Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge Read Online Free PDF Page A

mass quantities of orange juice sidelined its use for many years as a bartending curiosity and little else. It wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century and the advent of widespread refrigerated trucking systems that bartenders were able to incorporate it regularly into their repertoires. For best results, fresh-squeezed juice is recommended; if none is available, canned orange juice, with its higher vitamin C content, is preferable to standard grocery bottles or cartons. It is unknown who created this particular combination, but the name “screwdriver” was coined by Frederick Leeds, a Florida bartender who claimed that he used the drink to help him remove from his boat hitch a screw that had rusted into place.

CHAPTER TWO
    Bailey woke to the sound of snapping jaws, causing her to yelp and nearly fall out of bed. No—
breathe
—she was alone. Gingerly she pushed herself to a sitting position and brought a careful hand to her chest. Her heart was beating like a jackhammer, and the scrapes on her elbow still stung. But she was definitely alone, and alive.
    She blinked until her surroundings came into focus. Her childhood bedroom was an untouched shrine to her teenage self. Normally she resented waking up to posters of heartthrobs whose careers had long since lost their pulse or to her stack of For Dear Life CDs. Today she couldn’t have been gladder to see them. They were things that made sense. They were
normal
.
    But somewhere under her bed, she remembered, were her blood-clotted clothes. And forty feet down the hall from them were her parents, expecting their normal daughter to rise and shine.
    With a deep breath, she swung out of bed. She’d replaced her work outfit with the first things she could grab when her limbs had stopped shaking: a baggy T-shirt she’d stolen from her ex (and ex-TA) Dan and the ugliest flannel pajama pants she owned. She slipped her feet into owl-headed slippers and then padded out into the world.
    Everything in the hallway was normal: family portraits on the walls and the familiar scents of lemon cleaner, jasmine rice, and fresh flowers from her dad’s shop.
    Maybe everything
was
normal. Maybe she
had
imagined it.
    “Please tell me there’s breakf—” Bailey said as she emerged into the kitchen, but then she stopped in horror.
    The room was a tableau of tasks interrupted: Water running over the dishes in the sink, the crossword abandoned on the table. And her parents. Who had just broken apart from what appeared to be a very passionate make-out session.
    “Gross!” Bailey yelped. “God, my eyes! Gross!”
    “Beetle,” her dad said, unhanding his wife. He was a squat man—not fat, but just a bit round, like he’d stayed svelte just long enough to get married and then let himself go in spectacular fashion. Or at least so Bailey assumed; the earliest pictures she’d managed to unearth of her parents were from her second birthday party. Now her dad was leaning back against the kitchen counter, failing to look at all casual.
    Bailey squeezed her eyes shut and for just a moment forgot about the nightmares of the last few hours. “
Ohmygod
,” she said. “Is this what you two do in the kitchen when I’m sleeping?”
    “I’m sorry your father and I love each other,” her mom said, squeezing her husband tighter. She was skinny, with long straight hair, and, despite her husband’s significantly greater mass, she appeared to have been attempting to envelop him.
    “Yeah,” said her dad, beaming. “Maybe if we hated each other, we could’ve given you the neglectful childhood you always wanted.” He kissed his wife on the cheek.
    “Not our Bailey,” her mom said with a smile before her expression hardened a shade. “Did you talk to Jess about the job? When’s your interview?”
    “Wow,” Bailey said. “Did you maybe want to let me have coffee first?”
    “I’m only asking,” her mother said. “And it’s a pretty simple question.”
    Bailey dumped coffee into a WORLD