Chapter 20
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— Austen —
“That’s not a Negroni,” I said. “That’s a Negroni’s sad cousin who didn’t get invited to the wedding.”
Fewin held the glass up to the light, wounded. “It’s got all three things in it.”
“In the wrong order and the wrong measures. Build it again. Equal parts. Stir, don’t shake — you’re not auditioning for a Bond film.” I pushed the bad drink back to Fewin. “And drink that one yourself so it doesn’t go to waste. Penance.”
Handful was two stools down with his clipboard and a coffee, going over the numbers from the weekend. He didn’t look up. “She’s been here twenty-five minutes and she’s insulted four of your drinks, your stirring technique, and the way you hold a glass.”
“The glass was a public service. He holds a coupe like he’s about to throw it at someone.”
“In fairness,” Handful said, “he might be.”
The numbers were stupid good. Fewin was turning into something I could be proud of.
And Handful — somewhere in the last week and a half, the man had stopped being a man I was ignoring and gone back to being someone I could trade insults with for an hour without checking the clock.
We’d found the rhythm. Quick and dry, him lobbing, me knocking it down.
It was easy. But I didn’t want him clocking how much I was enjoying myself.
Fewin set an Old Fashioned on the bar and slid it down toward Handful. “One for you, brother.”
Handful looked at it and shook his head. “I’m good.”
Fewin blinked. “It’s a perfectly decent Old Fashioned.”
“I don’t drink Old Fashioneds unless she makes them.”
I looked up. “What? Why? Is that some kind of biker superstition?”
He grinned at me. “You made me an Old Fashioned the first night we met. Best one I’ve ever had.” He looked at me. “Told you once you were my last. Covers a lot of ground.”
“Handful,” I said. “I told you the night you came back — that wasn’t the first time we’d met.”
He went still. “I remember. You said four. I’ve never figured out where you got four from though.”
“You really don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?”
“You’re a man who’s strolled through life on the working assumption that he made a charming first impression on every woman he ever met.” I leaned on the bar. “The night at Velvet wasn’t your first impression on me. It wasn’t even your second.”
He went still. The grin dropped, and I watched him trying to place me.
“Go on,” he said eventually.
“Dutch and Indira’s wedding. I was there with someone — doesn’t matter who — and a biker with pin-up tattoos and a great deal of confidence decided I was the most interesting thing in the room and would not be told otherwise.
Three separate times. I shut you down three times and you kept coming back like a Labrador who’d found a tennis ball. ”
Recognition flashed across his face. “The redhead.”
“Oh, you do remember.” That honestly surprised me.
“Ruby,” he said, and closed his eyes.
I hadn’t expected that one at all. “Ruby.”
He put his face in one hand. Fewin, down the bar, had stopped pretending to build a new Negroni and was openly listening, delighted.
“That’s three,” Handful said, into his hand. “You said four. What’s the other one?”
“A birthday party. My friend Rachel had started seeing a prospect and dragged me along to a birthday party at the clubhouse.” I picked up a lime and started cutting it, because I wanted something to do with my hands and because making him wait for it was the most fun I’d had all day.
“You came over. You were very charming for about four seconds, and then you spent the next twenty minutes having a conversation with my chest.”
Fewin snorted.
“I’m not exaggerating for effect,” I went on. “Twenty minutes. Not a glance. A conversation. At one point I genuinely wondered if you thought that was where the sound was coming from. So I told you your conversation might improve if you tried making eye contact.”
“And what did I do,” Handful said, still behind the hand, the voice of a man who already knew.
“You grinned at me like I’d handed you a trophy.”
That got another snort from Fewin.
“And then you forgot me. Completely. Wedding and birthday, gone, no trace. So when you walked into Velvet you looked at me like you’d never seen me before in your life — which you hadn’t, really, because you’d never once actually looked at me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For all of that. I mean it.” He held my eyes for a moment, then the corner of his mouth pulled up. “Though I’d argue the universe had a plan.”
“Don’t.”
“Twice it put you in front of me and I missed it. Third time I walked into your bar—”
“And harassed my staff.”
“—and couldn’t look away.” He spread his hands. “That’s not bad luck. That’s fate.”
“That’s a man trying to spin being forgettable into a love story.”
“Is it working?”
I gave him the look. The one that had ended conversations with men with twice his confidence. He held up both hands, still grinning, and picked up his clipboard.
Fewin nodded at the clipboard in Handful’s hands. “That’s his emotional support clipboard. He reaches for it every time you’re around.” He looked between us. “So do I still have to drink the bad Negroni, or—”
“Yes,” Handful and I said, at the same time, and that broke it. Thank God.
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Lex found me at the end of the bar after Handful had gone to deal with a delivery.
“He tell you about Friday?” she said.
“What about Friday?”
“No. Course he didn’t.” She sat, that flat unbothered way of hers.
“There’s a regular. Renner. Flashy, expensive suit, big tipper.
Been coming years. All that time, he’s been putting his hands on whoever serves him.
All that time, every manager this place ever had decided the man’s tab was worth more than the woman’s dignity.
Friday he did it to me. Busy night, room full.
And your ex walked him out the front door in front of God and everybody, banned him for good, refused to give him his money back.
Told him Venom doesn’t sell that no matter how deep his pockets are.
” She looked at me. “Cost the house the biggest tab in the building. Didn’t even slow down to think about it. ”
I didn’t say anything.
“Six years,” Lex said. “First time anyone ever chose me over the tab.” She picked up her coffee. “Thought you should know.”
And she was gone. I went back to my limes.
The fate speech and the grin when I gave him the look — that was Handful. But the apology, what he’d done for Lex on Friday, and picking up his clipboard and letting me off the hook after that fate speech — that was Tyler. One man. That was the confusing part.
I was still working that out when he came back twenty minutes later, clipboard still in hand.
“Fewin still alive?” he said.
“Barely. I think he’s been making the cocktails wrong on purpose so he gets to drink them.”
Handful looked down the bar at Fewin, who was staring into a rocks glass with great concentration, and laughed.
For a second we were just two people at a bar who’d made each other laugh. His eyes were on mine, all the way, the way they hadn’t been at the wedding or birthday party.
My hand moved before I did — toward the clipboard, toward him — and by the time I caught it he’d already seen it.
He stepped back — but not before I saw what it cost him.
His own hand had already started toward mine, and he caught it the way I’d caught mine, made himself lower it, his jaw tight with the effort.
He wanted the contact. That was plain to see, and he wasn’t hiding it.
But I’d caught my own hand half a breath before he did, and he’d read it — that the reach was a slip and not a decision, that I wasn’t ready — and he’d stopped it for me.
He didn’t say a word about any of it. Just gave me the room to pretend it hadn’t happened.
Who was this man? Not the Handful I’d met first, all swagger and wandering hands.
Not my Tyler either. This was someone new — still every inch the bad-boy biker, still a man who could clear a booth with a look, only there was a patience laid over it now, something almost gentlemanly, that I’d never once seen in him. It was confusing.
“I should go,” I said. “Velvet.”
“Yeah.”
I got my bag. At the door I looked back, because I am apparently a person who does that now, and he was already back at Fewin’s numbers, not watching me go, just letting me leave.
I drove to my real job and made drinks until last call.
I didn’t think about him once. Didn’t think about the weight of him pinning me down.
Didn’t think about the feel of his fingers inside me.
Didn’t think about the look of satisfaction on his face when I lay in bed after with his come dripping out of me.
Not once.