I could use that as an excuse to escape back upstairs, but something makes me want to stay. Maybe it’s the warm, relaxed atmosphere. Maybe it’s the way Cash is looking at me and the way Lincoln is scooting over to make room on the couch.
“Just for a little while, I guess,” I mumble and come to sit down.
“Do you guys always take days off at the same time?” I ask them.
Everett shrugs. “It’s not really a day off. We all have day jobs that we still have to go to. The bar was supposed to be a side project, but we ended up getting pretty invested.”
“Seems like it would take up a lot of time when you already have jobs. And not easy ones.” I nod to Everett and Lincoln, who are basically always on call in case there’s crime or a fire.
“And then there’s me,” Cash says with a laugh. “Spending my time with the horses in the fields. The bar was my idea.”
Lincoln rolls his eyes. “All the impulse ideas come from Cash. He has too much free time and too much imagination. One day he just comes to us and says ‘you know what this town needs?’. There were plenty of other things on the list before a bar, but here we are.”
I tip my head to one side, thinking about that. “So there wasn’t a bar before that?”
“There was,” Everett explains. “But it got shut down. Health code violations, and there were rumors that the owner was using it and the small town vibe for all kinds of things. He left town in a hurry years ago, and the bar was in shit shape.”
“The whole thing was a fucking disaster for a while,” Lincoln says. “The building needed a ton of work. There was water damage and rats, and none of the equipment had been updated since the sixties. None of the wiring was up to code either, so it basically had to be gutted and redone.”
My eyebrows shoot up at that. “Jesus. Sounds like more trouble than it was worth.”
“Cash had a vision,” Lincoln deadpans, making jazz hands in a way that is clearly sarcastic. “And he’s like a dog with a bone when it comes to his visions.”
“Hey, it worked out, didn’t it?” Cash asks.
“It could just as easily not have.” Everett looks at me. “You actually had more experience bartending than any of us did when we started the place.”
“Really?”
He nods. “We had no idea what we were doing, and on top of that, we all had other commitments.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I tell them. “But I’m honestly surprised you didn’t just go under. A lot of places with more experience do.”
“Oh, we know,” Lincoln says. “Trust me. It’s all part of the Cash effect.”
I blink. “The… Cash effect?”
“Cash just has this way of making things work out,” Everett explains. “He pulls some harebrained idea out of his ass, and then it just works.”
Cash jumps in to defend himself, but he’s laughing. “They’re not all hairbrained, thank you. Hiring Harper wasn’t out there, but it worked out for the best. She’s the best bartender we’ve ever had.”
My face heats, and I look down at my lap.
“Yeah, sometimes you manage to rein it in, I guess.”
The conversation and banter flows so easily between them, and they somehow manage to weave me into it too. It’s clear that they know each other very well, and that there’s love underneath all the jokes and teasing.
If Everett and Lincoln didn’t want to go along with Cash’s impulse decisions, then they probably wouldn’t bother. But the fact that they do must mean that they trust him. They’re a unit—a pack—and all their interactions just reinforce that.
The night wears on, and they keep talking. Everett talks about some of the wilder arrests he’s had to make over the years, making the other two laugh softly as they ask him to tell their favorite stories.
“It’s not every day you show up to a call about someone hanging out by the creek with their dick out and find your old history teacher skinny dipping,” he says, making a pained face.
“Just naked?” I ask.
He nods. “As the day he was born. Turns out he was drunk as a skunk because his wife left him for some guy she started seeing from the city. I had to talk him down to get him out of the creek, and then he spent the night in a cell until he sobered up.”
“At least it was probably more embarrassing for him than it was for you?” I try.