“Make sure it’s got lotsa ice. I’m cutting back.”

I didn’t know how to answer. Don was in recovery, just like me. They say you’re not supposed to go to bars, or other drinking places in the first six months – trigger points, in meeting-speak. But the bar was not only my best friend but also my livelihood. Thankfully, all my coworkers knew I was newly sober. A better group of confidantes you couldn’t find; they covered for me at all ends of the drinking table. So here I was, working until I found something that paid enough to get me out of here.

And here Don was, without any such excuse, asking me for Jack on the rocks. My head ached with contradictory slogans – extending a helping hand to the drowning vs. you can only be responsible for yourself.

“I don’t think I can do that, Don.”

“Paying customer, ain’t I? I want Jack. Lotsa ice.”

“Go home Don. You shouldn’t be drinking at all.”

“My business. Bring it up at meeting if you wanna. But give me my damn drink!”

Better and better. How I missed it before, I don’t know. Don was tossed. “I’ll be right back.”

My eyes trawled the bar anxiously, looking for Nick, our shift supervisor. I wasn’t up to going at this alone. There he was, out on the floor. “Nick. Nick!” Ugh, I hated yelling. With the music on twenty there was no other way he’d hear me though. His head snapped up, scanning the bar until he found me. He sensed my panic, or maybe it was just that I was normally quiet on shift, a head-down kind of woman. Either way, he came barreling over.

“What’s the matter honey?”

“I have a customer, the man in the green shirt at the end of the bar there, who I don’t want to serve. He’s in my AA group.” Nothing shameful in it, yet I still blushed every time I mentioned treatment. “He’s got a wife and kids, you know. Real hit rock-bottom life mess before he got sober.”

“I can change your station. Move you up to the private room for a couple of hours.” That was an ideal solution. If Don drank, I wouldn’t be the one to do it, and it would be none of concern. It felt wrong though.

“Any way we can go about not serving him?”

Nick smiled ruefully at me. “He drunk?” I nodded. “Legally? Of course. But Hammerson won’t like it.” Daryl Hammerson. I hated that man. He had the gall to tell me a bartender who couldn’t drink was as useless as teats on a bulls. I would have stayed and worked at the bar forever, alcoholic or no, if it wasn’t for him.

Was I willing to bite that bullet? I glanced down at Don. Eyes rimmed, shirt wrinkled, a worried family at home. Someone had helped me. It seemed as good a time as any to pay it forward.