Speakeasy (True North #5)(60)

I serve countless drinks. They all blur together. I take money and make change on autopilot. But then I look up at the next customer and find that it’s my brother, Griffin. “What the hell are you doing?” he asks. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. You’re slinging drinks?”

He says this in a tone that suggests I’m building a pipe bomb or cooking up methamphetamines.

“I’m helping,” I yelp. “Alec’s bartender he…” I swallow hard, because I’m picturing that needle and his blue lips. “There’s been an emergency.”

As if to prove my point, the two EMTs pick that moment to exit the storeroom. Alone. They’ve got their stretcher and their equipment, which looks untouched. I lean against the bar to let them pass behind me.

Is Smitty dead back there? I feel shaky all over again.

“You can’t be the one serving drinks,” my brother says. “That’s bullshit.”

“Oh shut up, will you?” I fire back, and not nicely. “For once, can’t you just stay out of it?”

Apparently not. Griffin bellows toward the storeroom. “Alec!” He ducks under the bar, as if to go look for him.

But Alec appears in the doorway. “What?”

“May can’t be your backup bartender. You can’t ask her to do that!” My brother’s face is red and angry.

Alec seems not to notice that Griff is ready to blow. “May, come here, please. Griffin, feel free to help out.” He disappears again.

“What the fuck?” Griffin mutters.

“Hey, dude. Can I get a Sip of Sunshine?” a customer demands.

“Charge him four dollars,” I say, walking away from grumpy Griff. When I peek into the storeroom, there’s no dead body. There’s nobody at all. The back door is open, so I step outside. Benito and Alec are standing out there looking tense. Smitty sits on a wooden crate, leaning back against the building, looking just slightly healthier than a corpse. “Shouldn’t you be in the hospital?” I yelp.

“No.” Smitty scrubs his forehead.

“They’d charge him thousands just to watch him overnight,” Alec says.

“It’s a fucking scam,” Smitty mumbles.

“Which he knows, because this has happened before, apparently.” Alec’s dark eyes glitter with shock and worry.

“It’s not that big a deal,” Smitty says.

But Alec knows otherwise. He looks as angry as I’ve ever seen him. “You keep saying that, and it’s not helping.”

Smitty shrugs.

“At the very least, you can’t have drugs in my bar. Not ever again.”

“There’s always my car,” Smitty says. “I’ll just duck outside.”

Alec clenches his fists as if he’s about to clock the guy whose life he just helped save. “What if you could just pretend for five minutes that you give a fuck? I want you to be okay.”

“No, you want to judge me. I’m the same bartender I was yesterday. Just shut up or I’ll probably puke again. That’s not going to get your business staffed.”

Alec looks right at me for the first time. He beckons, and I follow him inside the storeroom. “Hey,” I say. “You okay?”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t know he used,” Alec whispers. “And he’s not in treatment. He wants me to pretend like it’s no big deal. I don’t know what the fuck to do. Tell me how I’m supposed to feel about this.”

“You can feel any way at all about it,” I whisper.

“But it would be wrong to fire him, right?” Alec searches me with his big brown eyes. “I can’t believe my employee shoots up at work. That’s insane.”

“You don’t have to allow that! No drugs at work—that’s a pretty simple rule. If he’s late or not performing, that’s a reason to fire someone.” My lawyer brain is really handy tonight.

“I hate this,” he hisses.

The anger in his face makes me feel like throwing up. I’ve seen that anger before in people who just wanted me to snap out of my addiction. “Alec, I don’t know what to tell you. I hate it, too? I don’t have magical insight into every addict’s mind.”

He throws his arms out. “You think that’s why I’m asking you?”

“Isn’t it?” I gasp. “Why else would you?”

His eyes bug out. “Because I trust your opinion!”

You wouldn’t if you knew me better.

“How does this end?” Alec whispers.

With you leaving me for someone like Chelsea. Some sweet young thing who isn’t complicated. But that’s not what he’s asking. “I don’t have any idea. Heroin isn’t my area of expertise.” Thank god.

“If he doesn’t get treatment, it will just happen again, right?”

Yes. “I don’t know what to tell you, Alec. If every addict got fired, there’d be a national labor shortage.” And now my hands are shaking again. For once this isn’t my drama, and yet I’m stuck in the middle of it anyway.

My brother sticks his head into the storeroom. “Alec, your bar needs you. I have to see Audrey and May home.”

“May doesn’t need a ride. Her car is right outside,” Alec says. He gives me a helpless look, and I feel a pang of love for him. The happy-go-lucky bar owner gets a strong dose of dysfunction, and doesn’t know what to do.