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I mumbled.
    We drank in an oddly not-uncomfortable silence for a while, watching ESPN highlights, during which I finished my scotch, and the bartender poured more, another full glass.    
    I was in a foul mood, and the scotch helped a little, but only a little. A turbulent three and a half hour flight, followed by a rough landing, which had been on the sea itself rather than an airfield. In my drunken rush to get away from Seattle, I hadn’t even noticed that the airplane I’d gotten into was a seaplane.  
    The length of the flight meant I’d gone from hammered to hung over, and then the pilot had taken my money and left me on the docks with my purse and wedding dress and not a damn thing else except a splitting headache and a broken heart. Well, the pilot actually wasn’t that much of a dick: he’d given back six hundred of my cash, saying I looked so messed up he figured I needed it more than he did. But he still left me on the docks with nowhere to go, no one to talk to, in a rainstorm, alone…
    Plus, I hadn’t eaten since I couldn’t remember when. Lunch? I’d left Seattle sometime around nine or ten, which meant it had to be nearing two in the morning now, if not past.
    As if on cue, my stomach let out a vociferous snarl.  
    The gorgeous bartender’s stupidly perfect Cupid’s bow lips quirked. “Hungry?”  
    I shrugged and tipped back the rocks glass. “A bit, yeah.” I was fucking starved, actually, but I’d be damned if I’d admit it to him.  
    “I could use a bite myself,” he said, slugging back the rest of his scotch as if it was nothing, “so I’ll rustle something up. Won’t be fancy, but it’ll fill ya.”  
    He ducked under the service bar and went into the kitchen, flicking on lights as he went. From my angle, I could see most of the kitchen, which gave me an opportunity to watch him while I worked on my second big ol’ glass of tasty scotch.  
    He turned on the grill, the kind with a flat metal top used in short order restaurants, turned on a deep fryer, pulled out a tray of hand-shaped burger patties and tossed four of them onto the grill, then opened a freezer and poured a few handfuls of French fries into the now-crackling deep fryer. He did all this with casual familiarity, moving with grace and ease around the kitchen. He set the handle-press thingy onto the patties to flatten them and make them cook faster, tossed two buns onto the grill to toast them, then set up two platters with tomatoes, onions, lettuce, and a side of mayo, all done expertly and neatly, with an eye for presentation. A few more minutes and the fries were done, so he lifted the basket out to drain, flipped the burgers, and then shook salt onto the fries, shaking the basket so the salt distributed evenly.  
    Next came a cardboard Miller High Life six-pack holder filled with silverware rolls, ketchup, mustard, vinegar, and A-1. There were no wasted motions, no idle moments spent just waiting for the food to cook. He laid a slice of cheddar on each burger, and then a slice of pepper-jack, and then slid his spatula beneath two patties at a time and set them in a top-down heater to melt the cheese, which only took a few seconds, then he laid two patties each on a bun bottom, set the top bun on them at an angle, and then shook half the fries onto one plate and half onto the other.  
    He shut off the grill and fryer, wiped down all the surfaces he’d used, and carried both plates in one hand and the condiments in the other, and even managed to shut off the kitchen lights with his elbow. He set one plate in front of me and the other next to me then, leaning over the bar from the customer side, poured us each a pint of some local amber beer.  
    Fifteen minutes after I’d said I was hungry, I’d finished my quadruple scotch and had a thick, juicy double cheeseburger in front of me, complete with still-steaming golden-brown fries and a pint of cold beer.  
    I liked this guy.
    Just, you know…not too