Chapter 2: Shaken and Unsettled

The competition had been running for an hour, and Maya was hitting her stride. Her classic Old Fashioned was perfect—no pretentious garnishes, just quality bourbon, simple syrup, bitters, and a proper orange peel expressed over the glass. Clean, honest, effective.

Unlike her neighbor, who was currently using what appeared to be a miniature smoking gun to infuse his cocktail with applewood smoke.

"Really?" Maya said, not bothering to hide her amusement. "A smoking gun? What's next, a particle accelerator?"

Julian didn't look up from his careful manipulation of the device. "It's about layering flavors. Creating complexity."

"It's about showing off." Maya strained her Moscow Mule variation through a fine mesh, the copper mug already frosted from the ice. "Your customers are paying for a drink, not a magic show."

"My customers appreciate artistry."

"Your customers are Instagram influencers who care more about the photo than the taste."

This time Julian did look up, and Maya caught something flickering in his dark eyes—irritation mixed with something that made her stomach tighten unexpectedly.

"You don't know anything about my customers," he said, his voice carrying an edge. "Or me."

Maya shrugged, turning back to her prep work for the final cocktail. "I know your type. Trust fund kid who went to bartending school because it seemed edgy. Probably never worked a real shift in your life."

She was baiting him now, and she knew it. Something about Julian Reyes made her want to push, to see what it would take to crack that perfectly composed exterior.

"You're wrong." His response was quiet, controlled, but she could hear the tension underneath. "But I suppose that's easier than admitting you're intimidated."

Maya's hands stilled on her shaker. "Intimidated? By what? Your fancy tools and precious little garnishes?"

"By the fact that I take this seriously. That I've spent years perfecting my craft while you've been..." He gestured dismissively at her straightforward setup. "Slinging beer and whiskey to dive bar regulars."

Heat flashed through Maya's chest, sharp and angry. "Those dive bar regulars work their asses off for twelve hours a day and just want a decent drink at the end of it. They don't need some pretentious asshole explaining the terroir of their fucking gin."

"There's nothing wrong with elevating the experience—"

"There's nothing wrong with honest work, either." Maya slammed her jigger down harder than necessary. "Not everyone needs their ego stroked by watching you perform molecular gastronomy on a whiskey sour."

Julian's jaw tightened, and she watched him deliberately slow his movements, like he was fighting for control. When he spoke, his voice was dangerously low.

"You know what I think? I think you're angry because you've been settling. Working in that dive bar, convincing yourself that 'authentic' means never trying to be better."

"And I think you're compensating for having the personality of a craft cocktail menu—unnecessarily complicated and twice as expensive as it needs to be."

The words hung between them, sharp and cutting. Maya expected Julian to fire back with another perfectly delivered insult. Instead, he laughed—a real laugh that transformed his entire face and sent an unwelcome jolt of attraction straight through her.

"Damn," he said, shaking his head. "You don't pull your punches, do you?"

Maya found herself staring at his mouth again, at the way his tongue darted out to wet his lower lip—a nervous habit she was beginning to recognize. The realization that perfect Julian Reyes had nervous habits made something flutter in her chest.

"Neither do you," she admitted, and was surprised to find she almost meant it as a compliment.

Their eyes met and held, and suddenly the noise of the competition faded into background static. Maya felt her breath catch as Julian's gaze dropped to her mouth, then back to her eyes. The space between their stations felt both impossibly wide and dangerously narrow.

"Thirty minutes remaining!" the competition director announced, shattering the moment.

Maya jerked back to her prep work, her hands moving on autopilot while her mind reeled. What the hell was happening to her? She'd been trading insults with Julian for over an hour, and somehow instead of wanting to strangle him, she was starting to wonder what his hands would feel like on her skin.

This was exactly the kind of complication she didn't need in her life.

She focused on her final cocktail—"Last Call," her original creation. Bourbon base with amaretto, a touch of maple syrup, fresh lemon juice, and a dash of smoked paprika. Simple ingredients, complex flavor. It was the drink that had made her reputation at Murphy's, the one that brought people back.

As she worked, she became increasingly aware of Julian's presence beside her. The way his forearms flexed as he shook his cocktail. The small sound of concentration he made when he was focused. The heat radiating from his body when he leaned close to grab something from his setup.

"Stop watching me work," he said without looking up, but there was amusement in his voice now instead of irritation.

"I'm not watching you work. I'm watching you perform."

"There's a difference?"

Maya paused, considering. "When I work, I'm making drinks. When you work, you're putting on a show."

Julian's hands stilled on his final garnish—some elaborate creation involving candied citrus and what looked like edible flowers. "Maybe I am. Maybe that's not entirely a bad thing."

Something in his tone made her look at him more carefully. For just a moment, his carefully constructed mask had slipped, revealing something vulnerable underneath.

"Why?" she asked, genuinely curious now. "Why does it matter so much? The performance, the precision, all of it?"

Julian was quiet for so long that Maya thought he wouldn't answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely audible over the competition noise.

"Because if you're not the best, you're just another bartender in a city full of them. And if you're just another bartender..." He shrugged, the gesture somehow conveying more than words could.

Maya felt something shift in her chest, a crack in the wall of irritation she'd built around him. She understood that fear—the terror of being ordinary, of being overlooked, of not mattering.

"Being just another bartender isn't the worst thing in the world," she said quietly.

Julian's eyes met hers, and she saw surprise there, like he hadn't expected kindness from her.

"Easy to say when you're not trying to prove you belong."

"Who says I'm not?"

The question hung between them, loaded with implications Maya hadn't meant to reveal. Julian's expression shifted, becoming more focused, more intent.

"What are you trying to prove, Maya No-Last-Name?"

Before she could answer, the final bell rang. Time was up.

Maya looked down at her three cocktails—clean, honest, well-executed. Next to her, Julian's creations looked like they belonged in a museum: architectural garnishes, perfect foam art, colors that seemed to glow under the competition lights.

"Judging will commence in ten minutes," the director announced. "Please step back from your stations."

The other competitors began to mingle, but Maya and Julian remained at their adjacent stations, the space between them crackling with unresolved tension.

"Your drinks look good," Julian said, and it sounded like the admission cost him something.

"Yours look..." Maya searched for the right word. "Intimidatingly perfect."

"That was the goal."

They stood in awkward silence, watching the judges begin their rounds. Maya should have been nervous—five thousand dollars was riding on this—but all she could think about was the way Julian's shirt pulled across his chest when he moved, the way his dark eyes seemed to see straight through her carefully constructed defenses.

"Maya," Julian said, his voice low and careful. "When this is over—"

"When this is over, we go back to our respective corners of the city and pretend this never happened," Maya interrupted, but her voice lacked conviction.

Julian stepped closer, close enough that she could smell his cologne again, that expensive scent that made her want to lean into him instead of backing away.

"Is that what you want?" he asked.

Maya looked up at him, at his perfectly styled hair and his perfectly trimmed beard and his perfectly pressed vest, and felt her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble.

"I don't know what I want," she admitted.

Julian's smile was slow and dangerous. "I do."

The judges were approaching their stations, clipboards in hand, expressions serious. Maya tried to focus on their evaluation, on the questions they asked about her choices and techniques. But all she could think about was Julian's words, the promise in his voice, the way he was looking at her like she was the most interesting thing in the room.

This competition had stopped being about the money somewhere along the way. Now it was about something much more dangerous.

Something Maya wasn't sure she was ready for, but couldn't seem to resist.