Beauclaire, North Carolina. AKA Middle of Nowhere, USA. AKA my prison cell for the next… well, I had no idea. How the hell did I end up here?

Were my parents—Swedish movie superstars that they were—really so ashamed of me that they’d sentence me to a life of endless tumbleweeds and incoherent bar flies just because I’d…? Scratch that. Of course, they were. I didn’t even need to ask the question.

I sighed as I walked through the town—if it could even really be called one. It was more like a campsite, though it did have a certain charm to it, what with its hints of Civil War history sprinkled throughout its architecture and a slower-than-molasses pace of living. Still, all I could see in the glass of each of the numerous little Mom and Pop shop window displays I passed was the last look I’d seen on my parents’ faces when they’d told me they were sending me away.

Evidently, me getting thrown out of one of the best universities in Sweden rubbed them the wrong way.

Anyway, it was like I’d stepped onto the set of a horror film, a film in which the protagonist dies from boredom rather than at the hands of some psycho killer. Who knew, if I spent enough time in Beauclaire, maybe I would become said psycho killer. Boredom has caused stranger things to happen.

But seriously, how did anyone live in this town? There was nothing to do, nothing to see, and nothing to even give a shit about. I’d Googled it as soon as I’d found out where the Royal Erikssons were sending me, and I’d refused to believe it even as I got off the plane in Asheville, which wasn’t far away. I still refused to believe it as I walked Beauclaire’s streets.

Sure, I’d done some pretty awful shit while living in Stockholm, caused more than a few PR nightmares for my parents, and the raucous party that’d gotten me tossed from Stockholm University was pretty bad, but this hardly seemed like appropriate retribution. In fact, this bordered on torture, the kind that was allegedly illegal in the USA. Maybe that’s exactly why they’d chosen it. Maybe they wanted to put the fear of God in me or something—didn’t southern Americans use that phrase?—or hold my trust fund over my head while I lived in hell to make me appreciate what they were doing for me.

They were just doing it for my good, after all.

Whatever, screw them. If this was how they were gonna treat me, then I’d make it work. For the amount of money I stood to get from them once they were gone—millions, by the way—I’d do whatever I had to do to get back in their good graces, if for no other reason than to throw it back in their faces.

I mean, sure, it sounds pretty shitty for rich parents to send their kid across the world, to another country, just to punish him for being a young and dumb rich kid doing young and dumb rich kid things, but they aren’t all bad. They at least set me up with an apartment—even if it was dingy, dark, and nothing more than four walls—and a little bit of money to get things started; money that was tightly managed in a bank account I couldn’t withdraw from without their explicit permission—again, “for my own good.” Because who can trust a rich kid with more money than sense to spend his money on reasonable things, right?

So, I’d decided pretty much immediately upon landing in the southern cesspool that was Beauclaire that the first thing I needed to do was to find a job—because there was no way in hell I was going to survive however long I’d have to stay here without some money in my pocket that wasn’t attached to good ol’ Mamma and Pappa.

Whatever, it’s not worth worrying about—my parents, the school I’d gotten thrown out of, any of it. It was all halfway across the world, and I was in a crappy town with nothing but the clothes on my back and burning hatred, burning desire to get back at them for doing this to me—by succeeding. Wouldn’t that be a pleasant surprise to them for once?

To that end, I’d set off early on my second day in town from my tiny apartment, living on a hope and a prayer, pulling myself up by my bootstraps and all that other American machismo stuff. There are a lot of words people could use to describe me (“douche” is the one I get most often), but lazy isn’t one of them.

Unlucky for me, every shop I passed, even the ones that looked like they were doing good business, didn’t seem to be hiring. What were the odds, right? Someone like me—highly educated and highly qualified—comes to a tiny town in the USA looking for work and can’t find it. Is this what the Americans talk about when they say all of the minorities are taking their jobs?

Seeing a bar at the nearby street corner, something I didn’t even know existed in this town—isn’t that against their religion or something?—was like a breath of fresh air, like I’d walked through the gates of heaven instead of the gates of hell. At least there would be alcohol in this town to help me get through this nightmare.

The place was called Second Chances, which seemed almost like a joke designed to rub its finger in my eye, and it looked like it’d recently been renovated, which was a positive sign. If they had enough money to spruce the place up, then they might just have enough money to hire a desperate foreigner.

And then, something caught my eye, down in the bottom corner of the front door—a sign that said, “Help Wanted, Apply Inside.” I’d already planned on flinging the door open and running to the counter to order something to drink, with money I didn’t have, but after seeing the sign, I had to go in. I pulled the door open and stepped inside, and was almost immediately overwhelmed with the smell of alcohol and fresh wood like they’d just finished remodeling days before I set foot there.

No one was at the counter, no bartender, no host, no waitress, nothing, which was odd, but I didn’t mind because it gave me a chance to kinda scope the place out without having to pretend I was doing something else. They had a great selection of beer and liquor, top shelf and bottom, and for some reason, I could see myself hanging out there. Maybe not all the time, but it could at least be a place away from the depressing apartment my parents got for me in town.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t hear anybody come in,” someone said from behind me, making me jump, which didn’t happen all that often. “We’re not open yet. Can I help you with something?” the guy asked, tall and thin, salt-and-pepper hair. He was good-looking, in the classic kind of American way, the kind of George Clooney looks that all the Swedes back home went nuts about.

“Yeah, I saw the help wanted sign on the door, so I thought I’d come in and apply,” I answered and the guy wrinkled his eyebrows at me, no doubt because of my accent. It was easy to forget living in Sweden that I even had one, and it was even easier to forget that I was not only in the United States, but I was also in the southern United States, so to this guy I probably sounded like I’d just crash landed from the moon.

“Sorry? Come again?” he asked, stepping forward.

“I’m here to apply for a job,” I said again, keeping it simple.

“Oh, I didn’t even realize we had the sign up already. Shit, sorry,” he laughed, running a hand through his hair. “I’m Jason; I’m one of the owners of the bar. You are…?” he asked, holding out a hand for me to shake. I took it, squeezed it harder than I probably needed to show him I meant business and nodded at him with a smile.

“I’m Kai Eriksson,” I said.

“You must not be from around here, huh?” he asked

“What was your first clue? My stunning blue eyes?” I asked, and he chuckled.

“You’ve got pizzazz, I like that,” he said, resting his hands on his hips and looking me up and down. It should’ve made me uncomfortable, but part of me enjoyed watching him watch me. If this was all the work there was to be gad, a bartending job no less, something that I’d been doing back home for years; then I would take off my pants and dance for him to get it.

Just then, another guy stepped out from the kitchen, or what I assumed was the kitchen, and looked every bit like the southern cliché I expected to live in a place like this: big, bearded, and covered in plaid like a campground had thrown up on him. He looked at me, looked at Jason, and raised one eyebrow at him.

“Who’s this?” he asked as he dried his hands on a towel he’d been carrying.

“Said his name is Kai, he’s here to apply for the job,” Jason said, and the big dude scoffed at me, rolled his eyes.

“He don’t look like he can tie his own shoes, much less make a good drink,” he said.

“Jesus, Mike, dial it down,” Jason said and punched the guy in the arm. I wasn’t offended, in fact, I thought it was kinda funny, a quicker wit than I would’ve guessed would come from a guy like that.

“Don’t you have a car to fix or something?” I asked, firing back at him and his face turned bright red, though Jason burst out laughing.

“Oh, this ought to be good,” Jason said. “Come here, come sit down and talk with me for a few minutes. George!” he called across the bar and an older guy, who looked like a more run down version of Jason, emerged and looked at all of us. He shook his head before he came out of the office into the main room.

I sat down next to Jason, not failing to notice that Mike, or whatever that big dude’s name was, couldn’t take his eyes off me. Did he recognize me or something? I didn’t think that was possible, not many people knew my parents outside Sweden, much less me, but then again, it was a small southern town, so maybe he had nothing better to do than to read gossip magazines at the supermarket after work.

“So, this here is Kai, he’s interested in working with us,” Jason said to George, his older friend and look alike. “Kai, this is my brother, George. He and I run the place together along with my fiancé, Dan. “

“Nice to meetcha,” George said, offering me a handshake. I shook his as well, wondering if this was just a weird thing that southerners did or if it was some intimidation tactic.

“Likewise,” I said, and again Mike scoffed.

“Shut the hell up, Mike,” George said, whirling around to stare at him. Mike stared down at the floor, clearly embarrassed, and I couldn’t help laughing. He was like a little puppy dog, barking and yapping at someone much bigger and stronger than him, and then pretending like it never happened when he got caught.

“You got any experience in bartending?” George asked, cutting right to the chase. Honestly, I appreciated it. This whole situation had turned more than a little awkward, and I was looking forward to it being over.

“Yeah, plenty. I was a bartender in Stockholm for the last four years,” I answered, not failing to notice their eyes all come alight at the mention of a big foreign city. It couldn’t have been a surprise to them I was a foreigner, Jason had already noticed it when we talked earlier, but it seemed to bowl them all over anyway.

“Stockholm? That where you’re from?” George asked, staring me down.

“Not quite. I’m actually from Gothenburg,” I said, and they looked at each other like I’d just said a swear word in Swedish. “It’s a big city in Sweden, never mind.”

“So you’re Swedish? What brought you here?” Jason asked, trying to get a wrangle back on the conversation.

“It’s a long story, not one I want to dive into right now. Look, I can make a few drinks for you if you want, I’ll do it right here and right now, to prove myself. I just really need a job,” I said, banking on my foreign desperation to help me seal the deal. I’d heard that southern Americans were particularly gullible, so why not give it a shot?

“All right, let’s see what you got. Use whatever you want behind the counter,” Jason said, raising his eyebrows at George and Mike in surprise. Something told me that this was not at all the way they anticipated this going down.

It was easy for me; I’d been blessed with the gift of confidence, no doubt thanks to my parents. I twisted from the stool and stepped around the counter to reach for one of the glasses hanging up above. All the materials were lined up and ready, no doubt in preparation for the bars’ opening later that afternoon, so I scooped some ice into a mixer and whipped together a whiskey sour, spinning the container around in my hands as I did so. Nothing said confidence like bar tricks.

“Well, I think I’ve seen enough,” Jason said as I poured the concoction into one of the glasses and slid it across the bar to him. “What do you think, George?” George shrugged, raised his eyebrows again, and looked at Mike.

“Oh, big fucking deal, so he can spin a cup around a few times and make an easy drink, that don’t mean shit,” Mike said, rolling his eyes. I didn’t know what his deal was, but clearly, he wasn’t having me, though to be honest, I wasn’t exactly impressed with him either. Just then, the door to the bar opened yet again, and in stepped someone I recognized: Dan Montgomery. The guy had been all over TV in Sweden just before I left. He’d won America’s Next Top Singer, which, believe it or not, was just as popular in Sweden as it was in America.

I felt like I’d fallen into a dream and woken up in some alternate reality where everything had been turned on its head. Why was Dan Montgomery here?

“Is that who I think it is?” I asked, staring across the bar at the young man who approached us. He was tall and sculpted, beefed up from years of southern American eating. He stared back at me in much the same way, like he recognized me vaguely but didn’t know where from.

“Yeah, that’s my fiancé, Dan,” Jason said, standing up and meeting Dan halfway across the bar.

“Fiancée?” I asked. I mean, Jason was good-looking, but it didn’t seem like a good match for Dan. Not that I was interested in stealing him away or anything.

“Yeah, that’s our own long story. Dan, this is Kai,” Jason said to Dan and Dan nodded enthusiastically.

“Yeah, I know, that’s Kai Eriksson. He’s the son of May-Britt and Mikel Eriksson,” Dan said, and I nearly passed out right then and there. How did he know that? More importantly, why did he know that?

“You know my parents?” I asked, my confidence seeming to evaporate as I continued to speak.

“Who doesn’t? They’re superstars, especially your mother,” Dan said. “I’ve run into them a few times here and there while I was out in Hollywood,” Dan said. Small world, indeed. How could it be that I would end up in a shithole town like this and run into somebody who knew my parents? Of all the things I hated about being the son of famous people, I most hated feeling like I could never get away from them, could never escape them and be myself in my own world.

Clearly, that was true here as well. That must’ve been why they’d chosen this town for me to come to because they had connections there and they could keep an eye on me, make sure I was holding up my end of the bargain—lest my beloved trust fund be yanked away once and for all.

“Anyway, come with us, the three of us need to talk about Kai,” Jason said to Dan and led him along with George back to George’s office—leaving me with Mike, the mudslinger. I smiled at him, but he only rolled his eyes.

Believe it or not, it was kind of cute.