“Is that your final answer?” I prompt.

“Yes. That’s my final answer.”

I admit, I’m disappointed when I have to say, “I’m sorry, but that is incorrect.” Shannon’s face falls like a pile of crumbling bricks.

“Ronan, would you like to respond and try to steal or would you like a new question?”

“I’ll try to steal, thanks.” He clears his throat, eyes fixed on mine as he leans in, lips almost touching the mic. His voice is a low, confident rumble. “The ingredients in Polyjuice Potion are lacewing flies, leeches, knotgrass, fluxweed, shredded Boomslang skin, a bit of the person you want to turn into and…” He pauses for dramatic effect. “Powdered Bicorn horn.”

I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. “Is that your final answer?”

A cocky grin spreads lazily across his face. “Yes, Blaire, it’s my final answer.”

“You’re sure?” I arch a brow.

His smile doesn’t waver. “Absolutely.”

“You are correct. We have a winner!”

“Hell yeah!” Ronan jumps to his feet and raises both fists into the air as if he’s won a round in the boxing ring. He turns to me and in what I can only assume is an impulsive show of victory, he wraps his arms around my waist, picks me up off the floor, and swings me around in a circle.

When he sets me down, I take a dizzy step back. He keeps his hands on my waist to prevent me from falling off the makeshift stage. “I gotta head back to the bar, but I’ll take a raincheck on the drinks.” He winks, jumps off the stage, and fist bumps his way to the front door.

The brief warm and fuzzies disappear the following night when Ronan hosts a Beer Pong Tournament. The loudest beer pong tournament in the history of the universe, apparently, because every thirty seconds there’s a collective “ooooooh” or “yeeeahhhhh” coming from his place.

It takes everything in me not to go over and check it out after I close up. And even then I peek through the window, just to see. It looks ridiculously fun. But I know if I go in there Ronan will find a way to make me participate, and I have terrible aim. I’m guaranteed to lose, which would also mean drinking beer. I have an early morning tomorrow, so I back away slowly and head home, where it’s mostly quiet and there are no twenty-one-year-olds playing beer pong in the apartment next door to mine.

Over the next several weeks my competition with Ronan heats up, both of us trying to outdo each other with new events, particularly since we’ve both made it through to the top one hundred bars from the over five hundred who were initially nominated for Tori Taylor’s Best Bar contest. The next round will bring us down to the top fifty, and both of our bars are currently hovering in the thirties thanks to social media votes. After that, the competition is going to get steeper with the quarterfinals, taking us down to the top twenty-five bars. I don’t want to get cocky or complacent though, since we still have a long way to go to number one.

I hold a poetry slam night and despite the initial lack of excitement, it turns out to be a totally popular event, especially with the drama students at the college.

Unfortunately, Ronan plans another one of his loud events—all his events are loud—on the same night, so we’re forced to wrap it up early. I should really know better by now.

On the upside, every new, fun event I host does better than the last. We hold a Halloween cookie-decorating contest and sell a ridiculous number of gory cupcakes and fun, horrifying drinks. Orders for cupcakes for the local businesses continue to pour in, which means I’m endlessly busy and still managing not to dig too far into my line of credit. It also means I’m light on sleep, but I can deal with being tired as long as B&B is staying afloat.

Tonight I have a bachelorette cupcake and cookie-decorating party. It’s actually one of Daphne’s engagement photo shoot clients who came back looking to secure her for additional dates—including the wedding. When Daphne suggested the bachelorette party I absolutely ran with it, with her input, of course. It gives her another opportunity to take some fun candid photos to add to their engagement and wedding albums and I have the opportunity to do something new and different.

Daphne came in earlier to snap some shots of the setup, and then popped back in before the bride and her wedding party were scheduled to arrive.

The bride’s sister arranged the event and rented out the entire café. Customers can still come in and purchase cupcakes to go, but there’s a warning on the door and the entire place is full of women decorating treats.

We decided the cupcakes are fun, but you can’t make interesting shapes the way you can with a cookie. We start with a cupcake-decorating tutorial—Daphne records that part—but that’s quickly devolved into turning cupcakes into vaginas. And the cookies…well, those are just as entertaining. Once the debauched decorating begins, Daphne takes off back to her studio, half apologizing for not being able to stay. I wave her off; honestly, this is the most fun I’ve had with a decorating class.

At eight Ronan pops by—he still makes a daily stop for a cupcake—and gets a gander at the penis cookies the ladies are working on.

The entire wedding party stops to watch him cross the café.

“Ooooh! Hey there, cutie, you can come sit with me!” The bride’s sister—Stephanie—is on her third martini and lost her filter an hour ago. The drinks aren’t even that strong. Every time she decorates a cookie, she ends up taking a picture of her biting into it and then she forces her friends to send her the picture. She then promptly posts it to all her social media accounts. She’s also tagged the café in every single post. I should probably mention that the cookies she’s most fond of posting are the penis ones.

I consider untagging the café, but decide that based on the number of likes the posts are getting it doesn’t hurt to let it ride. Who knows, it could become another new revenue stream.

“What’re you ladies up to?” He shoots a smile and wink in my direction—the wink is probably unconscious—and veers toward the women.

“We’re decorating cookies. See!” Stephanie holds up her most recent work of art. A very orange penis, complete with pubic hair. It looks like it was decorated by a six-year-old. Or a drunk woman, the latter of which is accurate.

Ronan’s eyes go wide and he coughs into his fist. “That’s very convincing.”

“I even gave it pubes! They’re made out of licorice.”

“I manscaped mine,” one of the other bridesmaids declares and holds up her less orange, much more aesthetically appealing bald-balled cookie.

Stephanie’s eyes rake over Ronan, pausing at his crotch. “Do you manscape?”

“Uhhh—”

“Ladies, this is Ronan, owner of the bar next door. When you’re done here, you should drop by. You must have some kind of special drink promotion you can offer these lovely ladies, right, Ronan? And don’t you have some kind of event going on? Is it a live band?” I know it’s not because I stalk his IG profile. I don’t follow him, because I don’t want him to know I’m watching him, but after the loud, live entertainment started I needed to know ahead of time what I was facing every week.