inside my own body. I was twice the size of Jason, and twice as thick, so watching him trying to wrangle me must’ve been as rich as watching a mouse try to pull a tiller or something. Because I was afraid I would break something if I didn’t go, I gave in and followed Jason out of the office and back into the bar.

“Why are y’all treating me like this?” I asked, slamming one hand against the tile of the bar and making the glasses up above rattle and shake.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m a pissed off toddler or something,” I snapped.

“Why would we ever need to do that?” Jason asked, under his breath though I still heard it clear as day. I didn’t appreciate him patronizing me—see, I can use big words like that too.

“I heard that smart ass,” I said.

“Good, I’m glad. What the hell’s going on with you? You’re acting all kinds of edgy like something else is on your mind. Is it your time of the month?” Jason asked, and if he hadn’t been my best friend, somebody I had more respect for than most everyone else in my life, I would’ve hauled off and decked him for the comment. Only he could get away with saying something like that to me.

Instead, I let myself deflate, let all unjustified anger boiling inside me evaporate like rain on the asphalt after one of Beauclaire’s numerous summer storms. He was only treating me this way because I wasn’t giving him another choice.

“God dammit, ya got me again,” I said, slumping down into one of the barstools and sighing.

“What’s wrong?” Jason asked, sitting down next to me, his eyes scraping over me like a searchlight, looking for any and every little sign he could find that might point him in the right direction. Good luck, partner, ain’t never been a man who could read me.

“What the hell do you think, man? Do you have any idea what day it is?” I asked.

“Shit, it’s Valentines, I forgot… is that what’s going on?” he asked as he ran a hand through his hair. No wonder he’d forgotten about it, he’d had Dan to keep him company all night long, while all I had was a sorry dent in my bed where Scott used to sleep. Even as I thought of him, I heard his snores, felt the bed sink to one side like it did when he’d crawl in hours after I’d gone to sleep.

If only I’d seen that gap of time for what it’d really been back then. He wasn’t reading like he said he was—the damn fool couldn’t read no more than I could do calculus anyway—but as they say, hindsight is always twenty-twenty, ain’t it?

“You’re damn right it’s Valentines, and more than that, it’s been a year since Scott left me,” I said, my words choking as I tried to get them out. I didn’t talk about Scott much with anyone, not even with Jason, and I sure as hell didn’t like to air my dirty laundry like this, but I seemed to have lost all control of myself. Mushy fucking holidays like Valentine’s tend to have that kind of effect on me.

“Jesus, Mike, I’m sorry. I didn’t even connect the dots,” Jason said, but I waved him away.

“Aw hell, it ain’t your fault. You didn’t know; you couldn’t have. I don’t expect you to remember which day it was Scott bailed on me. I don’t even want to remember it, but it’s kinda hard not to, given how close it was to this damn holiday and all.”

“Still, I’m your best friend, I should’ve been a little more aware. Look, whatever’s going on, whatever you’re feeling, this decision to hire somebody to help us has nothing to do with it. I want you to know that,” Jason said, fixing me with those piercing eyes of his like it would be all fine and settled simply because he’d looked at me.

“I know, god I know I’m being a little shit, but I can’t help it, man. I’m all messed up today like I keep expecting Scott to walk in here and sling mud at me all over again,” I said, sighing as I slumped against the bar.

“I understand, I don’t blame you. But look at it this way: you’ll always have us and this bar. We’re not replacing you, and we are sure as hell aren’t going to bring anybody in here who’s going to be any more important to me than you are. Got it?” he asked, and I chuckled as I nodded along with him. Of course he was right, of course I was being stupid, like I’d been zapped right back into high school and I’d lost a popularity contest—the big oaf chosen last in gym class, or chosen first to serve as a human meat shield for dodgeball, depending on the popular kids’ needs.

“I know, you ain’t really even gotta say that. I’m acting like a damn fool,” I said, waving him away again. “I trust y’all, I know you’ll bring on somebody who’ll do the job and do it well. And if they don’t, I know y’all will see to that too—assuming I don’t get to ‘em first,” I continued and stood up from the chair to start to walk away from Jason before things went any further.

“Just take it easy, don’t worry about it. Do your job like I know only you can. This place would fall apart overnight without you,” Jason called after me as I went to the kitchen. I didn’t bother saying anything back to him; it didn’t feel right to after my little outburst.

Life really is a bitch sometimes, ain’t it?