Dottie Cox, the proprietor of Dot’s Spot, Last Chance’s main watering hole.
Dash pulled his gaze away from the spring training game on the television above the bar and looked into Dottie’s over-made-up eyes. Dottie had to be pushing sixty hard, but she was outfitted in a neon green tank top and too-tight blue jeans. She might be trashy, but she had a heart of gold.
“Honey, you want another Coke?” Dot asked again.
Dash took a deep breath. “I guess I’ll have to settle. Especially since I can’t have you.”
Dottie leaned over the bar and gave him the kind of wise look only a bartender could manage. “Dash, if you want to flirt, go find someone your own age. In fact, I have a suggestion—why don’t you find your courage and do something about Hettie Marshall.”
He squinted back up at the television. “They’re putting in Ramirez. Good move,” he muttered.
“I declare, Dash, you’re a chicken. And I don’t mean one of them chickens they process out at the plant. Hettie is a single woman now, and near as I can tell you’ve done nothing about it.”
“She just lost her husband. She’s in mourning.”
Dottie leaned an elbow on the bar. It was a slow night at The Spot. The house band didn’t play on Mondays, so the regular patrons were feeding their pocket change to the jukebox. And since the regulars drank too much, the jukebox was pumping out mostly drinking and cheating songs.
“Honey, you’re afraid Hettie’s going to say no.”
He snorted. “Of course I am. She’s been saying no for decades.”
“My point exactly. You’re so afraid of being alone that you don’t even try. Which, of course, means you’re destined to be alone.”
He frowned. “Dottie, have you been sampling the liquor?”
“No, I haven’t. And you know I’m right about this.”
He tamped down his annoyance. He needed Dottie pointing out his fears and failures like he needed a hole in the head.
“Dottie, the truth is that I love Hettie, but she doesn’t love me.” He looked down at his soda pop and ran his finger through the condensation on the outside of the glass. Hettie was a sore spot.
He’d been carrying a torch for that woman since he was a teenager. They’d had a pretty hot thing going his senior year in high school, and then she up and dumped Dash on the same day he signed his first major-league contract. He was suddenly a rich man, but Hettie broke his heart by walking away from him. She’d left him for Jimmy Marshall.
But now Jimmy was dead. And everything had changed. Dash wasn’t the big man with the major-league contract anymore. He was a recovering alcoholic with a busted-up knee.
He hated to admit it, but Dottie was right. Hettie wanted a different kind of man. And he’d have to change if he wanted to win her love. What if he put himself on the line, and she still said no? What if he let himself fall hard for her, and she walked away like she had all those years ago?
This was why AA suggested that people like him stay away from relationships. Dash had had a few in his twenties. But every time a woman turned heel and walked out, he crashed, hard. And then he’d go looking for a drink.
Shoot, his life was exactly like those stupid drinking and cheating songs on Dottie’s jukebox. It was pitiful.
He straightened his shoulders and turned toward the jukebox, where Willie Nelson was singing “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” “It’s a damn good thing I don’t have a shotgun because I might be tempted to murder that thing. Don’t you have any happy songs in there?”
Dottie laughed. “No, honey, I don’t.”
“Don’t you believe in happiness?”
“Sure I do, but on the nights when the Wild Horses don’t play I get patrons who just want to drink and listen to sad music. Ain’t that right, Roy?” She turned toward Roy Burdett, who was, as usual, drunker than a skunk.
“Yeah.”
“Well, I come here most Mondays and I’m tired of it.” Dash pushed himself up from the bar stool and headed over to the jukebox. He didn’t have a shotgun, but he was fully capable of disabling that infernal machine. He searched out the wall socket and pulled the power cord from the wall. Dot’s Spot went quiet.
Half a dozen good ol’ boys looked up from their beers and bourbons.
“Hey, why’d you do that?” Roy staggered to his feet and came toward Dash. “I like that song. You plug