“Good. And maybe you’ll date Rick, have sex, and fall in love.”
“I don’t have time. Give me two years, maybe three, then I’ll have time.”
“I like schedules, too, but not for love. Now you’ve distracted me. You have to eat.”
“I’ll get something at the bar.”
“Dinner Sunday,” Nina insisted when Morgan tossed the container, rinsed the spoon. “I’m telling Mama you’re coming, and once I tell Mama, it’s done.”
“I’d love to go, honestly. Let me get through this week. We’ve been so damn busy at Greenwald’s. Spring makes everybody think of remodeling or painting or building decks.”
She grabbed her purse and kept going. “Have a great time tonight.”
“You can take that to the bank. I’m calling Mama before I get my gorgeous on.”
“Your gorgeous is never off.”
Morgan jogged to the car. Pleased she’d already made up a little time, she drove the five-point-four miles to the town center.
The shops along what the locals called Market Mile （actually one-point-six） would close within the hour. But the restaurants and cafés would keep Market Street lit and busy well into the night.
Most of the buildings—rosy or white-painted brick—kept the retail to street level and held apartments above. The Next Round was no exception and tended to rent to patrons or employees who had no issue living above a bar.
She swung off Market, circled around the back of the bar to the parking lot. With her car secured, she crunched across the gravel to the back kitchen door and stepped into the heat and noise.
The Round ran to burgers, steamers, nachos with sides of fries, onion rings, fried pickles, and three varieties of wings.
When she opened her own tavern, she intended to spread out to a few more, hopefully surprising, choices of bar food.
And she should probably learn how to cook first, because you never knew when you’d have to pitch in.
“Hey, Frankie,” she called out to the woman working the grill as she put her jacket on a peg. “How’s it going?”
“Good enough.” With her poof of ink-black hair tucked under a white cap, Frankie flipped three fat burgers. “Roddy and his brothers are grabbing some dinner before their dart tournament. Be glad you weren’t on for happy hour. We were slammed.”
“I like slammed.”
She exchanged greetings with the two line chefs, the teenage dishwasher, and the waitress who swung in to pick up an order of loaded nachos.
Though she had ten minutes before her shift, she walked through the door and into the bar.
A different kind of noise, she thought. Not the sizzle of meat on a grill, the whack of knives, the clatter of dishes. Here voices filled the big room with its long black bar, its tables and booths. Music pumped from the juke, but not loud enough to overwhelm conversation.
She saw Roddy and his brothers—regulars—at their usual booth near the dartboard, drinking beer and chowing down on bar nuts. Coors for Roddy and his brother Mike, she thought, and Heineken for brother Ted. If their father joined them, he’d order a beer—on tap—and a bump.
She took the pass-through behind the bar where the bartenders worked.
She’d relieve Wayne, currently adding a slice of lime to a bottle of Corona.
“Got a little bit of a lull,” he told her, and gave her his full-wattage smile. “Guy at the end of the bar’s running a tab. He’s on his second vodka tonic, so keep an eye.”
He served the Corona to another stool sitter, exchanged a few words before he slipped back to Morgan.
“Waiting for his date—Match.com—first time. She’s late, he’s nervous.”
Cute, Morgan decided, on the nerdy side. She’d put down money he had a full gaming system in his living room.
“Got it.”
“I’m gonna clock out then. Have a good one.”
As always, she checked her supplies—the ice, the limes and lemons, the olives, the cherries. She filled a couple of orders for tables, and was about to work her way down to Corona when she spotted a woman of about thirty step in, look anxiously around before she approached the guy at the bar.
“Dave? I’m Tandy. I’m so sorry I’m a little late.”
He brightened right up. “Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s nice to meet you. Do you want to get a table?”
“This is fine. Is this fine?” She slid onto the stool beside him.
Morgan shifted down the bar as they smiled at each other with expressions of anxiety and hope.