Chapter 4
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— Austen —
He was back again.
Third time this week. Wednesday night, quarter past eight, same stool at the far end of the bar where the light was worst and the foot traffic was lightest. Cut on, because the cut was always on — Venom Riders MC, the patch across his back, the pin-up girl forearms on display were as much a part of him as the grin he walked in with.
He’d nodded at me when he sat down, ordered an Old Fashioned, and opened a book.
A book.
The same book he’d been reading for ten weeks.
Pride and Prejudice. Not even a cool edition — a trade paperback with a book club seal on the cover and somebody else’s margin notes in pencil.
He read it slowly, turning pages like a man defusing a bomb, occasionally frowning at something Austen had written two hundred years ago as if she’d directed it at him personally.
It was, against every instinct I had, the most disarming thing I’d ever seen a man in my bar do.
“He’s back,” Jamie said, appearing at my elbow with a tray of empties.
“I’m aware.”
“That’s three times this week.”
“I can count, Jamie.”
“He’s on chapter twelve. I checked when I cleared his glass.”
“Why are you tracking his reading progress?”
“Because it’s the most interesting thing happening.
” Jamie set the tray down and leaned against the back counter, arms folded.
Twenty-three, wiry, the kind of barback who’d be running his own place in five years if he kept his head down.
“He tips thirty percent. He hasn’t flirted with a single member of staff in two months.
And he’s reading Jane Austen. In public. In a leather vest.”
“It’s a cut.”
“It’s a leather vest with patches sewn on.”
“Don’t let him hear you call it a vest.”
Jamie grinned. “I’m just saying. Either this is the most elaborate long game in the history of men, or he actually likes you.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“No. But it’s fun to watch.”
I ignored him and went back to work. Wednesday nights at Velvet were manageable — enough business to stay busy, not enough to drown.
The after-work crowd had thinned to the regulars, the couple in booth four who came every Wednesday and always ordered the same thing, and a group of women at table six who were two bottles of prosecco into what looked like a very productive divorce-planning session.
And Handful. At the end of the bar. Reading Jane Austen like his life depended on it.
Ten weeks. He’d been coming back for ten weeks, ever since that Tuesday night when he’d sat on this stool and apologized — really apologized, not the kind men do when they want something — and I’d told him no.
No to a date, no to anything beyond bartender-and-customer, no to whatever he thought was going to happen if he kept showing up and being sorry.
He’d taken the no.
I’d expected him to push. Men like him always pushed — that was the playbook, the escalation, the assumption that no was a speed bump, not a wall.
He hadn’t pushed. He’d come back the next night, sat at the same stool, ordered the same drink, and read.
Didn’t try to start a conversation. Didn’t linger at the bar when I was serving other customers.
Didn’t perform his reformation for an audience.
He just sat there. Quiet. Reading a book about a man who was an asshole and a woman who saw through him.
I was not going to think about that metaphor.
“Austen.” Derek materialized at my shoulder. Derek had a gift for materializing — he moved through the floor without sound, which made him excellent at managing a room and slightly unnerving as a colleague. “Your biker’s back.”
“He’s not my biker.”
“He’s sitting at your bar reading a romance novel.”
“It’s not a romance novel. It’s a novel about manners.”
“It has a love story in it.”
“It has social commentary in it.”
“It has a man being humbled by a woman who’s smarter than him.”
I looked at Derek. He shrugged once, unrepentant. “Derek. I served him. I’ve already had a version of this conversation with Jamie.”
“Then you’ve heard the optimistic version.” He folded his arms. “Let me give you the other one. It’s a long con. He’s playing the redemption angle. New him, look how much I’ve changed. They all do it.”
“Maybe.”
“There’s no maybe. I’ve been in this business longer than you. Men like that have three modes: charm, apology, charm again. He’s on mode two. Mode three’s coming.”
“Noted.”
Derek gave me one more I know what I’m talking about look and went back to the floor.
I built a Negroni for the woman at seat three, poured two glasses of the Willamette Pinot for the Wednesday couple, and held out about ninety seconds before I looked at the end of the bar.
He was frowning at the book again. His finger was resting on a line like he’d found something he wanted to argue with.
The cut sat across his shoulders. It should have looked absurd in here, the leather and the patches against the polished wood and the pendant lights.
It didn’t. He wore it the way some men wore wedding rings.
He looked up. Caught me watching. And instead of the grin — the one I’d been bracing for, the one that said gotcha — he just raised his glass slightly, gave me a nod, and then he went back to his book.
Damn it.
?
Indira came in at nine.
I hadn’t seen her in months — since before the baby. She looked tired. Coffee-and-willpower tired. She’d put on lipstick anyway.
“You’re alive,” I said.
“Barely.” She slid onto the stool closest to the service well — my end, where we could talk without shouting. “Maya’s with Dutch. I told him I needed an hour to just be myself. He told me to take two.”
“What are you drinking?”
“Something I don’t have to share with a newborn. Dealer’s choice.”
I built her a French 75 — champagne, gin, lemon, simple — because Indira had always liked things that looked elegant and hit hard. She took the first sip and closed her eyes.
“Mmmm, I’ve missed this place.”
“This place has missed you.” Indira and I had known each other for — what, four years now?
Five? She’d been doing marketing for Velvet’s parent group when I’d first started here, running brand campaigns for the portfolio of bars and restaurants they owned across three states.
We’d bonded over a shared suspicion of men who used the word synergy and a shared appreciation for cocktails that didn’t apologize for their alcohol content.
She’d moved on to other work after a year, but the friendship had stuck — drinks every couple of months, the occasional lunch, the kind of low-maintenance connection that worked because neither of us needed it to be more than it was.
It was the reason I’d said yes when one of her colleagues had asked me to be his plus-one at her wedding. I knew the bride. The groom’s world was something else entirely, but I’d figured an open bar and a woman I liked getting married was worth it.
I hadn’t figured on him being there. I smiled to myself as I remembered giving him a fake name just to make him stop. Ruby.
“How’s Maya?” I asked as I prepared another drink order.
“Perfect and terrible. She sleeps in ninety-minute intervals and she’s a total daddy’s girl — screams when she’s with me, shuts up the second Dutch walks into the room.
He walks her in circles at 3 AM singing — and I use that word loosely.
” She took another sip. “He’s a good father.
Annoyingly good. I’d complain but I love watching him with her. ”
“And you?”
“I’m sitting in a cocktail bar on a Wednesday night, drinking champagne, and talking to another adult. I’m incredible.” She smiled, tired at the edges but solid underneath. “How are you? How’s the bar? Derek still convinced the world is ending?”
“Derek is consistent in his pessimism.”
“He’s consistent in everything. That’s why he’s good at his job.” She looked around the room, taking it in. “Busy for a Wednesday.”
“It’s been a good month.”
“It always is when you’re running the bar.” She said it matter-of-factly, the way Indira said most things — not as a compliment but as an observation. “Speaking of which. Any movement on the—” She stopped. Her eyes had found the end of the bar.
I watched her register him. The cut. The book. The stool he’d made his own over two and a half months of showing up.
She looked back at me. One eyebrow up. Nothing else.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to drink my cocktail.” She took a very deliberate sip. Held my eyes over the rim of the glass. Set it down. “How long has that been going on?”
“Nothing is going on. He’s a customer.”
“A biker in your cocktail bar reading?”
“People read in bars. It’s a thing people do.”
Indira set her glass down. “Austen.”
“Indira.”
“I’m going to finish my drink. I’m not going to say a word about him.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She picked up her glass. “The French 75 is perfect, by the way.”
We talked for another forty minutes. The bar.
Maya. A distribution problem with the parent group’s new wine supplier that Indira still had opinions about even though she hadn’t worked with us in years.
The apartment I was looking at across town — bigger kitchen, better light, a lease I could sign for more than a year.
She didn’t mention Handful again. She didn’t need to. The eyebrow had done all the work it needed to do.
At ten she checked her phone and put cash on the bar. “My hour’s up.” She glanced at her phone. “Dutch said take two. One was enough to reset me.”
“Take the second.”
“I don’t want to take liberties.” She stood, gathered her bag. “I love my life. I just needed a breather.” Paused. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too. Tell Dutch he’s setting the bar high.”
“He’ll be insufferable about it.” She squeezed my hand across the bar and left.
On her way past the end of the bar, she slowed for half a step. Handful looked up. Indira looked at him. Something passed between them. Then she kept walking.
Handful went back to his book.
At eleven the bar started to thin. The Wednesday couple left on schedule. The divorce-planning table had moved to the decisive phase — somebody was writing a list on a napkin. Jamie was collecting glasses at the far end. Derek was cashing out tables.
I wiped down the bar, working my way from the service well toward the last few occupied stools. Handful’s glass was empty. He’d closed the book, spine-up on the bar, keeping his place.
“Another?” I asked.
“No. I’m good.” He straightened up. “How many is that?”
“How many what?”
“Nights I’ve been here.”
I didn’t have to count. “Twenty-eight.”
Twenty-eight. He’d missed three nights along the way. I hadn’t asked for an explanation. He hadn’t offered one.
He nodded slowly, like he was confirming something for himself. “And in all that time, have I—”
“Flirted with my staff? No.”
“Made a comment about—”
“Anyone’s body? No.”
“Said anything that would—”
“Get you kicked out? No.” I folded the bar towel. I could see what he was doing. Doing the math out loud like he wanted me to check his work.
“You’ve been a model customer. Excellent tipper. Quiet. Well-read.” I paused. “It’s deeply suspicious.”
He laughed. “I’m not running a game,” he said.
“That’s what someone running a game would say.”
“Fair.” He looked at the book on the bar. Back at me. “I’m not asking you for anything. I just like sitting here. It’s quiet. It smells like oranges and bourbon instead of beer and regret. And you make a really good Old Fashioned.”
“We’ve established that.”
“We have.” He didn’t move. Didn’t lean in. Didn’t drop his voice. Just looked at me with those brown eyes — no grin. “I like who I am when I’m in here. I don’t know if that’s because of the bar or because of you, but either way, this is where I want to be most evenings.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment. Behind me, Jamie clinked glasses in the wash. The music shifted to something slow and acoustic.
“One date,” I said. I’d been arguing with myself about this for a week. I’d been winning, right up until I opened my mouth.
He blinked.
“One. Not here. Somewhere quiet. Not a club thing — no brothers showing up, no bikes in the parking lot, no audience.” I held up a finger.
“No surprises. You pick the place, tell me where it is so I can get myself there, and if at any point during the evening I decide I’m done, I leave and you don’t follow me. Those are the rules.”
“Rules are good.”
“They’re non-negotiable.”
“I didn’t say they were negotiable. I said they were good.” He stood up, pulled cash from his pocket, and laid it on the bar next to the book. Enough for the drink and a thirty-percent tip, same as always. “What’s your night off?”
“Sunday.”
“Sunday, then. I’ll text you the place by Friday.”
“You don’t have my number.”
He paused. Looked at me. The grin appeared — not the usual one, not the hundred-watt performance that had made me want to throw things at Dutch and Indira’s wedding. A smaller one. Almost shy, which was a word I wouldn’t have associated with this man before.
“Austen, can I have your number?”
I wrote it on a napkin. Slid it across the bar. Ten weeks of no, undone by a Bic pen and a cocktail napkin.
He took it, folded it once, and put it in his pocket without looking at it. “Sunday,” he said.
“Sunday.”
He left. The door closed behind him. I picked up the towel and wiped down a stretch of bar that was already clean.
Jamie appeared at my shoulder. “Did you just give him your number?”
“I gave him permission to text me a restaurant name.”
“You gave him your number.”
“Go restock the limes, Jamie.”
He went. Grinning.