It didn't help that a photograph of his mother and me at Will's funeral had gone viral. We'd clasped hands over the flag given to me by the Army Honor Guard during the service. Two generations of sad women captured in one picture.

Grief porn, Bitsy had called it. Just looking at the picture made hearts ache. I'd become the girl who was widowed before her twentieth birthday. So no, I didn't want to rehash to the media about how my nineteen-year-old husband was killed by an IED or comment on the growing epidemic of young widows. I’d hung up on him before he'd finished asking his question. But ever since the phone call in February and my subsequent breakdown at the bar, Mark had been uneasy around me, giving me looks like I was too emotionally unstable to work around regular humans.

But my bar persona was pretty good, I thought. I pretended to be happy, made appropriate jokes, and flirted with my co-bartender Eve because I couldn’t bring myself to flirt with the men at the bar. I even slicked on mascara and painted my lips dark red so that I didn’t look like a sad girl who’d lost her husband before she’d turned twenty. I wasn’t the best-looking member of the staff, but I wasn’t going to embarrass any of the Gatsby’s ownership either.

“Do you think you’ll be okay?" Mark pressed, shifting from foot to foot. Didn’t he ever tire of that question? In the days and weeks following my breakdown, I understood why he asked. When I started crying, it had actually set off a chain reaction, and then the bar had cleared because it was too depressing. I got that it had been a bad night of receipts for Mark, but bringing it up every time I came into work seemed a tad excessive.

"I'm not on the rag if that's what you're asking.” I decided to pretend like I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Fine." Mark threw up his hands and walked off in a huff. In a contest between which topic was least comfortable—talking about a girl's period or a girl's husband's death—I guess period talk won out. I finished wiping down the bar top and putting the glasses away. Mark would return. He just wanted to shake off the horrible vision that I'd popped into his head. I smiled a little evilly to myself. Maybe he'd associate periods with death from now on and never bring up either subject again.

Mark wandered back when I'd put up the last glass. "I'm putting you at the outdoor bar. You and Eve."

"Ten four." I gave him a salute. Eve was a good bartender; she was able to flirt just enough to make the guys feel handsome and strong without going so far over the line that her boyfriend, a bouncer here, felt threatened. Working at the bar meant I could concentrate on a constant buzz of activity instead of how fricking alone I felt all the time.

"Let me know if you have any trouble." Mark held the hinged part of the bar top up as I slid under.

"And then what?" I asked. When Mark just shrugged, I patted him on his biceps. He meant well, I suppose.

The band was good and it was a gorgeous evening, so the patio bar was hopping by eight that night. Our uniforms of short black shorts and tight white t-shirts that constantly got wet ensured that the bar crowd stood three to five deep at all times. Eve and I had taken to wearing tanks underneath our Gatsby’s tops to avoid giving a free show to the guys, but they still showed up. I guess hope springs eternal.

“Did you see the eye candy Adam brought in tonight?" Eve waggled her eyebrows at me as she poured two draws at once. Adam was the son of the owner of Gatsby’s. The table just to the left of the stage was always reserved for him and his crew. The patio bar was positioned on the right of the stage.

“Nope.” And I hadn’t. Despite my loneliness, actual guys didn’t interest me much. They sometimes looked at me with lust in their eyes, usually after last call they’d come up to the bar hoping that maybe Eve or I would take up the offer that had be declined throughout the night.

I turned to look over at Adam’s table, but per usual, I couldn’t see anyone. I was too short. At five ten, Eve stood a good five inches taller than me and could generally see into the crowd. I’d have to wait until the crowd moved or the band took a break.

“Mmm." She’d spotted him again. "Tall, buff, buzz cut so short you can see his scalp?"

Eh. Eve and I had very different ideas of what was hot in a guy. Her boyfriend, Randy, was all neck, shoulders, and muscles, which was a good fit for her because she was taller. A guy like Randy felt overpowering to me. I liked them short and wiry, and none of the guys in Adam’s group were that type. His guys were all buff and muscled, as if they were some traveling men’s fitness troupe. And, worse, at least a couple of them were former military. I could just tell by the way they held their bodies and looked around constantly, as if they feared some mortar attack from the sky.

When I got back into the dating game, which I would someday when I stopped missing Will so much, I wouldn’t be with another military guy. My perfect man was someone who loved statistics more than guns and whose idea of a grand time was shopping for a new ruler or pen. Maybe he’d even be a fellow knitter and we’d sit side by side on the sofa watching Downton Abbey and knitting each other socks. Those guys weren’t coming to the bar, though. Some smart girls had already snapped them up and were hiding those treasures in their homes.

I’d shared this with Eve once and, after I’d finished my description, she’d shaken her head. “There are two rules for dating you should never forget. One, he should be strong enough so you can have sex standing up and two, never, ever date a guy who could wear your jeans. It’s terrible for the confidence when you see your skinny jeans looking better on his ass than yours. Learn from my sad dating history,” she admonished me. Randy sure fit both those rules and so did most of Adam’s crew. I was making up my own standards though and tall, buff, brawny guys didn’t meet them.

"You know him?" I asked Eve when I swung back her way after serving a couple of drinks.

"No, but I'd like to." She bit her fist in mock appreciation of his fineness. "Since I'm taken, I guess I'll have to leave him to you.”

"I thought I was going to be the threesome in your and Randy's bed tonight," I teased, trying to divert the discussion away from Eve’s supposed man candy.

"That's a threesome I'd like to see." One of the bar customers leaned against the bar, waving a twenty. The guys who came to Gatsby’s in their hundred-dollar bargain suits were trying far too hard, but their clothing attracted a certain type of girl, and I hardly ever saw a guy with a suit go home alone. I wondered what the girls thought when they were taken back to the guy's apartment that he shared with three others. Probably the same thing a guy thought when a girl took off her miracle bra. Disappointment all around.

"It's a hundred dollars," Eve said to Mr. Suit, while tapping his twenty. "You'll need four more of these."

"A hundred for what?"

"If you give them a hundred, they'll kiss." One of our regulars who'd been sitting at the bar since five that afternoon explained the rules. When Eve and I worked, guys were always asking for sexual things. I never really understood why they hit on us. Did they think that their ten spot was going to buy our phone numbers? Or that their lame catchphrases like ""What time you getting off tonight?" were going to make us bend over and drop our shorts? My favorite was "When are you two going to kiss? I'll pay twenty dollars for that!" just like this joker.

Eve and I once said that we'd kiss for a hundred, and since then, we'd get offered the money several times a night. I guess it fueled some fantasy. A hundred bucks to kiss a friend? Too easy to resist.

Suit Man rounded up his friends and slapped a hundred dollars on the table. "Now kiss."

"Kiss. Kiss. Kiss." The chant rose up from the bar. Eve finished delivering four mugs of beer and I slipped the lime wedges on a couple of tequila shots before we met in the middle. She dug her fingers into my hair and whispered against my mouth. "Someday you oughta try kissing a guy." Then she gave me a wet kiss as I held on to her shoulders.

When we broke apart to the shouts of encouragement, I responded. "Only if I can make fifty bucks per kiss." Scooping up the money, I stuck it in my back pocket to split later.

She swatted me on the ass and turned back to the customers. Watching us kiss made them thirsty. When Maisey, the waitress serving Adam's table, swung by with an order, Eve grabbed her tray and started pumping her for information. I was a little ashamed to say I sidled down the bar so I could eavesdrop.

“Who's the big guy Adam brought in?" Eve popped the caps of three bottles and set them on the tray and took to making the rest of Maisey's orders.

"Aren't they delicious? I'd like a go with all of them."

"At one time?" Eve mocked.

"Like you haven't thought about it,” Maisey retorted.

"You ain't woman enough for all that man meat over yonder," Eve said. "Don't know a woman who is. But anyway, the new guy. What's his deal?"

"Some Marine on leave for a couple of weeks."

A Marine? Yup, totally not interested. I drifted back down to my side of the bar. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eve toss a sidelong glance my way while gabbing with Maisey. Eve filled the rest of the order and Maisey took off. Once Maisey was out of earshot, Eve came down to see me—a naughty look on her face. She was up to something. “Take a break. Maisey says that the band is finishing up the last song of this set.” When the band took a rest, the patio usually emptied out as people went indoors to dance and hunt a different crowd. “Go on.” She started shoving me out of the bar.