17. Chapter 16
Liv Strauss
The corkboard above the register has seventeen pins in it, and I know exactly what each one holds.
Piper's first graded paper, an A in statistics, goes between the Clockwork Tavern's liquor license and a Polaroid of me and Kevin from last year's New Year's shift.
The paper is slightly crumpled from where she shoved it in her bag, but the grade is circled in red pen, and that's the part that matters.
I smooth the corner flat before I pin it.
My phone buzzes on the bar. Piper again: Stop staring at it and get back to work.
I text back: I'm the boss. I can stare at whatever I want.
Three dots appear, then: Bookkeeper. Not boss. Don't let it go to your head.
She's not wrong. The contract sitting in the drawer beneath the register says exactly that: Liv Strauss, Bookkeeper, Clockwork Tavern.
My name. My rate. My terms. I negotiated every line of it myself, and Kevin signed it with the same bemused expression he gets when I refuse to let him carry the kegs.
Six months ago, I would have signed whatever someone put in front of me and called it a win. Now I read every clause twice and strike the ones I don't like.
The morning light cuts through the front windows at an angle that makes the bottles behind the bar glow amber and gold.
I have two hours before Kevin comes in, two hours of quiet books and inventory and the specific kind of peace that comes from a space that belongs to you.
The numbers on my laptop screen are clean.
Margins are up. Tips are steady. The Tavern isn't going to make anyone rich, but it's solid, and solid is enough.
I close the laptop and start restocking the well spirits, muscle memory guiding my hands while my mind drifts to tonight.
Missy finished her reading comprehension test yesterday.
Zoltan texted me a photo: her face scrunched in concentration, pencil gripped like a weapon, the tip of her tongue poking out between her teeth.
She passed. She more than passed. The speech therapist said her progress in the last six months has been remarkable, which is the clinical way of saying she talks now, in full sentences, to people who aren't me or her father.
I'm making her favorite dinner tonight. Pasta with the sauce she calls "the red kind," which is just marinara with extra garlic because she decided at some point that garlic was her favorite flavor and I didn't have the heart to correct her.
My phone buzzes again. Not Piper this time.
Conference call ran long. Home by six. Missy is asking if you're bringing the book.
The book is a battered copy of Charlotte's Web that I found at a thrift store three months ago. We're on chapter nineteen. Missy cries every time we get close to the end, so we've been reading it very, very slowly.
I type back: Tell her I'm bringing the book and the fancy crackers she likes.
His reply comes in seconds: She says the crackers are acceptable.
Then, a moment later: I say you're spoiling her.
Someone has to.
I can picture him reading that, the way his mouth would twitch at the corner, the almost-smile that used to drive me crazy and now just makes something warm settle in my chest.
Six months of almost-smiles of learning that the man who runs forty-person code sprints without raising his voice laughs quietly, almost silently, when something genuinely surprises him.
Six months of discovering that the cedar-and-coffee smell is just the kitchen now, just home, just the specific geography of a life I chose with my eyes open.
I finish the well spirits and move on to the top shelf, wiping down bottles that don't need wiping because my hands need something to do.
The front door opens. I don't turn around because it's too early for customers and Kevin has a key.
"We're closed," I say.
"I know." Piper's voice, bright and amused. "I brought coffee."
I turn. She's standing in the doorway with two cups from the place down the street, her hair pulled back in a messy bun, wearing the NYU sweatshirt I bought her for Christmas.
She looks tired in the way students always look tired, but there's something else underneath it.
Pride, maybe. The quiet satisfaction of someone who is building something that belongs to them.
"You're supposed to be in class," I say.
"Class doesn't start until eleven." She sets a cup on the bar in front of me. "I wanted to see my paper on the wall."
I step aside so she can look. She stares at it for a long moment, her expression unreadable, and then she reaches out and touches the corner of it with two fingers.
"Mom called this morning," she says.
I take a sip of the coffee. It's exactly how I like it, which means she's been paying attention. "What did she want?"
"To say congratulations. She saw the grade on my student portal." Piper turns to face me, leaning against the bar. "She sounded sober."
"She's been sober for eight months."
"I know." Piper picks at the edge of her cup. "She wants to have dinner. All three of us. She said she'd come to the city."
I don't say anything. The old wound is still there, the one that says trust is a calculated risk and some calculations don't balance no matter how many times you run them. But it's quieter now. Less sharp.
"What do you think?" I ask.
Piper looks at me, surprised.
"I think I want to try," she says. "But only if you're there."
I set down my coffee and pull her into a hug. She's taller than me now, gangly in the way she's always been gangly, and she smells like the cheap shampoo she refuses to upgrade because she says the expensive stuff makes her feel like a fraud.
"Okay," I say into her shoulder. "We'll try."
She squeezes me once, hard, and then steps back. Her eyes are bright but she's not crying, which is good because if she cries, I'll cry, and then Kevin will come in and find us both a mess and never let us live it down.
"So," she says, her voice deliberately light. "Big night tonight?"
"Pasta and a book. Very glamorous."
"Missy's going to cry at the ending again, isn't she?"
"Probably." I pick up my coffee. "I'll have tissues ready."
Piper grins. "You're such a softie."
"Don't tell anyone. I have a reputation."
She laughs, and the sound fills the empty bar, and I think about how different everything is from six months ago.
The same space, the same bottles, the same scratched wood under my hands.
But I'm not the same. The woman who signed that first conduct agreement without blinking, who told herself she didn't need anyone, who kept everyone at arm's length because distance was safer than disappointment: she's still here, somewhere. But she's quieter now. Less afraid.
Piper leaves for class with a wave and a promise to text me after her study group. I finish the morning prep, run through the inventory one more time, and then sit down at the bar with my laptop and my notes app.
The file is still there, saved under a fake name I haven't used in months.
Poetry, if you can call it that. The kind of earnest, embarrassing lines I used to write at midnight and then pretend didn't exist. I've shown some of it to Piper.
I've shown more of it to Zoltan, one line at a time, watching his face for any sign of judgment and finding none.
Last week, I read him a stanza about trust. About choosing to let someone see the parts of yourself you've spent years hiding. He listened without interrupting, which is his version of awe, and when I finished, he said, Write more.
Not that's good or I like it. Just: write more. As if the act of creation was the point, not the product.
I open the file and stare at the cursor blinking against white space.
Then I change the file name. Delete the fake one, type in my real one: Liv Strauss, Notes.
It's a small thing. A gesture no one will ever see. But it matters, the same way Missy's drawing matters, the same way the contract in the drawer matters, the same way showing up matters even when showing up is terrifying.
I write one line. Then another. The words come slowly, the way they always do, but they come.
By the time Kevin arrives for his shift, I have half a page of something that might be a poem and might just be a feeling with line breaks. I save it and close the laptop.
"You look happy," Kevin says, dropping his bag behind the bar. "It's suspicious."
"I'm always happy."
"You're never happy before noon. It's one of your best qualities." He starts pulling glasses from the dishwasher. "Big plans tonight?"
"Pasta. A book. Maybe some crying."
"Sounds romantic."
"It's not like that." But I'm smiling, and Kevin sees it, and he grins in a way that says he's going to tease me about this forever.
I leave him to the lunch prep and head for the door.
The afternoon is mine: a shower, a grocery run, maybe an hour on my couch with my cracked phone and the group chat Piper started that now includes Petra and, inexplicably, Dex, who turns out to have opinions about reality television that are both passionate and deeply wrong.
The subway is crowded, but I find a seat and pull out my phone. A text from Zoltan: Missy is very excited about the crackers. I've been informed twice.
I type back: Only twice? She's being restrained.
She's saving her energy for the book.
The warmth in my chest spreads. This is the version of him that no one else gets to see: the one who texts about crackers, who comes home forty minutes early, who stands in his own kitchen doorway and watches his daughter like he's relieved she still exists.
The version who laid his hand flat against his jacket pocket when he was trying not to feel something, and who learned, slowly, to stop hiding it.
I get off at my stop and walk the three blocks to the grocery store. The crackers Missy likes are on the top shelf, because of course they are, and I have to stand on my toes to reach them. The woman next to me offers to help. I thank her and take the crackers myself.
Some habits are worth keeping.