I turned to look over at Adam’s table, but per usual, I couldn’t see anyone. I was too short. At five ten, Eve stood a good five inches taller than me and could generally see into the crowd. I’d have to wait until the crowd moved or the band took a break.
“Mmm." She’d spotted him again. "Tall, buff, buzz cut so short you can see his scalp?"
Eh. Eve and I had very different ideas of what was hot in a guy. Her boyfriend, Randy, was all neck, shoulders, and muscles, which was a good fit for her because she was taller. A guy like Randy felt overpowering to me. I liked them short and wiry, and none of the guys in Adam’s group were that type. His guys were all buff and muscled, as if they were some traveling men’s fitness troupe. And, worse, at least a couple of them were former military. I could just tell by the way they held their bodies and looked around constantly, as if they feared some mortar attack from the sky.
When I got back into the dating game, which I would someday when I stopped missing Will so much, I wouldn’t be with another military guy. My perfect man was someone who loved statistics more than guns and whose idea of a grand time was shopping for a new ruler or pen. Maybe he’d even be a fellow knitter and we’d sit side by side on the sofa watching Downton Abbey and knitting each other socks. Those guys weren’t coming to the bar, though. Some smart girls had already snapped them up and were hiding those treasures in their homes.
I’d shared this with Eve once and, after I’d finished my description, she’d shaken her head. “There are two rules for dating you should never forget. One, he should be strong enough so you can have sex standing up and two, never, ever date a guy who could wear your jeans. It’s terrible for the confidence when you see your skinny jeans looking better on his ass than yours. Learn from my sad dating history,” she admonished me. Randy sure fit both those rules and so did most of Adam’s crew. I was making up my own standards though and tall, buff, brawny guys didn’t meet them.
"You know him?" I asked Eve when I swung back her way after serving a couple of drinks.
"No, but I'd like to." She bit her fist in mock appreciation of his fineness. "Since I'm taken, I guess I'll have to leave him to you.”
"I thought I was going to be the threesome in your and Randy's bed tonight," I teased, trying to divert the discussion away from Eve’s supposed man candy.
"That's a threesome I'd like to see." One of the bar customers leaned against the bar, waving a twenty. The guys who came to Gatsby’s in their hundred-dollar bargain suits were trying far too hard, but their clothing attracted a certain type of girl, and I hardly ever saw a guy with a suit go home alone. I wondered what the girls thought when they were taken back to the guy's apartment that he shared with three others. Probably the same thing a guy thought when a girl took off her miracle bra. Disappointment all around.
"It's a hundred dollars," Eve said to Mr. Suit, while tapping his twenty. "You'll need four more of these."
"A hundred for what?"
"If you give them a hundred, they'll kiss." One of our regulars who'd been sitting at the bar since five that afternoon explained the rules. When Eve and I worked, guys were always asking for sexual things. I never really understood why they hit on us. Did they think that their ten spot was going to buy our phone numbers? Or that their lame catchphrases like ""What time you getting off tonight?" were going to make us bend over and drop our shorts? My favorite was "When are you two going to kiss? I'll pay twenty dollars for that!" just like this joker.
Eve and I once said that we'd kiss for a hundred, and since then, we'd get offered the money several times a night. I guess it fueled some fantasy. A hundred bucks to kiss a friend? Too easy to resist.
Suit Man rounded up his friends and slapped a hundred dollars on the table. "Now kiss."
"Kiss. Kiss. Kiss." The chant rose up from the bar. Eve finished delivering four mugs of beer and I slipped the lime wedges on a couple of tequila shots before we met in the middle. She dug her fingers into my hair and whispered against my mouth. "Someday you oughta try kissing a guy." Then she gave me a wet kiss as I held on to her shoulders.
When we broke apart to the shouts of encouragement, I responded. "Only if I can make fifty bucks per kiss." Scooping up the money, I stuck it in my back pocket to split later.
She swatted me on the ass and turned back to the customers. Watching us kiss made them thirsty. When Maisey, the waitress serving Adam's table, swung by with an order, Eve grabbed her tray and started pumping her for information. I was a little ashamed to say I sidled down the bar so I could eavesdrop.