I shake my head and smile at Roy, and even though I’ve heard this story twice, I put my elbows on the bar and lean toward him. “I haven’t heard that one.”

Roy drones on and on. Sweet old man really, which is why I listen to his repetitive stories. This is his life… just as it’s mine… sitting in a bar and whiling the time away.

Continuing from one story to the next, Roy tells me about his wife, Georgia. She died long before I was born so I didn’t know her, but she sounded like a hoot. A few more customers start to straggle in, mostly fisherman at this time of the early afternoon, telling me the shrimp aren’t running anymore.

I call out greetings and serve up beers as well as some harder liquor for the more salty men. Periodically, I shoot the shit with Roy or some of the other locals.

I’ve found the key to enjoying this job is to stay busy, so I like it when people start coming in. It makes the time fly by. While the afternoon shifts that I work are generally slow, I still can get in a good hour or so of busy traffic, which means better tips.

Right at six PM, Kent comes in to relieve me. He started working at The Last Call about a year ago and is one of Hunter’s more seasoned workers. He’s also really hot with sandy blond hair that he wears long and shaggy, with a beard of about four days’ growth. It never gets any longer or shorter, so I know he must be in to grooming. On top of that, he’s a generally nice guy. I mean, really nice.

I’ve often thought about going out with him. He’s asked me a few times, and I always turn him down with a bit of levity. He’s a little younger than I would like—I think twenty-three—but ultimately, I can’t do it.

He’s a bartender. Blue collar, working class. Definitely not rich.

Which means definitely not my type.

Some would think that makes me shallow, and I would have to agree with them if I went out with these men for their money. But that’s not why I go out with them. I couldn’t care less about their fancy cars and expensive gifts. It amuses me to get them because I know just how little that stuff really means to these men. It’s a way to impress and seduce. It’s classic and dull, but I accept it.

It also means they are the shallow ones, and shallow people are easy to keep at arm’s length.

The reason I don’t go out with people like Kent is because he’s too nice. Too stable. Too dependable. Wouldn’t want to hurt a woman intentionally. Knows the meaning of honest work. He has character.

Those are the men I stay away from. Those are the type of men that would threaten to unravel me.

“Hey Kent,” I greet him with a smile as he walks back behind the bar.

“Hey Casey,” he says with a pearly white grin. “Looking gorgeous today.”

“Why, thank you, kind sir,” I say with a little curtsy and then give him an appraising once over. “You’re not looking bad yourself.”

He chuckles and opens the register to start zeroing out the tallies for my shift while I finish washing up some empty glasses and giving a good wipe down of the bar. When I’m done, I fish out my tips but leave a dollar behind. It’s some sort of karmic tradition all the bartenders here do, and I’m not about to mess with the tip money juju.

A quick count and I see I’ve netted a grand total of thirty-two dollars. Actually not bad for a slow afternoon shift of six hours.

“Casey Markham… girl, do I have a bone to pick with you,” I hear yelled from behind me. It’s a voice I’ve known most of my life.

With a grin, I turn to face Gabby with her chocolate-colored hair and Cherokee heritage cheekbones that make her so exotic looking. “What have I done now?” I ask with smirk as I walk out from behind the bar.

“Can we get two beers when you get a minute?” Gabby asks Kent as she points me out toward the back deck, indicating she wants to sit out there.

“Sure thing, Gabs,” Kent replies, and immediately starts pouring two pints of Harp’s, which is a new beer Hunter started carrying on tap that Gabby and I began drinking recently. We’re going through an Irish phase or something.

Kent slides the beers across the bar to us and Gabby fishes in her purse, pulling out a ten-dollar bill to hand to him. Immediately holding his hands up defensively, Kent backs away and shakes his head. “No way, Gabby. I can’t take your money. The boss will fire me this time if I do it.”

“What?” she asks, her voice bordering between pissed and flummoxed. I’m enjoying this show, so I just grab my beer and take a sip.

“Hunter said you can’t pay for anything here anymore. He said he’ll fire me if I take your money,” Kent says solemnly. “And I’m sorry, Gabby. I like you and all, but not enough to lose my job.”

Gabby starts muttering curses, and I hear Hunter’s name in every other word. Love is very strange, I think to myself.

Throwing the money on the bar, Gabby grabs her beer. “Then consider that your tip, Kent. And I’ll be talking to Hunter about this later.”

She spins away and stalks through the bar, past the pool tables and to the door that leads to the outdoor deck. I actually like to think of it as her outdoor deck, since Gabby is the one that built it from scratch. Yup… my girl is such a dude when it comes to building things. She’s a general contractor, and there isn’t anything she can’t create from wood.

The multi-tiered deck is stunning with quarter walls dropping from the ceiling that hold various surfboards of Hunter’s that he won as trophies in some of his competitions. The covered portion of the deck contains a framework that has plastic drop walls so you can even sit out here in the winter and look at the ocean. Adding this deck is one of the things that helped propel The Last Call into bar-stardom status here on the island. Hunter hires live bands to play out here in the summer, and it’s just the coolest place to hang with your friends.

Gabby sits down at an empty table closest to the beach, which is nicely shaded by an umbrella that’s slightly tilted to block the late afternoon rays coming from the west. I sit down next to her and prop my feet up on the chair beside me.

“So what’s the bone you have to pick with me?” I ask her nonchalantly as I gaze out at the ocean. The water is a dark green this late in the afternoon and the waves are small, barely making a rumble as they roll in.

“You lied to us,” Gabby says, and that gets my attention. My gaze jerks over to her and my eyebrows raise in question, but I know damn well what she’s talking about. I don’t lie to my friends—much—but I have told one recently and it’s apparently biting me in the ass.

Still, in the off chance I’m wrong, I decide to play it close to the vest. “How do you think I lied?”

Gabby rolls her eyes at me. “This past weekend… you said you couldn’t go out with us because you had a date with that NASCAR dude… what’s his name? Richard?”

“That’s right,” I say neutrally, not copping to anything other than what I had told her a few days ago.

“You weren’t on a date with him,” she snaps at me.

Well, shit. I’m busted… I think. There’s still a chance she’s bluffing me.

“What makes you say that?” I ask with a forced measure of indifference.

“Oh, cut the crap, Casey, and just fess up. Hunter and I saw him at the Soundside with another woman on his arm,” she says in exasperation.

“Oh my gosh,” I say with bubbly excitement as I lean toward her. “Y’all ate at the Soundside? Was it fabulous? I bet it was fabulous.”

Gabby’s eyes flutter closed, she inhales deeply and then lets it out slowly through slightly parted lips. When she opens her eyes, I see patience with a good deal of annoyance just underneath. “Dinner was wonderful, and as I said… Richard was there dining with another woman. So I want to know why you said you were with him Saturday night and you couldn’t hang out with your friends?”