Page 2 of Venus
As the crew settles into the day, Trevor nudges my arm. “So? Wednesday? You in?”
I chew, considering. I don’t love bars. Sticky floors, fake flirting, shouting over music. But I also haven’t been out in months, and I know Trevor won’t shut up until I say yes.
I nod. “Yeah. Wednesday.”
The bar Trevor drags us to on Wednesday night is exactly what I expected. Dim neon signs, a jukebox stuck in a cycle of country-rock and Nickelback, and that familiar tang of cheap beer and old regret. It’s like every bar in every southern rom-com, just lacking the main characters. One thing about this small town is that we’re all equals here, and at least seventy-five percent of the town’s population has gotten blackout drunk in this very building.
We grab seats at the bar top. It was a quiet shift for once. One car accident, no fires, no major trauma. A blessing for the community, but it also means we’re more restless than usual. Trevor keeps elbowing me to check out the women on the dance floor.
They’re all beautiful, but none of them… hit.
They’re loud, confident, drinking fruity cocktails with paper straws. They command attention, and they get it. Jackson’s already practically levitating with excitement. These are his people.
Me? I’m watching like an outsider. Like I showed up to a party I wasn’t invited to, but no one knows how to tell me to leave. I sip my beer, lean back, and wonder what it would feel like to walk into a room and spot someone who just gets me. Someone who doesn’t require the sales pitch, the flirting, the charade.
Someonereal.
I want to come home and kiss my girl on the forehead, not the mouth. I want a woman who starts crying at two a.m. because she dropped her fries on the kitchen floor and then laughs about it five seconds later. I want a wife who will nag at me when I put the pillows on the bed two inches too far to the left and accidentally leave a dozen mints in my pockets when I throw them in the wash.
The idea of finding that person in a bar like this? Feels about as likely as a cat saving a firefighter from a tree.
But then the door opens.
And suddenly, I’m eating my words.
She walks in with a subtle sway, her hoodie pulled halfway up her forearms, salmon-pink scrub pants just visible underneath. She doesn’t scan the room. She doesn’t seem to care about the attention. She just walks straight to the bar, orders her drink, and sips it like it’s the only good thing that’s happened to her all day.
And Iknow.
That’s her. That’s the woman I’ve been imagining in every empty bed, every quiet moment, every holiday, and every damn day.
Jackson follows my gaze. “You good?”
I don’t answer. I can’t. Because everything around me has gone quiet except her.
God help me, I think I just saw my happily-ever-after walk into a bar with sticky floors and a broken jukebox.
Chapter 2 | Venus
I never believed in love at first sight.
Not until I wandered into this bar, bleary-eyed, emotionally gutted, on the verge of tears, and saw the words ‘Double Vodka Raspberry Lemonade’written in curly pink chalk above the bar. In that moment, it felt like the only thing in the world that made sense.
The whole room smells like stale beer, and it normally doesn’t bother me, but tonight it does. Everything does. The music’s too loud, too; some early 2000s country song with a steel guitar that keeps scraping across my brain like a dull scalpel. The pool tables are too crowded, and I’m not even interested in playing pool.
I slide into an empty corner of the bar top and shrug out of my hoodie. My salmon-pink scrubs are still wrinkled and damp at the cuffs. I should just go straight home. I should shower and curl under a blanket. But the thought of facing the silence in my apartment feels louder than this place ever could.
The bartender, a baby-faced kid who probably just turned twenty-one, wanders over. His name tag says ‘Noah.’ He gives me a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“I’ll take the vodka lemonade,” I say.
He nods, pours, and slides the glass over. “Rough night?”
I stare at the drink for a second before nodding once. “Yeah. Something like that.”
He doesn’t press. Just takes my cash and leaves me alone.
I take a sip, then another. I close my eyes and let the burn trail down my throat like a punishment. I need to feel something other than the loop that’s been playing in my head since the hospital. CPR compressions. A mother’s scream. The cold, still weight of a newborn.
