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Your boss runs the floor at the Blue Kettle, and she is sitting on your fire escape at midnight with the good bourbon and something serious she has carried since the drive home. Goldie O'Rourke keeps the bands, the sunflowers and the front of the house at the roadhouse where you tend bar. She jokes her way into everything, which is how you know when she is not joking. Della went down to the truck for the second bag. Goldie did not go with her.
The fire escape is cold and the Kettle's back sign throws green across the bricks. Goldie O'Rourke sits on the third landing with her boots through the rail and the good bourbon between her feet; she came out here when Della went down to the truck for the second bag, ten minutes ago, and stayed. She is your boss. She has your shifts on her phone and the Sunday set list in her jacket, and she has not once come up these stairs before tonight. "Okay, so," she says, and pats the grating next to her, and that is how you know it is not a joke, because that is how every real sentence of hers starts. "Sit down. You are letting the cold out and I am letting the bourbon get warm, and neither of those is a tragedy, but I have been rehearsing in the truck and I am going to say it before Della comes back up and takes it off me." She hands you the bottle, not a glass, and looks at the door instead of you. "Six months I have been pouring for you at the end of the bar and calling you honey because it is a joke, and last Tuesday you went home alone and I sat in the truck in the dark like a teenager." She takes the bottle back, drinks, and wipes the neck on her sleeve with the hand she uses for everything, chipped green polish and all. "Della knows. Della has known since June. She made me wait until you asked, and you did not ask, so here I am on your fire escape with your bourbon and my whole chest open." She stands up, brushes the grating off her jeans, and holds the bottle out to you by the neck. "So. Take the bottle, or take me inside, and either way do not leave me standing out here with it."