Free Cocktail Hour by Tara McTiernan Page B

answered in a weird yodeling voice, "Oh, three or four!"
    Sharon looked at him and then at the bartender. Were they flirting? And what was this routine of theirs? Oh, who cared what these two were doing? She was just glad Samantha had said his name. Sharon, for some reason, thought it was Dan. As in, Dan-Dan-the-Party-Man. Dean, huh? Dean-Dean-the-Party….Machine? Yeah, it worked. She was glad she hadn’t called him Dan. She didn’t like making mistakes like that. Not only for his sake and for the sake of being polite, but for her own sense of self: a woman who had it all together, and then filed it alphabetically in the tidy drawer of her mind.
    Samantha poured his beer and set it on a fresh promotional cardboard coaster in front of him before leaning on the bar with her elbows to face him. "So now you want to talk to me. Before you were too busy. I don't know, you can't just snap your fingers like that. I don't always jump," she said, smiling and shaking her head at him, a little dimple appearing on her right cheek.
    “Oh, come on, Sam? For me?” Dean said, leaning in and tilting his head toward hers conspiratorially. “Anyways, my good neighbor here was parched and I thought I could help her out. Or that is, you could. By the way…, Sharon? This is the lovely and talented Samantha, bar-maiden extraordinaire.” He straightened and swept his arm out with a flourish toward the bartender.
    Samantha looked over, her smile hardening and her eyes sweeping quickly over Sharon before looking back at Dean. "Hello," she murmured.
    “Hi,” Sharon said, deadpan.
    Samantha's eyes were fixed on Dean. Sharon knew the look: definitely infatuated. And more than a little proprietary. Sharon wanted to tell her not to worry - she wasn't even slightly interested.
    Dean said, “And this, Sam baby, is my next-door neighbor, Sharon, from up in Farmland, also known as Monroe. It really is a co-ink-e-dink. What’s the likelihood that we would end up in the same bar?”
    Samantha chuckled and said, “As if you go anywhere else. All she had to do was come here once, and there you’d be.”
    Dean put his hand up along side of his mouth, cupping it, and speaking in sotto voce, “Shhhh! You’re breaking up my racket!”
    At that Samantha threw back her head and laughed derisively.
    Dean said, “Okay, you can laugh, but while you’re doing it, can you pour Sharon here an extra-dry Grey Goose martini and put it on my tab?”
    Samantha gulped her laughter down and waved her hand at him. “No problem, Deany boy. You got it.” She turned away and went to grab the back-lit bottle of Grey Goose off of the top shelf behind the bar.
    Dean turned back to Sharon, smiling and then looking worried, his brow creasing. “Sorry about that. I guess I spend too much time here.”
    Sharon shrugged. “No problem.” Then she turned to glance at the door and see if Chelsea was there yet. There was no sign of her. Sharon turned back. “Excuse me. Just checking to see if my friend is here yet. So…what were you saying…yeah, why would you think I’m not the ‘hard liquor type’?”
    “Oh. I didn’t mean anything by it! Really I didn’t. Just…you seem like you’d drink wine, really nice wine, like French, you know?” he said, looking almost boyish in his earnestness.
    “Wine? And where would you get that impression?” Sharon asked, not really caring about the answer. In fact, she wished she could skip the cocktail after all. This whole thing – the striver scene, the brittle flirtation between Dean and Sam, the forced small talk - made her feel tired. And old. She glanced again at the doorway. Where was Chelsea?
    “Well, your house is so nice and neat, at least from the outside. And…oh, I don’t know…I just-I didn’t mean...,“ he said, flustered and turning slightly red.
    She looked at him, wondering what the women found appealing about this bumbling guy with his effusive please-like-me act that reminded her far too much of her ex.