Chapter 5
five
. . .
Black Coffee at a Bar is a Warning Sign
HALSTON
Present Day
The man is tall, but not in the lean, pretty way Grant had been tall. This man is built with thick arms that make me respect fabric with ambition.
He glances at me for half a second, and it makes my stomach twist.
Half a second should not be a problem. Half a second is barely a unit of time. Half a second should not make my stomach tighten like it has just received classified information.
But my body has apparently decided common sense is optional.
Oliver reaches across the bar and takes my glass from my hand.
I blink. “Hey.”
“No,” he says firmly.
I look back at him. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was going to say hello.”
“You were about to make a bad decision.”
“I’m allowed to say hello to people,” I scoff like he’s not absolutely correct.
“Not like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you just found a match and remember you’re flammable.”
I smile.
Across the room, the man starts toward the bar. He has the kind of walk that makes everyone else look like they’re just wasting energy. There’s no swagger, no performative confidence. No bright athlete smile or backward cap or loud voice waiting to be noticed.
Oliver mutters something.
I lean closer. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You only say nothing when something is aggressively not nothing.”
“It’s nothing that involves you.”
“I’m sitting right here.”
“Unfortunate.”
The man reaches the bar.
Up close, he’s worse.
Worse in the way a bad idea becomes easier to justify once it has broad shoulders.
His hands are big and rough, with small scars across his knuckles. He has a nick near one thumb. They’re actual hands, not the smooth, manicured hands of a man who uses the word portfolio too often and thinks assembling IKEA furniture is a survival skill.
He looks at Oliver first. “Black coffee.”
His voice is low, and it settles somewhere under my skin and makes itself comfortable.
Oliver stares at him. “This is a bar.”
The man’s expression doesn’t change. “You have coffee.”
“I have regret and a machine I use under protest.”
“Black.”
Oliver’s mouth flattens. “Please?”
The man looks at him for a beat, and then says, “Please.”
I bite the inside of my cheek.
Oliver turns toward the coffee station, visibly irritated, and the stranger takes the stool two down from me.
I face forward and wrap my hands around the water Oliver shoves back at me, pretending not to be a little insulted that the stranger didn’t take the stool beside mine. I try not to look at him again.
I make it four seconds. Maybe three.
The man’s profile is also rude. Strong eyebrows, a straight nose, and a jaw made worse by the dark trim of his beard.
He’s so still.
Not stiff. But still. Controlled.
I wonder what it would take to make him lose that control.
Then I wonder why my brain has decided to be disgusting in public.
Then I remember I am one week out from finding my fiancé between his secretary’s legs, so maybe my brain has entered its revenge era and picked the nearest attractive stranger with emotionally damaging shoulders.
Oliver sets a white mug in front of him. “Black coffee.”
The man nods once. “Thank you.”
Oliver leans his forearms on the bar and looks at me.
Pointedly.
I look back.
Innocently.
His eyes narrow. I smile. He does not.
The stranger lifts his mug and drinks. No sugar. No cream. No cautious first sip to test the temperature. He just drinks his black coffee after midnight in a bar like a man constructed from boundaries and poor coping mechanisms.
Against my will, I say, “Do you always order coffee in bars?”
Oliver closes his eyes.
The stranger turns to me slowly.
His gaze moves over my face. Not in the way men look when they think they are being subtle and are, in fact, being extremely obvious. This is worse.
He looks like he’s taking in every single little thing. From the crooked pink bow in my hair to the tear tracks in my makeup.
His eyes land on mine. “When I want coffee,” he says.
I blink.
Oliver makes a tiny sound that might be a laugh if he hadn’t murdered joy years ago.
“That was a very literal answer.”
“It was a literal question.”
“Was it?”
I study him.
He stares back at me.
Most men I know perform when women talk to them in bars. They lean in, smirk, and lower their voices. They try to become whatever version of themselves they think will get invited back home.
This man doesn’t do any of it. He sits there with his black coffee and his unreadable face like flirting is an inconvenience, but he might tolerate it if the paperwork is correct.
“What if you wanted whiskey?” I ask.
“Then I’d order whiskey.”
Oliver mutters, “Revolutionary.”
The stranger’s mouth shifts, and I feel almost victorious.
“Do you have a name?” I ask.
Oliver sets a glass down harder than necessary, but I ignore him.
The man looks at me for a long second. “Yes.”
I wait. He drinks his coffee.
I laugh before I can stop myself. “Are you always this difficult?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Sometimes I’m more difficult.”
I stick out my hand. “I’m Elizabeth,” I say with a sly smile, giving him my middle name.
Oliver rolls his eyes and glares at the bar.
The man looks at my hand before taking it. His hand swallows mine, but it’s warm, rough, and steady.
I will not romanticize a handshake.
I’ve hit rock bottom in several ways this week, and I refuse to add that one to the list.
“Nice to meet you, Elizabeth.”
He doesn’t offer his name.
“Nice to meet you too.” I smile, and he looks at my mouth quickly before looking away.
Oliver slides a basket of mozzarella sticks between us as if cheese can prevent my moral collapse. “Eat,” he tells me.
I look down at the basket. “You already fed me.”
“I’m doing it again.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re making eye contact with strangers like you’ve never heard of consequences.”
The man looks from Oliver to me.
“Consequences?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
“Yes,” Oliver volleys back.
I pick up a mozzarella stick. “Oliver is dramatic.”
He stares at me. “I’m rational.”
“You changed my ex-fiancé’s contact name to Boat Shoe Judas.”
The man’s eyebrows move.
“Boat Shoe Judas,” he says.
I point the mozzarella stick at Oliver. “His work.”
Oliver does not look sorry. “Accurate labels save time.”
He looks at my left hand again, and I brace for questions.
He does not ask them. He only says, “Recent?”
My fingers tighten around my fried cheese. “One week.”
He nods. “Recent.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s how weeks work.”
The corner of his mouth tilts a little more this time. An almost-smile that feels dangerous.
I want to see it again.
Oliver pushes my water closer. “Drink.”
“I’m not a houseplant.” I frown at him.
“You require monitoring.”
The man’s gaze moves to my glass. “How much have you had?”
I stiffen. “Excuse me?”
“Alcohol.”
Oliver looks pleased with this development, which immediately makes me want to commit a small crime.
I turn to him. “Do not look smug.”
“I prefer alive friends.”
“I am alive.”
“You’re flirtatiously alive, and that’s worse.”
The man’s gaze stays on me. “I didn’t ask to offend you.”
“Well, you’re extremely gifted by accident.”
He smiles. A real one this time, but it’s gone just as quickly as it came.
He has one dimple. One.
It’s a shallow dent near the right side of his mouth, but it’s gone before I can properly resent it.
“I asked,” he says, “because if you’re drunk, I won’t flirt with you.”
The bar goes silent. Or maybe my pulse is just loud enough to cancel everything else out.
Oliver freezes.
The mozzarella stick stretches a long string of cheese back to the basket like even dairy is trying to leave the scene of the crime.
The man looks calm.
It’s not surprising. Men who say things like that so confidently probably file their taxes early and know exactly where their tire pressure gauge is.
“I’m not drunk,” I say.
Oliver makes a sound.
I glare at him. “I’m not.”
“You opened the evening by asking if Suzy Homemaker had ever been cheated on.”
“It was philosophical.”
“You called your drink a bachelorette party with abandonment issues.”
“It was accurate.”
“You announced a healing slutty era.”
I whisper this time. “That was private.”
The man’s mouth twitches.
I face him. “I am not drunk. I had two drinks over three hours, an irresponsible amount of fried food, and enough water to drown an orphan in a Dickens novel. I am emotionally compromised, yes. Am I slightly reckless?” I pause. “Clearly. But I am not drunk.”
He listens to every word, and then nods. “Good.”
I lift my chin. “Good?”
“Yeah.”
“Because you can flirt with me?”
Oliver whispers, “Please do not answer that.”
The man ignores him, and his eyes hold mine.
“If you want me to.”
It strikes me then that he does not flirt like other men. Because of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t pour charm over the conversation and hope it covers the parts he doesn’t want seen. He doesn’t crowd me, flatter me, tease me too loudly, or touch me before I can decide whether I want it.
He gives me the choice.
“I might.”
Oliver makes a pained sound.
“Might?” the man says, his voice low.
“I’m considering it.”
“I can wait.”
Oliver points his bar towel at me. “I don’t like this.”
I glance at him. “You don’t like most things.”
“I like the quiet, working appliances, and women not making life-altering decisions in my bar.”
“This is not life altering,” I say with an eye roll.
Oliver stares at me, but the man says nothing, which is very unhelpful.
I eat the mozzarella stick to avoid thinking about the fact that my entire body seems committed to betraying me.
For a few minutes, the conversation moves.
Not away from the tension, but around it.
Oliver serves the last customers as the woman at the end of the bar leaves without waving goodnight.
The two men near the dartboard argue about eleven dollars with the seriousness of an international tribunal.
Someone plays something low and moody from the jukebox because Oliver banned banjos after I complained about country music twice in one night.
He sits two stools away and drinks black coffee.
I steal glances.