Ryan

Something was definitely wrong with me tonight. I was in a shitty mood, and for no good reason. At least, not one that I could pinpoint.

“Hey, Ryan,” a female voice shouted at me from across Sam’s, the bar my brothers and I owned, and I knew what was coming before I even turned to face her.

The fact that the woman shouting at me was a gorgeous brunette did nothing to improve my state of mind. Beautiful women were a dime a dozen in Los Angeles, and I got to see them every single night. Hell, most of them screamed my name and left me their phone numbers on their way out the door, each one hoping I’d call.

Part of me no longer wanted to indulge in this game of let’s get Ryan to take his shirt off, but like a good fucking sheep, I did what was expected of me.

“Yeah, sweetheart?” I forced a grin, my teeth grinding together as I fought the urge to run.

She looked around at the bar, still packed even though it was closing time, and gave me a grin of her own. “Can I get an Adios . . .” Her lips pursed and her eyebrows raised seductively as she waited.

“Pantalones,” the rest of the bar crowd sang out in unison.

So I did what I always did—took off my damn shirt and tossed it onto the register, screams and whistles filling my ears like we were at a strip club.

As I made the last drink of the night, I got lost in my own thoughts, my mind a scary place to be when I was in one of these rare moods.

I couldn’t remember how this tradition got started in the first place, but I was fairly sure that I brought it on myself. You would think it would be every man’s fantasy to have a roomful of women screaming his name each night. You would think that every guy on God’s green earth would love to have women falling at his feet the way women seemed to fall at mine.

But if you thought that about me, then you didn’t know me at all.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love the attention, because I did. I simply wanted more. I wanted to be more than the guy everyone claimed to be in love with, but no one really knew. I wanted to be the guy women brought home to their parents, not the one they brought home to their apartment for a one-night stand, or offered to suck off in the bathroom.

Some nights I felt cheap, like I was little more than a piece of meat, not worthy of having an actual conversation with.

Feelings like that weren’t exclusive to women, although you’d swear women cornered the market on the notion. Women could be just as bad as guys, if not worse, when it came to ogling, catcalling, or treating someone like they were nothing but a hot body with a pretty face. I wasn’t sure they always realized it, but sometimes they could make a guy feel about an inch big with the things that came out of their mouths.

Yeah, I know I sound like a fucking chick right now. If my older brother, Frank, knew what I was thinking, he’d make fun of me and call me a princess or some shit like that, but it doesn’t change the way I feel.

I, Ryan Fisher, want to fall in love—true love, real love, authentic love. I want to fall in love like both my brothers did. Well, not exactly the same way that they did . . . because, hello, Drama 101.

But still . . .

Maybe that was my problem tonight. Maybe I was jealous that they’d both found the loves of their lives, and here I was, taking my damn shirt off night after night and going home alone. There was something fucked up about being adored, but knowing the feelings weren’t based in anything real.

It didn’t make you feel loved. It made you feel lonely.

“What’s the matter with you tonight?” my younger brother, Nick, asked as he peered over his shoulder at me. His blue eyes matched mine in shape and color, and sometimes it really tripped me out to look at them.

When I shrugged but didn’t respond, Frank grinned at me.

“Is it that time of the month?”

I glared at him, not amused at his joke.

Frank used to be a real stick-in-the-mud, the one Nick and I picked on, but now that he was with his girlfriend, he was a changed man. Frank was actually fun again and seemed truly happy, something that had been missing from his life for years. I hadn’t realized how miserable my brother had been until I saw him come to life when he met her.

Looking across the bar, I spotted Frank and Ryan’s girlfriends, Claudia and Jess, sitting together at a table as they waited for the bar to close.

I wanted that. I wanted my girl to be sitting there with them, talking, laughing, and waiting for me. The problem was, I had no idea where the hell my girl was, when I’d find her, or how. I spent the majority of my time here at Sam’s, so if she never walked through those bar doors, how would I ever meet her? And how would I know that she was worth taking the risk for, when I’d all but decided to not date our customers anymore?

Speaking of, dating a customer had worked out for Frank, but I considered that a rarity, something you would expect to happen all the time in this business but usually never did. I honestly had no fucking idea where my girl was, but I definitely knew I wasn’t currently looking at her.

“I’d love to go home with you tonight,” the brunette purred as I handed her the drink she’d ordered.

“Sorry. Can’t.” Without further explanation, I turned my back and hurried away from her, couldn’t get the fuck away quick enough.

Yeah, something was definitely wrong with me tonight.

In my defense, I’d quickly learned that dating the women who came into the bar wasn’t necessarily the best idea. At first, I didn’t see the harm in dating anyone who caught my eye, and before I knew it, I was going out with a different girl almost every night. Okay, going out probably wasn’t the right term. But those women had all been wrong for me, and I knew it the second we left the party atmosphere of the bar.

Eventually, all the women I’d taken out started congregating at Sam’s . . . on the same nights. They argued, fought for my attention, and tried to outdo one another in every way possible. It was only then that I realized I’d created a bit of a problem.

The thing was, these women all knew they could find me here at Sam’s nearly every night, and as a bartender, I had to be friendly and accessible. I hadn’t even considered that reality before it was too late. Frank had warned me that dating customers was a bad idea, but as usual, I hadn’t listened.

None of the women seemed to take into account that the bar was my place of business. They saw it as a fun place where they could find me anytime they wanted, no strings attached. But the truth was that these women waltzed into my office and did whatever they wanted, without a second thought, and I had nowhere to hide when someone I once took out came in and refused to leave. To say that things got uncomfortable there for a while would be a serious understatement.

Looking back, I consider myself lucky that Frank hadn’t murdered me.