All of my brothers were cool and good-looking and successful, and I was a fucking bartender.
Not that I was bitter, or anything. I mean shit, I was the best-looking of the lot, after all.
And, don’t get me wrong, I loved the bar. It was home. It was my entire life. The hard part was that I’d never gotten a chance to do anything else. When Mom died it had been left up to me, as the oldest, to help Dad. I’d managed to get my high school diploma, but only barely. I’d been too busy cooking, bussing tables, and washing dishes to care about tests or homework. I worked so my brothers didn’t have to—during the week at least.
Dad always gave me Saturdays off and made whoever was around help out. Usually that meant Zane, Baxter, and the twins, since Brock always had practice and Lucian and Xavier were too young to be of any help. Saturdays meant dates for me. I’d take my earnings from the week and cruise the town on my bike—a chopped Harley Dad and I worked on every Sunday—and go scouting for chicks. Didn’t usually take long to find someone to kick it with for the evening, since I had Dad’s size and looks and Mom’s chill confidence and calm demeanor.
Well, most of Mom’s calm demeanor; I had Dad’s temper in there somewhere, and these days it wasn’t hard to bring it out of me. I guess I was mad because I had to run this place on my own. Back then I’d been bored and full of anger over Mom’s death and had been as ready to fight as I had been to fuck, and I’ve always been damn good at both.
Nowadays, the only fighting I did was to kick out the odd drunk. The fucking was a constant, since even though business hadn’t been great, Badd’s Bar and Grill still had a reputation for having a good-looking bartender who poured strong drinks and was always DTF if you were half-decent looking and had a nice rack—the good-looking bartender being me, obviously.
Ketchikan, being a popular destination for Alaskan cruises, almost always had a constant stream of tourists looking for a “local spot” to drink—which meant fine-looking honeys only in for a day or two. These easy hook-ups had a built-in escape clause: they knew they were leaving, I knew they were leaving, so there was no mess, no hurt feelings, no awkward morning-after chit-chat.
It was a good gig.
But it was the only gig I’d ever had. I had no idea what else I could do, what else I might be good at, what else I might want to do. I tended bar and fucked hot tourists, it’s what I did.
It was all I did.
Today, I’d spent almost an hour daydreaming and being pissed at my brothers, and still no one had come in.
“Fuck it,” I said, and poured myself a stiff scotch.
Stiff, meaning a rocks glass full to the brim with Johnny Walker Black Label.
I circled around the bar, sat down by the TV, and turned on ESPN, leaning the high-top chair back with my feet flat against the bar-front and sipped my scotch watching last night’s replays and highlights.
Maybe two hours later, I was on my second glass, and still hadn’t seen a soul.
Then the bell over the door chimed.
I hoped it was a pretty tourist, maybe a redhead with a nice set of tits, or a blonde with a fat, juicy ass.
What I got was Richard Ames Burroughs, the attorney in charge of executing Dad’s will: three-piece suit, slim leather briefcase, oxford shoes, slicked, parted hair, glasses that could appropriately and not ironically be called “spectacles”, and a tendency to literally look down his nose at me. He also had a tendency to act like the stools and bar top were infected surfaces, as if he might catch fuckin’ crabs or something.
Trust me, bub, I wash that bar down enough that there ain’t a single germ on the damn thing.
Richard Ames Burroughs stepped carefully across the floor—which was still clean from when I’d swept it before opening—and shuffled beside me. “Mr. Badd.”
“Name’s Sebastian,” I growled.
“Sebastian, then.” He pulled out the stool beside me, brushed it off with a napkin, and then set his briefcase on it. “I have your father’s will.”
I slugged my scotch. “He’s been dead three months, Dick. Why are you bringing this to me now?”
“You can call me Richard, or Mr. Burroughs, if you please. And it was part of his will that it not be read for twelve weeks after his death. I do not know why, as he didn’t choose to offer a reason.” He paused, opened his briefcase. “I’ve sent copies to each of your brothers, or, at least, those for whom I could locate a physical address. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Your father was very specific that he wanted me to wait three months before reading the will, and that you were to be the last one to whom I read it.”