Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103621 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103621 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
“And the extra stick part you asked for?” Sparkle Two asks. “What’s that?”
“Meat stick,” I say, suppressing a laugh as the two women exchange horrified glances. “Every Trash Panda comes with a Slim Jim of your very own. Use it to stir your drink or enjoy it as a bar snack. Or both! We don’t judge here.”
But Sparkle One and Sparkle Two do judge. They judge hard and are off their stools, mincing across the sticky floor in their heels a second later, fleeing to the parking lot to find a cab to take them back across the river.
“Scaring off my customers again, Mack?” Cobb asks, a twinkle in his gray eyes as he sets my drink down.
“I do what I can to help out,” I say. “I know you have a limited tolerance for tourists. Especially ones who turn up their noses at a Slim Jim.”
“Damn straight. Catch up with you later when I’m not slammed, kiddo, and good to see you.” He reaches over, ruffling my hair with an affection that’s nice.
“Good to see you, too, Cobb.” I gather my mason jar close, inhaling the weirdly comforting scent. It smells like the remnants of my grandma’s ancient liquor cabinet, summer camp, and smoky, salty secrets.
And Cobb gave me not one, not two, but three meat sticks of my very own.
My Trash Panda is glorious tonight. I’m still considered a “regular” even though I haven’t been here in months. And Cobb is my friend and will smash the face of any guy who tries to fuck with me tonight.
I should be feeling good.
Great, even.
Instead, the same cold sadness that’s been floating around in my brain returns the second Cobb swaggers off to make a round of Angry Gooses. (Excuse me, Angry Geese—gin, grapefruit juice, a single slice of jalapeño, and molasses. Surprisingly, not as gross as it sounds.)
The feeling is one part melancholy, one part something worse than melancholy.
Something hopeless.
Something that feels like “the end” in a way I’m not ready for.
I’m not ready to give up on happily ever after, on finding my person and building an even bigger, more beautiful life, magnified by the glory of having someone special to share it with. But I’m thirty-two, almost thirty-three, and starting to doubt I’m ever going to find it again.
And by “it,” I mean a man like Tanner Bryce.
Tanner, with his kind eyes, easy laugh, and sexy way of julienning a carrot. Tanner, who was my teacher and my friend, and then, the day I graduated from culinary school and was no longer his student, my lover. He was fun and deep and thoughtful and silly, my perfect match in every way, except one.
He was twenty-eight and ready to settle down; I was newly twenty and ready to take the world by storm. He wanted to get engaged and start looking for a house; I wanted to backpack around France, learning to bake pastries. He wanted to be mine; I wanted to see what it felt like to kiss boys aside from my high school boyfriend and former teacher.
At twenty, forever felt like a cage.
At thirty-two, it sounds like freedom.
What would I give to be free from the shackles of swiping right and blind dates and learning to be naked with someone new and hoping and losing hope and breaking up and getting ghosted (or worse) and never feeling completely safe or loved?
What would I give to have a man say my name the way Grammercy Graves says Elly’s?
A lot.
I would give a lot.
It’s not that I’m jealous of Elly’s miraculous love story, I’m just…sad. And on the verge of losing hope for a happily ever after of my own. Aside from the eighteen months of my disastrous, impulsive marriage four years ago, I’ve been on the dating market nonstop for over a decade, and Prince Charming has yet to make an appearance.
It’s enough to make a girl look up her old culinary school teacher in a moment of weakness, only to learn that he lives in Brooklyn with his beautiful artist wife and their two sweet little tow-headed baby boys and looks very, very happy…
Yeah, I did…
Last night, in fact.
And now, I’m here, draining a Trash Panda with a speed that probably isn’t wise. Cobb is a heavy pour, and I barely had time to shove a sandwich in my mouth between catering jobs this afternoon. Alcohol, a mostly empty stomach, and encroaching despair are never a good mix.
With that in mind, I chomp into my first Slim Jim, marveling that something made almost entirely of organs and nightmares can be so fucking tasty…
“Ladies and gentlemen!” The karaoke host—a woman dressed as a poodle with pink hair—bounces onto the tiny stage, giving me hope that our ears are about to get a break.
The past three singers were horrendous, but in my experience, people with pink hair tend to know what they’re doing with a microphone.