And hot. Sweat trickles down the back of my neck and spine as I move from one customer to the next, slinging drinks and counting cash.
I glance toward the front door and see that my friend Slim is waving to get my attention.
“Hey, Daddy? Can you take over for a sec?” I shout. “I’m gonna go see what Slim needs.”
“Sure thing, Jojo,” he says. My dad steps forward and motions for the next in line to order.
I walk the length of the bar, knowing my chances of getting to the door are much greater if I hop the bar than if I try to push through the crowd. At five foot three, I’m not exactly the tallest girl in the world. I could get lost in a crowd like this.
As I pass behind Colton, every inch of my body is aware of just how close I am to him. I try not to stare at the way he’s smiling at the girls who just ordered or the way his cheek gets that dimple on one side that just wrecks me every time I see it. I try to ignore the muscles that stretch his black t-shirt to its limits, his arms flexing as he pops open a couple longnecks.
He turns his head to give me a smile, but I avoid his gaze as I slide behind him and hop onto the top of the bar at the very end. There’s a group of guys parked down here with their drinks, and they offer their hands to help me across. I wave them away and twist my body around, not needing any help. I’ve done this a billion times in my twenty-two years.
Hell, I grew up in this bar and there is no place in the world I’d rather be than right here, right now.
I wade through the crowd near the entrance and finally tap on Slim’s shoulder. “Everything going okay?”
He nods and holds his hand out to the next couple girls in line. They fish their ID’s from their purses and hand them over, along with a five-dollar bill each to pay the cover charge.
“We’re getting close to max capacity,” he says. “I estimate we can bring in another five or six people, and then we need to put a lock-down on this place until people start leaving.”
A surprised smile spreads across my face, and I lift both fists into the air.
“Hell yes,” I shout. “Are you kidding me? A sold out show on our first night?”
I take pride in being a hardass sometimes, but tonight I can’t even pretend to contain my excitement. A packed house at max capacity nearly an hour before the band even plays? And on a night with a five-dollar cover?
The cover was my friend Penny’s idea. Lately, she’s been making a name for herself around Fairhope, helping people set up their own small businesses. Taking a risk, I hired her to come in and take a look at our books. She suggested we think about doing some special events, and it was Colton’s idea to offer live music on Saturday nights. It seemed like a perfect idea to invite Penny’s husband, Mason, and his band to play our first night.
Penny was the one who suggested a cover charge and an ID bracelet so we wouldn’t have to keep checking ID’s all night. I had protested at first, saying that if we really wanted to bring in the drinking crowd, we should make it free to enter like every other dang night we’d been open for the past twenty years.
But Penny had insisted, saying the cover would make it feel more exclusive and would bring in the kinds of customers who would be willing to pay for the drinks and stay awhile.
Hell if she hadn’t been right. When I find her in the crowd, I’m going to kiss her square on the lips. My brain can’t even process the kinds of numbers we’re bringing in right now, and the night has just begun.
I slap Slim on the back. “Let the next few in and shut it down,” I say, and he nods. He’s a big guy, of course. All dudes called Slim usually are, right? It’s like guys named Tiny being six feet tall. Slim is about two hundred pounds of pure muscle, and at six-foot-two, no one is going to mess with him.
I take a quick look past the girls standing in the door and am surprised to see there’s a line of almost