Sighing, Patrick Drake shifted the case of beer in his arms as he came from the back of the barstorage room, not surprised to see Elizabeth Webber, his most frequent customer sitting alone at the end of the bar. Shaking his head, he made his way towards her, setting the beers down on one of the coolers and grabbing a bottle of his best scotch along the way.
"So, who dumped you this week?" he asked, setting a short glass in front of her and filling it halfway.
Tipping her head to the side, she tucked her wild, chocolate curls behind her ears, revealing her puffy, red-rimmed eyes. "I'm beginning to think you enjoy this," she muttered, bringing the glass to her mouth and sniffing it before taking a long sip.
"I like routinethat you're dependables," he shrugged, backing towards the cooler to unload the beers.
It was surprisingly slow for a Friday night. He blamed some fancy party at the Metro Court Hotel across town for stealing all his customers. Of course, once the bar closed early there, they'd all file in and he'd have a full house by one a.m.
"So," he asked, shoving open a cooler and bending over to load the beers. Once the bar got busy later, he wouldn't have time to refill them, so they needed to be fully stocked ahead of time. "Who dumped you?"
"Why do you always think that I get dumped?" she asked, slumping forward.
"Because you come to the bar with either the biggest frown or biggest grin on your face," he replied, carefully setting the beers into the cooler. "If you're grinning, you're playing pool and dancing, usually with some jerk-"
"Gee, thanks," she interrupted, finishing off her glass and setting it back down on the bar.
"If you're frowning," he continued, "you drink half a bottle of the most expensive scotch I've got and then convince me to pay for it."
"I didn't order this," she pointed out, reaching over the bar for the bottle he'd left in front of her. "Besides I haven't been frowning…in a while."
He scoffed. "Which means this is serious." Tossing the empty case aside, he closed the cooler and walked back over to her. He grabbed a glass for himself on the way, not one to let his customers drown their sorrows by themselves. "Who was he?"
She ground her teeth, still thinking he was making fun of her, and her hesitation made him extremely curious. "Lucky."
"Oh," he murmured knowingly, pouring scotch into his glass and then adding a little bit more to hers. The name had been mentioned countless times for everything from petty fights to sleeping with her sister, and yet Elizabeth stayed with him. "What did he do this time?"
"Don't say it like that," she hissed, nibbling her lip as her eyes filled with tears.
"Alright, alright," he apologized, straightening up and grabbing a cocktail napkin from behind the bar. "No tears here." He tossed the napkin at her and she almost smiled. "Don't women have some kind of crew for this?"
"What?" she asked, balling the napkin up and throwing it back at him.
"You and your little girlfriends," he muttered, honestly relieved that Elizabeth was the only one here tonight.
Every week she came into the bar with her coworkers from General Hospital and someone was always having man troubles; the intern who dated the Prince with the cursed family, the psychologist who was in love with a patient, and the nurse dating some mobster's son.
And every week, Patrick tried to give them a little bit of advice, and they never listened, probably because during the advice giving he accosted them for sexual favors, but he had to find someway to make it bearable.
The only one who never had any problems was the OB, who swore that she only came for the tequila, but Patrick learned that she was a sex-addict replacing one addiction with another. And he realized when he failed to get her into bed that he had lost part of his charm.
Their problems were rather typical for women their age, the kind Patrick was used to hearing about from women when they had a bad day. He made it his job as their bartender to listen to their bitching and moaning while racking up a hefty tab with a hefty tip. Trying to get them into bed was just an added bonus – something for fun.
He learned the hard way that last thing they wanted was advice. Knowledge gained by defending the intern's Prince when she thought he was having an affair, and she'd chucked an entire bottle of top shelf tequila at his head, only to apologize a few days later when she learned he wasn't.
"Some are working, some have boyfriends," she muttered spitefully, shoving the scotch aside and motioning for something else.
"You should slow down," Patrick said, turning around and grabbing the tequila from the shelf behind the bar.
"Not until I feel better," she replied, licking her hand and pouring salt onto it. "And the only way I'm going to forget is by drinking – a lot."
Satisfied when he poured the shot, she licked her hand, tossed it back, and snatched the wedge of lime from his hand, shoving it proudly into her mouth. Swallowing, she tossed the wedge down on the bar and shook her head. "What I don't get it that I did everything for him – all of them for that matter."
"What?" he asked, leaning against the bar as he refilled her shot glass.
"Lucky – he's a pathetic, selfish wimp. Just like Ric-"
"And Zander," he chimed in, ducking when she tossed the lime wedge at him.
"I don't know what's wrong with me," she moaned, tossing back the next shot, sans salt and lime. "I have a thing for men who are broken."
"Because you want to fix them," Patrick replied, rolling his eyes and never understanding why women felt as though they had to fix every man they dated.
It was precisely why he stayed single minus the women who he took to bed, promptly kicking them out afterwards so they wouldn't get any ideas about how to fix him.
"Well, they needed fixing," she defended, switching back to the scotch. "Most men do, including you."
"Uh-uh," he muttered, taking her glass from her when she started to set it back on the bar.
"Hey!" she cried, folding her arms over her chest and leaning back on her stool.
"First rule of the bar?" he asked, holding the glass above her head.
Rolling her eyes, she made a face and stuck out her tongue, causing him to laugh. "Never insult the smug asshole of a bartender."
"Ouch," he muttered, holding a hand against his heart as he handed the scotch back to her.
"It's true," she said, leaning forward as she took a sip. "In fact, you may be the most broken guy I know."
"I'm fine the way I am," he replied, rolling his eyes as he grabbed a rag from beneath the bar and started to wipe it down.
"Oh, please," she grumbled, mostly to herself. "Men who sleep with women without knowing their names are broken. Men who try to sleep with every womenwoman they come across are broken. Men who think they know it all and-"
"This coming from you?" he interrupted, abandoning the dirty bar to walk back over to her. "Elizabeth, do you even hear yourself?"
"Yes, but no one else does," she replied sarcastically, sipping on the scotchstill sipping the scotch.
"What about women who think they know it all? What about women who won't sleep with a guy to get something over on him? What about women who-"
"I'm not one of them," she interrupted coyly, smiling into her glass she straightened on her stool. "And you're – you're not supposed to be attacking me, you're supposed to help me."
"You want me to help you?" he murmured slyly, leaning over the bar and giving her a dimpled smile. "Because I can probably help you better than anyone else."
"You're such a pig," she said disgustedly, setting her glass down on the bar and lifting herself up so she could lean closer towards him. "What exactly could you do for me that no other guy can't? You going to take me upstairs, let me cry in your bedroom while you take off my clothes? So you can take a five minute ride and kick me out of the bed right after?" She laughed, her mouth so close to his face that he could smell the scotch on her breath, and it smelled sweeter than it he remembered. "Newsflash, Patrick Drake, there's not a man out there who can't give me the same things as you."
"Really," he muttered, biting his lip as he looked her in the eye. "And women like you are a dime a dozen, so maybe that's your issue with men."
"One in the same, huh?" she laughed, clearly not offended, which didn't surprise him.
It wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation.
"Exactly. Why do you think I've been trying to get you in my bed all these years?" he teased, carefully sliding her glass from the bar.
The last thing she needed now was more booze.
"You've never tried to sleep with me," she pointed out, and he had to think a moment before he realized that it was actually true, but he blamed that on the fact that she was always taken.
"You wouldn't know when to get out of my bed," he replied, straightening up when he noticed they were still each others face.
Shrugging smugly, she sank her teeth into her lip, her mind spinning with retorts. "Or maybe, you just wouldn't know when be able to let me out of it."
Sucking in a breath, he ducked his head, tossing up his hands when he realized he didn't have a response for that.
Grinning, she slid off the bar stool and grabbed her purse, not bothering to pay for her drinks like always. She backed towards the door, her hips swaying to the music playing from the jukebox, stopping only when she reached the door. Pushing it open, she hesitated, giving him a sneaky grin. "I guess round one goes to me."
And and then she was gone.