Page 10 of Touchdown, Tennessee

Which felt satisfying on a fuckingbone-deeplevel now that I knew Andrew Peachel hated it.

“Hey, there,” a young bartender in a tank top said as he came over to the table. “I’m Max. Can I get you a refill?”

I’d seen Max chatting with Andrew a couple of minutes ago over at the bar, and I knew they were friendly.

“Gray,” I said, reaching out to shake his outstretched hand. “You’re the Max from the specials menu?”

“That is me,” he said with a little salute. “I make all of the cocktail specials.”

“I’ll try the Poison Ambrosia.”

Max nodded. “You a fan of bourbon?”

“Just a fan of the name.”

“Have you ever been in before?” Max asked. “That sounded like a pickup line. It wasn’t, I promise. I’m very taken.”

“First time,” I told him. “Not exactly a bar-hopping kind of guy.”

“You’re here with the football team?”

I nodded. “Writing the Homecoming article on them for the TNU Weekly.”

“Good luck hanging with the Tempests,” Max said. “You’ll be bro-ing out with them before you know it. Bars were never really my vibe until I found this one, too, by the way. We do it differently around here.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him why that would never happen.

I looked down at the wooden lacquered tabletop that had plenty of dings, dents, and ring stains all across its surface.

It should have been comforting.

But it had been giving me a bad feeling in my blood since the moment I walked in.

Everyone else seemed to treat this place like Cheers, a friendly local bar where everybody knew everybody else’s name.

There was a reason I had trust issues, though.

I hated dive bars because I’d grown up in them.

I was only six when I first noticed my mom’s preferred method of theft: she went into a bar, charmed everyone and anyone within a six-foot radius of her, got them to trust her pretty blueeyes, and then managed to slip away with their cash, jewelry, or watches at some point in the night.

When other kids were going to soccer practice or skating lessons, I was brought to bars.

Mom kept me in a world surrounded by hazy smoke, the smell of liquor, and adults behaving badly.

I was her good luck charm.

A cute kid, always in tow.

She saw me mostly as a tool: when I was there,everybodytrusted her.

Pitied her.

Poor, sweet single mom, with her sensitive, troubled kid.

It only took a few years before she started to teach me, too, and I was even better at the job. She’d bat her eyelashes, asking people teach her how to play pool.

I’d take care of the sleight of hand, stealing whatever I could while she diverted their attention.