"What da deal, doe?" she asked playfully and Drew grinned and shook her head.
"Fine," Drew called back. "I'm on it, I'm on it. You bitch."
"Trick," Bunz answered and Drew chuckled. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and sighed. Even though she was feeling much more comfortable with herself and with Heath, she still got "fluttery" when she thought about contacting him.
"What are you doing tonight?" she typed out, eschewing any sort of polite morning salutation. After a few minutes, her phone buzzed with response.
"Nothing special. What about you?"
"Last night working at Cliff's. Thinking of having some people come down to celebrate it. If you're not too busy, you should come down."
"Sure," she read, feeling a smile spread across her face. "Sounds good."
***
Of all of Cliff's employees, Drew was the first one to tender her resignation during her tenure there. Before she started her shift, she shared some teary good-byes with the other cocktail waitresses, girls she'd come to know well and like a lot. When she'd first started, she hadn't been sure how well she'd get along with them, knowing how catty women could be sometimes, but they had quickly banded together against the often-untoward and unsavory clientele. Cliff himself could even be a little too forward at times although he was generally a nice guy.
He had ordered a cake to celebrate Drew's transition, and she was not only touched but impressed that he'd managed to find a beautifully decorated tres leches cake, which was her favorite. The sweet, milk-soaked cake was covered in a light whipped cream frosting that had "Goodbye Drew!" scrawled in elegant script across the top in purple frosting, with pink and purple lotus blossoms made of a heavier frosting in the corners.
"I want you to have fun tonight," Cliff had told her, clapping her on the shoulder and squeezing. "Work, play, make lots of tips. Drink and have fun! No stress tonight."
"Thanks, Cliff," Drew had said, smiling at him. "I've really appreciated having this opportunity. Thanks for being such a great boss." She might have been stretching the truth with the last part, but she really did appreciate the cake and her send-off.
She enjoyed some cake with the other girls a half-hour before things started picking up, then went to the mirror to touch up her lipgloss. For her last night, she'd decided on a sweetheart-cut black leather peplum tube top over black shorts and simple black suede ankle boots with a black wooden ice cream cone heel. She'd added a chunky gold necklace and a gold men's watch and had even gotten a fresh manicure earlier that afternoon. It was the first time she'd actually recalled feeling cheerful while working at Cliff's, and she had to laugh a little at the notion that it was because it was her last night.
When she came out from the back, she saw Bunz and her sisters at the bar, grinning at her.
"Barkeep!" Bunz called, waving her over.
"Wench!" Nik shouted and Drew rolled her eyes, sliding behind the bar.
"Yeah, yeah," she said, waving them off. "Let me guess - raspberry margarita, blended, sugar on the rim for Bunz, Cosmo for Nik because she can't let Sex and the City go, and Chardonnay for Toni." She lifted her brows at them and received another round of grins, and she knew she'd gotten them right.
"But first," Nik said dramatically, lifting a hand, "a round of shots, including one for our fair bar wench. Patron, if you please."
"Aw, man," Drew groaned. "No! Anything else! Whiskey? Vodka? Jäger?"
"No," Nik said stubbornly. "Tequila!"
Drew sighed heavily and poured out four shots of tequila and slid them around, then brought out a dish of freshly cut limes and a salt shaker. The girls all fixed up their hands with salt and lifted their shots into the air.
"To Drew," Nik said, smiling at her baby sister. "For making leaps and bounds and living this much closer to her dream."
"Hear, hear!" Toni exclaimed.
"Word," Bunz added with a nod.
Drew smiled and waved dismissively. "Down the hatch."
Simultaneously, they licked the salt off their hands, downed their shots, and popped the limes in their mouths, each of their faces screwed up from the strength of the liquor.
Drew shook her head quickly to focus, her tousled hair moving around her shoulders with the movement and set about to making all of their drinks.
"So, where's your man, B?" she called over her shoulder.
Bunz flicked her head toward a high-top table near the door. "Sitting off by his lonesome, nursing a beer." She smirked at Drew. "Waiting for your man to get here so he can have some fellow testosterone."