It was strange to wake up in a bed that wasn't mine, on the other side of the world without any idea how or why I got there.

I didn’t even know what time it was. Without a clock in the place or any idea where I’d left my phone when I went to sleep the night before, it was impossible to know. Not that it mattered much, it wasn’t like I had anywhere to be or anything to do. I flung open the curtain by my bed—there weren’t even any walls in the place to separate the so-called bedroom from the rest of the house—and found the sun still high in the sky, so I assumed it must’ve been at least midmorning, maybe a bit later.

I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do or where to go to kill time between now and when I heard from the guys at the bar again. It wasn’t like I could just waltz in there and beg them to hire me on the spot. If I wanted the job, I had to play it by their rules—I just hoped that that doofus Mike hadn’t poisoned the well for me.

As I sat on the bed wondering what to do, the vibration of my phone ringing echoed throughout the apartment. I scrambled to find it. What if it was Jason or George calling to ask me to come back in? That was not a call I could afford to miss, and I didn’t have any intention of doing so.

I flung myself to my hands and knees and found the phone underneath my bed wedged up against the wall. How the hell had it ended up there? Falling to my stomach, I squeezed under the bed and reached for the phone, grabbing it just as it rang for the last time.

I rolled out from under the bed and smashed the answer button. Too late. The call had already been forwarded to voicemail. Worse yet, it was a number I didn’t recognize, which I could only assume meant it was the bar calling. Shit.

After I got out from under the bed and brushed the dust off me, I smashed the number on the phone screen to call it back and cleared my throat. Jason answered after just a few rings.

“Second Chances bar and grill, this is Jason, how can I help you?” he asked as if it hadn’t been him who’d just called me.

“Jason, it’s Kai. You know, the guy who came in yesterday for a job?” I asked.

“Yeah, I just tried to call you. Were you busy?”

“Not exactly, unless you count staring off into space as being busy,” I said, and he chuckled. It wasn’t the total truth, but it wasn’t a total lie either. Still, making a joke about it seemed the best way to downplay the fact I couldn’t reliably answer my phone.

“So I take it it wouldn’t be too much trouble to ask you to come in today for a kind of formal interview, right?” he asked, and my heart jumped up into my throat. Yes! Mission accomplished. If he was asking me to come back in now, then the job was mine—assuming I didn’t say anything stupid or otherwise step on my dick.

“George and I want to ask you some more questions, get a better feel for how you might fit into the place before we decide to pull the trigger,” Jason continued, and my confidence evaporated, replaced by a million frenetic questions: had something bad come to light? What if Dan knew about my situation with my parents? What if he ferried that information back to Jason and George and that’d been my undoing? If that was the case, would I be able to find any work in this town?

“Absolutely. I can be there in the next ten minutes or so. Does that work for you?” I asked.

“Yeah, sounds great. Just knock a few times on the door, and somebody will let you in,” Jason said.

“Perfect. See you soon,” I said and hung up without waiting for him to say goodbye. I didn’t know where to start. I hadn’t showered—because I hadn’t been awake for more than five minutes— and I still had no idea what time it was. When I looked back at my phone screen to find it was already after 1 PM, my heart almost exploded out of my chest. How the hell had I slept this late?

I threw my phone on the bed and dashed to the broom closet pretending to be a bathroom to try and clean up quickly. There was no way I could take a full shower and get down to the bar in ten minutes, but I was going to give it my best shot. I ran my hands under the cold water and splashed it up on my face and hair to mat it down. It stuck up in all directions like I’d shoved a fork in a toaster, which was common for me when I first woke up in the morning, but it wasn’t exactly the best look to sport for a job interview. Tending bar wasn’t the most glamorous job in the world, but it required looking like I had basic hygiene.

I hadn’t yet unpacked all my clothes—most of them were sitting in a pile by my suitcase where I’d left them as soon as I’d gotten into the apartment—because the only thing that mattered when I’d arrived was finding the flask of liquor I’d hidden at the bottom. That’d gone dry days ago, and now I wished I’d at least hung up my clothes before I settled into the place. I didn’t know what to wear, and every shirt I unearthed was either far too wrinkled or required matching pants I couldn’t find.

So much for being a famous rich person who has their shit together.

In the end, I slapped on the least wrinkled long sleeved shirt I had—the blue checkered pattern helped cover up most of the wrinkles—and a pair of jeans and ran from the apartment. For a moment, I’d almost forgotten where the bar was, but given that it was one of the only few on Main Street in town, it was kind of hard to miss. I knocked on the glass door, leaning forward and heaving while I tried to catch my breath from the sprint. Mike’s bearded, burly figure appeared in the glass, a scowl already on his face, and my heart sank as he let me in.

“Look at that; the city slicker can’t even show up for a job interview on time. How cliché,” Mike said, holding the door open for me to step in. I didn’t let him get to me, instead just charged right past him, and found Jason and George both sitting at the bar waiting for me.

“I’m sorry I’m late, I had a little bit of a problem finding all my stuff this morning. You know, I’m still settling in and all that,” I blurted, my breathing still not even. It was a lame excuse, but it was all I could muster, and somehow I didn’t think either of them would care. The only one who seemed to be looking at me with any scrutiny was Mike, and I didn’t give a Swedish pancake about what he thought.

“No worries. Better late than never, right?” Jason asked as he stepped up from his stool to come over and pat me on the shoulder. “Truth be told, I’m not exactly the most punctual person in the world either, so I understand.”

“Ain’t that the damn truth,” George said, rolling his eyes. “I swear, part of the reason I’m as old and gray as I am is from spending so much time sitting around waiting for Jason,” he said, and Jason glared at him. I kinda liked the banter they had; it almost made me wish I’d had a brother of my own. Maybe that might’ve tamed me at some point, given me some responsibility, or at the very least kept me out of trouble because I’d been worried about the example I was setting.

Too bad my parents had decided I was more than enough for them—and their bank account.

“Anyhow, come on with us, we’ve got some questions to ask ya,” George said, standing up and waving his hand over to his office. I didn’t know what they were going to ask me or why, but Mike didn’t look pleased regardless. I could only imagine how much crap he must’ve talked about me after I’d left, how crazy it must be making him to think I might be working with them all soon. Whatever, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I get this job, and I get it today. I couldn’t go much longer without having any money of my own.

I stepped into George’s office behind him, and Jason closed the door after us.

“Have a seat,” George said, gesturing to one of the stools in front of his desk. He sat down in front of his computer screen, which was turned off, and watched pretty much every move I made. Was he trying to glean something from my body language? I wouldn’t guess that an interview like this would be so intense.

“Thank you so much for having me back,” I said, and Jason smiled at me.

“Of course. I mean, to be honest, you’re the only person we’ve had come in and ask, so it wasn’t like you were up against stiff competition,” Jason said.

“I guess that bodes well for me, doesn’t it?” I asked. I made a mental note not to forget that. If I didn’t get the job, it had nothing to do with anybody else.

“We’ll see about that, won’t we?” George asked, drumming his fingers on the desk. I didn’t know what that meant, but I tried not to pay it any mind.

“Look, Kai, we like you. You’re a people person, you seem like a hard worker, and you seem like you know what you’re doing,” Jason started, but I could tell from the shifting in his eyes there was a qualifier coming.

“Okay, is this where the magic ‘but’ comes in?” I asked, and they both chuckled. I felt like I was waiting for a bomb to go off. My parents and the trust fund be damned, if I didn’t get this job because of the things I’d done in the past, I was going to be upset.

It’s funny how one little house party can define a person for the rest of their life.

“It is. You know, with a name as unique is yours, it isn’t hard to do some digging around online. While we did—which we would do for anybody who applied for a job here, by the way—we found some things we were a little concerned about,” Jason said. It was diplomatic, but he didn’t need to dress it up. I knew exactly what he meant. My name and my face were all over the Internet, both because of my parents and because of my bad behavior over the years.

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” I said with a shrug, trying to keep it cool. If I reacted any other way to the news they’d found out about my past, it might put this whole thing in jeopardy, and more than that it might let word spread all around this tiny town. That was another thing I’d heard about Southern Americans that they didn’t hesitate to share whatever secrets they heard about other people, almost like it was its form of currency. Knowledge is power, indeed.

“We don’t want to let that color any impression we might get from you, especially in regards to hiring you. That said, we also want to make sure it’s not going to cause any problems for you or us if we do decide to hire you,” Jason continued. I couldn’t blame him for being cautious, that was the earmark of a good businessman, but it was frustrating. Was I going to have to answer for this for the rest of my life? Then again, I guess I didn’t have anybody to blame but myself.

“Look, I told you yesterday, and I’ll repeat it now, I can be professional. I know that based on the things you probably saw about me online you might find that hard to believe, but when I want something, I throw my everything at it,” I said, as confidently as I could manage, and they both looked impressed. Good, I had them right in the palm of my hand, and I wasn’t feeding them crap either. I meant it. I couldn’t explain it, but I wanted this job, and even more unexpectedly, I wanted to get to know them.

“All right, then I guess that settles it. Is there anything you else you need us to know or would like us to know?” Jason asked. Wait, that was it? Did they build this all up just for that?

“I would say how much I want this job, how much I’m looking forward to working with you guys, but somehow that feels contrite,” I said, and Jason raised his eyebrows at the use of the word. Just because I got thrown out of Stockholm University for throwing the party of the century didn’t mean I hadn’t learned anything while I was at the school.

“Well, I guess the only thing that’s left to do is to sign some paperwork,” George said and reached across the desk to offer me a handshake.

“Are you serious?” I asked, the glee shining through in my voice. I didn’t mean to sound so excited, but I couldn’t contain it. This seemed too easy, almost too good to be true. Wait until my parents heard I’d found a job on my own, actually convinced someone to take a chance on me despite my baggage.

Those days were behind me. Maybe it was silly of me, maybe it was overly optimistic, but I wanted this to work and not just because I was terrified my parents would pull my trust fund away from me—though that was a concern. More than that, I wanted to try to make things work for myself. I wanted to find a place where I felt like I could belong, where all the skeletons I’d left in my closet in Sweden would stop following me. Clearly, these people were willing to give me a second chance—maybe the name of the bar wasn’t such a finger in my eye after all—and I wanted to take it and make good on it.

“As serious as a heart attack,” George said, shaking his hand at me to remind me it was there waiting for me. I thrust my hand into his and gripped it as hard as I could, shaking it like my life depended on it.

“Thank you; I don’t know what else to say. Honestly, after you told me you did some research on me, I thought you were going to laugh me out of here,” I said.

“Hey, we’ve all done some pretty dumb stuff when we were young. I can’t hold that against you,” Jason said.

“Yeah, he ain’t lying about that either. The number of times I’ve had to bail this guy out of trouble, it ain’t even funny,” George said, jabbing a thumb at Jason.

“Yeah, you’ll get used to that too. Everything I say, he makes it sound like it’s ten times worse than it was,” Jason said. “Good thing we’ve got Dan and Mike to level things out.”

God, that reminded me, I’d forgotten all about Dan. How well did he know my parents? Did he even know them at all, or did he just know of them? It was hard to tell. Maybe, if I showed him of all people that I’d gotten my act together, he’d ferry the information back to Sweden and my parents—and maybe that would get them off my back.

More than anything else, this was exactly what I wanted: a fresh start, a blank slate, and it’d been given to me. I couldn’t screw this up.

“Can you start tomorrow?” George asked.

“I can start right now if you want,” I answered and George chuckled.

“That’s what I like to hear. Unfortunately, I don’t think Mike will be too happy about sharing the shift with you, so we’d better wait until tomorrow when I can let him down easy,” George said.

“I’m with George on this one,” Jason said with a smile. “That said, don’t be afraid to go out there and rib him a little bit for us. Lord knows he’s given us our fair share of trouble over the years, maybe it’s time we exacted our revenge.”

Now that I could do, and without much effort. I smiled and nodded at them, said thanks once more, and let myself out of George’s office to find Mike rubbing a rag in the same spot on the counter that he’d no doubt been wiping down since I entered the office, all while pretending like he wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. He scowled at me, and I flashed him a smile.

“What the hell are you smilin’ at?” Mike snapped.

“Oh, just that I get to work with you and I’m excited about it,” I said, and winked at him. He looked like he’d just been punched in the gut like he’d been waiting for me to come out of the office in tears or something. His disappointment was satisfying.

“You’re shittin’ me,” Mike said, flinging the towel down on the counter.

“Nope, he’s not shitting you,” Jason said, emerging from the office behind me with his hands on his hips. “And, starting tomorrow, you’re going to be training him in everything he needs to know about this bar.” The color drained from Mike’s face as his mouth fell open.

I had no idea what the future held for me, but I knew it was guaranteed to be interesting due in no small part to Mike. For as combative and pouty as he was, I liked him. He had a good sense of humor, he wasn’t a slacker, and he was kind of hot in his homegrown small-town way.

But even thinking that about him was trouble—and I didn’t need any more sources of trouble in my life.