“No.”
“Good. Nobody interesting ever is.”
We walk in together.
The Fire Pit swallows us in bourbon light and Kentucky noise.
Inside, the bar glows amber and dark. Scorched wood walls. Bourbon barrels cut into high tables. Old photos of horses, wrestling matches, and Kings parties that probably should not be displayed in a place with a liquor license. A horseshoe hangs over the bar, welded to a motorcycle chain. The back wall has shelves of bourbon that go from respectable to the kind of bottle a man buys when he wants to prove his divorce is going fine.
The room smells like charred oak, fried catfish, cornbread, leather, perfume, and trouble.
Home, basically.
Cornbread stands behind the bar wiping a glass with a towel that looks too small in his hand. He is built like a grain silo learned to deadlift. Big belly, bigger shoulders, shaved head, beard the color of actual cornbread, and hands wide enough to palm a ham. He wears a black Fire Pit shirt stretched across his chest and a leather vest that makes him look less like a bartender and more like a bouncer who got distracted by mixology.
His eyes land on me.
Then Amelia.
Then my hand at her back.
A slow grin spreads over his face.
Oh no.
“Derby!” he bellows.
Every head turns if it had not already.
I point at him. “Cornbread.”
He leans both hands on the bar. “That the panty lady?”
The room dies.
Amelia goes still under my hand.
I consider murder.
Not later. Not theoretically. Right now. With the bar towel.
“Cornbread,” I say carefully, “you got three seconds to remember you like breathing.”
He looks confused. “What? Everybody heard.”
“That’s the problem, you dense refrigerator.”
Cornbread’s brow furrows. “I ain’t a refrigerator.”
A man at the bar mutters, “More like a chest freezer.”
Cornbread points at him. “Watch it, Earl. Your tab’s held together by hope and lies.”
Amelia is still motionless.
I start to move my hand away in case she wants space.
Then she laughs.