Much to Jason’s surprise, there wasn’t a whole lot I needed to learn. Working and living in Stockholm, especially on the bar circuit like I had been for the last two years, I picked up a lot more than most people realized. When my parents thought I was just out screwing around, being a spoiled rich kid who never had to lift a finger for himself, I was observing people and making sure I learned whatever I could whenever I could.

I never wanted to end up a helpless rich kid who can’t do anything for himself.

See, that’s the thing about having rich parents as a kid. They don’t ever really hang around, don’t ever bother to teach you things, they just leave you to the hired help like you’re some nuisance they never wanted around in the first place. It’s a tired cliché, but it was true in my case. I spent much more time with nannies and other random people coming in and out of my life as a kid than I ever did with my parents.

The other thing about being a rich kid is that you can’t go to public schools. For some people, that’s a blessing, but for me, it was a little bit more of a curse. I was always an outgoing kind of guy, and I befriended pretty much everyone I could because I was desperate for friends who weren’t rich, so being isolated in our mansion of a house in Stockholm wasn’t exactly suited to me.

“Hey, you alive in there?” Mike asked, waving a hand in front of my face. I’d been standing with my hands against the counter, slumped over it, for the last few minutes, so long that my arms had started to tingle and go numb.

“Yeah, I’m here,” I said with a smirk. He looked at me like he had no idea what to make of me—not that I could blame him after the way I’d behaved the night before. It was not characteristic of me to be subtle, especially when it came to someone, I found attractive, but last night was a new low even for me. Mike was a co-worker, it wasn’t like I could act on my attraction—even if I’d wanted to, which I wasn’t sure of just yet.

Because the fact of the matter was that I was in Beauclaire trying to make a fresh start, trying not to start more little fires my parents would have to swoop in and put out because I was obviously incapable of taking care of myself. Getting involved with Mike would qualify as fire. A major one.

“Sometimes I can’t tell. Do all Swedes look like they’re robots when they talk?” Mike asked as he picked up a towel from the counter and went to wipe down some of the tables. The bar had been open for a little over an hour, but so far only one person had wandered in, some old dude named Harry who lived up to his name. He sat down at the bar right in front of me, sucked down at least six beers in about ten minutes, and all I could focus on was the long, disgusting hair growing out of his ears. I hoped I never ended up like him at that age.

After he left, Mike had told me Harry was one of their regulars, the kind of guy who had nothing better to do with his life than come to the bar alone and drink. I felt kind of sad for him. The only thing that separated the two of us was money, but when I boiled it down, I was probably more like Harry than any of my parents or fake friends back home.

“No, but we do all lack feelings like robots,” I said to Mike, and he smirked at me. No one else was working that night, Jason and George and Dan had all taken the night off since they’d gotten the new person to help Mike run the place. To say the air between us was a little charged would’ve been an understatement, especially after what I’d said the last time we were alone in the place together.

“I find that hard to believe,” Mike said as he came back to the bar.

“So what’s your story anyway? You always lived here?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Mike had Beauclaire written all over him, from head to toe. He was about as country as they got, and that was part of the reason why I found him intriguing, maybe even a little attractive in his rugged kind of way. He was not the type of guy I would normally have gone for—or, should I say, that my parents would’ve tried to set me up with—but maybe that was exactly what I liked about him. He represented something different, something new.

It didn’t hurt he was good looking underneath all his Southernness. The beard he wore trimmed short gave him a sort of strong quality, which was only made better by his bulging biceps and barrelled chest. He looked like the kind of guy who could lift four hundred pounds like it was nothing—and then throw down at an all-you-can-eat buffet immediately after.

“Beauclaire born and raised,” he said with a warm smile like he was proud of it. How could anyone be proud to be from this town?

“Jesus, I’m so sorry,” I said, shaking my head. He smirked at me.

“Aw, come on, it ain’t awful here. I know it’s a little boring and sleepy, but that ain’t always a bad thing. It keeps me outta trouble,” he said with a wink, an obvious reference to my past. I couldn’t blame him for taking a swipe at me—in fact; I found it kind of funny. He was like me in that regard, never pulling punches, especially when it was a joke.

“Speaking of, is there anything to do for fun in this town?” I asked. Mike leaned against the bar, fixed his eyes on me and smirked at me before he shook his head.

“What? You don’t think this is fun?” he asked, gesturing around the empty room.

“Honestly, I’m starting to wonder why I got hired in the first place. I thought you were supposed to be so busy you couldn’t handle it,” I said.

“Normally we would be, but I dunno what’s going on. Maybe there’s some event in Asheville or something that took ‘em all away,” Mike said.

“You mean like a hoedown?” I asked. He fixed his eyes on me, a blank look on his face.

“Very funny.”

“I bet you aren’t exactly happy to be spending the night all alone with me, are you?” I asked, and he shook his head at me again, watching me with his deep brown eyes.

“Now why would you say something like that? It ain’t like we have bad blood or anything,” he said.

“Oh, is that why you tried to sabotage me getting this job?” I said and winked at him. I liked how we were able to banter back and forth, how quick he was on his feet. The more I talked to him, the more time I spent with him, I realized there was a lot more to him than met the eye, which fascinated me—in a troubling way.

“Please, I didn’t try to sabotage you. The only thing I did was speak the truth, same thing I’ve always done,” he said.

“If all you do is speak the truth, then why are you lying to me right now?” I asked and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Damn, boy, what are you, some bloodhound or something?” he asked and threw his towel at me. I caught it out of the air and slung it over my shoulder.

“Hey, what can I say, I’ve got a nose for bullshit,” I said, and he smirked.

“Well, that explains why you’re always up Jason’s ass,” he said, and I burst out laughing.

“You’re pretty fast on your feet; you know that?” I asked.

“Look, kid, when you got a body like mine, and a brain that ain’t gonna win no awards anytime soon, you gotta find other ways to win people over,” he said, and though he wore a smile there was a subtle sadness underneath it. He wasn’t kidding, as much as he tried to pretend otherwise. As uncomfortable as it was for me to admit, I knew the feeling. Well, minus the part about not having a nice body, but that was bullshit on his part anyway, his body was perfectly fine—maybe a little too fine.

“Well, this turned awkward all of a sudden, didn’t it?” I asked.

“Hey, don’t open a can of worms if you don’t want to eat ‘em,” he said with a shrug. “Anyway, how about a change of subject?” I couldn’t argue with him on that, more because I didn’t know what to say than anything else. How could I respond without sending the wrong message?

“Yeah, sure, sounds good. Uh… anything about this place I should know? Any problematic customers I should be aware of, or any special drinks?” I asked. It was about the only non-controversial thing I could think of to talk about.

“Not really, we’re pretty plain Jane around here,” Mike said. “I don’t think we’ve ever had to throw anybody outta the place, knock on wood,” he said and knocked on the bar, though it wasn’t wood. I would never understand Americans and their weird superstitions.

“And what about the drinks? Do you guys have anything signature, anything tricky I need to learn?” I asked. Jason hadn’t mentioned anything the day before when we’d gone over the bar fundamentals, all the different drinks that they offered on the menu—which weren’t very many to begin with—but maybe he’d overlooked something. I just wanted an excuse to be closer to Mike, to get him talking about something. I couldn’t stand silence between us because it let my mind wander to places it had no business visiting.

“Well, there’s one, the newest one, though I’m not real sure how to make it,” Mike said. “It wasn’t my creation, and it’s a hidden menu item, if you get my drift.”

“Why would there be a hidden menu? That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

“Hell, I have no idea. All I know is customers aren’t supposed to know about this one,” he said as he came around the bar and grabbed an empty glass. He held it up at me and winked. “Don’t tell Jason I told you how to make this; he’ll have my balls in a jar in his office if you do.”

“Your secrets are always safe with the Swedes,” I said, and he chuckled.

“Yeah right, ain’t nothing we can trust socialists with,” he said, though he winked at me again. “Anyway, watch closely, I ain’t gonna do this more than once,” he said and started off making a relatively complex drink. It involved several different types of liquor and both mango and peach juice. After he’d shaken it all up together in a mixer and poured it into the glass, he stabbed a heart-shaped cocktail skewer into it.

“What the hell is this thing called?” I asked, laughing. It looked awful, like a unicorn had taken a piss in the glass—a truly horrifying Lisa Frank-esque creation.

“Promise not to laugh?” he asked, fixing me with an intense stare.

“Why would I laugh?” I asked, not sure where this was going.

“Just promise. I swear, if you laugh at me when I tell you this, I’m gonna… Well, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“I’ll try not to,” I said. No sense in making promises I knew I couldn’t keep.

“All right, fine. It’s called Piece of My Heart,” he said, and I almost choked on the burning at the back of my throat. How the hell did he expect me not to laugh at that? It was the corniest name for a drink I’d ever heard in my life, even cornier than the buttery nipple.

“You’re joking,” I said, incredulous.

“God dammit, I knew I shouldn’t have told you. Can’t you take anything serious?” he asked.

“I can take a lot of things seriously, but a name like that? No way in hell,” I said. “I mean, I’ve been to a lot of bars in my life with a lot of ridiculous drinks, but I think this one takes the cake. Who came up with this thing?” I asked.

“Your boss, as a matter of fact,” Mike said smugly, a broad smile appearing on his face.

“No way,” I said, unable to believe it. Jason seemed so levelheaded and unemotional, way too solid of a guide to make something as mushy as this.

“I shit you not. He made it for Dan when they got back together earlier this year,” he said. “No matter what you think of the thing, I suggest you keep it to yourself.”

“Duly noted, I won’t say a word to either of them,” I said. He shifted around uncomfortably.

“Well, do you want to try it? Just so you know how it tastes and so you can describe it to customers if they want to know what it is? I mean, I’m not gonna lie, you’re probably gonna get requests for this more’n you might think. It kinda became a thing,” Mike said. I didn’t want to try to make any sense out of that, so I shrugged.

“Yeah, sure. I’d hate for it to go to waste,” I said, though I rolled my eyes and he smirked at me.

“Well go on then, smartass, you might just like it,” he said and slid the drink across the bar to me. He held it in place, and I reached to take it from him, a little too fast, and our hands brushed against each other. It was so fast I would swear it hadn’t happened had I not felt the heat coming from his big bear paw of a hand. When I looked up, he was looking down at the floor, and his face was so red he looked like he was drunk. But this wasn’t drunkenness that’d taken over him; it was something else, something much more frightening.

Paying it little mind as possible, I picked up the drink and took a small sip of it. Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t bad. It was sweet, much sweeter than anything I would normally drink, but I kinda liked it. It was perfect for a small town like this, something “out there” that these small towners would think was a real creation, something special. Still, I couldn’t get over the name.

“So, what’s with the name anyway?” I asked after I’d taken another sip. The last thing I wanted was to ask about the awkward touching of our hands, like we were two teenagers embarrassed by our desires at the movie theater when our hands intertwined in the popcorn bucket—though that wasn’t what this was. It was only as awkward as I made it out to be.

“Hell if I know, man. It was a rough road for Jason and Dan, long story, but the short version is that they worked through their shit and Jason made a drink for Dan after it all, dedicated it to him and all. I guess Dan has a popular song by the same name, so it stuck. Anyway, I know it’s all pretty hokey, but I think it’s kinda sweet too, which I guess fits the drink, right?” he asked, still not looking at me. It struck me then that the drink in my hand was probably a lot like Mike—trying to act tough and in charge on the outside, but sweet and melting on the inside.

Maybe we had more in common than either of us realized, and maybe that was why we’d had so much friction between us from the start. I wasn’t nearly as much of an arrogant ass as Mike probably saw me as, and he probably wasn’t nearly as simple as he seemed to be. Maybe he was afraid to be who he was, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. Living in a small town like this where everyone knew everyone else’s business sure wouldn’t make it easy to live an honest life. The way he looked at me—a fascinated, cautious kind of look—made me want to dig deeper.

Or maybe it was just the several different kinds of liquors I’d ingested talking.