Chapter 9 #2
“She just started last month. Moved here from out of town. Smart as hell. Caught an error in one of my quizzes before I even finished stapling it. Schooled me right there in my office. Didn’t blink. Didn’t stammer. Just laid it out like I was a freshman and she was the professor.”
He sees how gone I am for this woman in my eyes before I can school my features, and his mouth curves into the kind of smug, knowing smile that makes me want to hurl the entire pretzel bowl at his head.
“I’m fucking serious,” I warn, jabbing a finger at him, “it’s not like that. She’s just… competent. Direct. Which is… refreshing. And she’s friends with Alis and Skye. So, no, it’s most definitely not like that.”
George’s smile only widens, eyes glinting with mischief.
“Ah,” he says, low and smug, like a man watching the puck slide clean into the net. “So she’s the reason for the watch.”
By the time I push back from the table and kiss Linda’s cheek goodnight, I’m exhausted from the effort of pretending. George claps me on the shoulder as I leave, his grip lighter than it used to be, but steady enough to say what he doesn’t out loud: Take care of yourself.
I nod, promise I will, and walk out into the night.
The drive home is silent. Radio off, phone facedown on the passenger seat. The roads are nearly empty, streetlights blurring through my windshield as I run back over every word from today. George’s smug smile. His voice: So she’s the reason for the watch.
I tighten my grip on the steering wheel. I don’t want him to be right. I don’t want her to be the reason for anything. And yet, no matter how many times I tell myself she’s just a secretary, just a sharp tongue and a steady gaze, the truth presses in like a bruise I can’t stop touching.
I roll through a yellow that probably should’ve been a red and catch my reflection in the rearview—the hard line of my mouth, the watch face ghosting in the corner of the glass.
I flip the mirror down. Childish. Doesn’t help.
The image is still there in my head: her hand braced on the edge of the filing cabinet, the tiny tremor in her fingers she tried to hide.
The way she said thank you like I’d taken a boulder off her spine with three words and a body in a doorway.
“Fuck,” I say to the empty car, like swearing at upholstery might rewire me back to the version of myself that didn’t care.
A light turns green. I don’t move at first. The guy behind me taps his horn—polite, not pissed.
I pull forward and breathe through my teeth.
I need out. Out of this loop. Out of her voice in my head.
Out of George’s knowing, out of the way my chest feels strangely sore, like I’ve been running stairs.
I reach for the phone at the next stop sign and call Dexter.
He picks up on the second ring. “Hey, man.”
“Hey.” My voice scrapes. “You busy?”
Pause, the soft background wash of family noise. Clinking plates, a kid laughing. Sunny. “Kind of,” he says. “Alis’s parents are in town, we’re doing a whole weekend thing. I can pull away for a beer later tonight if you need—”
“No.” I say it too fast. “No, it’s fine. I was just… driving.”
“Driving where?” he asks, too gentle, like he can hear the weight in my throat.
“Home.” I clear it. “From George and Linda’s.”
“How’s he doing?”
I swallow. “Thin.”
“Shit,” he says softly. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” I drag a palm down my jaw, stubble rasping against skin. “He’s still himself, though. Still chirping the Avs. Still convinced my Canes are frauds.”
Dex chuckles, then quiet again. “So, you good?”
I could say yes. I could say absolutely, I’m peachy, I’m a man without a single inconvenient thought in his skull. The lie rises easy. Too fucking easy.
“Yeah,” I say. “All good. Go be charming with the in-laws.”
“Leo.”
“Yeah, man.”
“You can call me later if you need to.”
“I won’t,” I lie.
He exhales like he knows I’m lying. “Alright. Later, brother.”
I end the call before I have to answer that back. Toss the phone face-up on the passenger seat and stare at the black screen until my face floats there, faint and unimpressed.
The quiet rushes in again. It’s the kind of quiet that eats itself. I last four blocks, then unlock the phone and thumb the little red flame without thinking. Tinder blooms like a bad habit I keep in a glass case with a hammer beside it.
I swipe left on a brunette with sharp brows.
Left on another with a smile that, if my imagination were crueler, could be Tori’s cousin on a dark night.
Left, left—too close, too many lips that look like hers.
My thumb stutters over a profile that could have been Pull-and-Replace: same hair, same jawline.
Left. Left. It becomes a small ritual of punishment.
Then a blonde pops up. Filter-soft, sunlit laugh in the thumbnail, bio that says dogs, patios, over games under drama.
The part of me that’s slightly functional snorts.
The other part—the one that wants to combust out of my skull—doesn’t care.
I swipe right. Match in under a second. A green dot pulses like a detonator. Her name is Kelsey. She messages first:
Hey there what are you up to?
My thumbs move on autopilot.
Headed downtown. You around?
I can be. Harper’s on Main in thirty?
I check the clock because habits die hard.
Doesn’t matter. I type See you there and drop the phone back on the seat, laughing without humor.
This is the choreography I know: girl, bar, banter, forgettable fuck, make up a weekend get together in the morning.
Easy. Disposable. The religion I converted to after Stephanie.
I turn off the highway and into the familiar wide avenue of Main Street.
Grand River at night is gutters of light and low music leaking out of brick storefronts—string lights swing over the crosswalks, planters push flowers into the cool air, and the Bookcliffs stand like watchmen on the horizon, dark and patient.
People drift between doors, laughter spilling across the sidewalks; the smell of pizza from a place down the block mixes with hops and diesel and the faint woodsmoke from a late patio fire.
Harper’s sits between a yoga studio that glows faintly and a gallery that likes to pretend its bronze sculptures aren’t just abstract chaos.
Its weathered wooden sign basks under two flood lamps.
I wedge my truck into a slanted spot, kill the engine, and shove my hands into my jacket like that’ll hide the watch.
The face catches the streetlight. I want to take it off. I don’t.
Inside Harper’s the air is warm and loud—Edison bulbs, a mural of the Bookcliffs behind the bar, a row of taps that promises local IPAs, and a suspender-clad hipster bartender complete the vibe.
The floorboards creak. The place smells like citrus, beer foam, and the kind of cologne guys wear when they want to be noticed for trying.
Harper’s is packed but not Denver-crowded; you can still move without elbowing someone’s dignity.
I scan for the blonde. There are three. Of course.
Two in black dresses, one in a jean jacket, all leaning against the bar like they’re already half a story in someone else’s night.
I take a step forward to text Kelsey and then—because systems break for reasons you can’t explain—I see electric blue.
Skye’s hair flashes under the bulbs like a neon sign. She’s tucked into a high-top, laughing with one hand slung over the back of her chair. Next to her, half in shadow, is Tori.
Everything in me freezes in that stupid animal way, like the brain’s wiring is deciding between fight, flight, or the dumb, decorative third option: freeze. A guy behind me utters something about learning to walk in crowded places and sidesteps, but I don’t move.
Tori’s in a black top that dips at the collarbone, sleeves pushed to her elbows.
Her nails are red in a way that makes small, terrible promises.
She’s mid-laugh—open, real—and when Skye says something offhand she throws back a look that’s all mischief and teeth.
The sight lands somewhere low in my gut and stays.
Relief hits first, oddly. Relief that she’s laughing, not replaying Chase’s hand on her arm like a bad loop.
Relief that there’s a friend at her side—Skye—someone liable to make a scene if some guy tried to be a shit.
Relief that she’s not alone carrying a shit moment she shouldn’t have had to endure.
Then anger—at myself—for what I’m doing.
For summoning a blonde as a decoy, a distraction.
For the cliché I planned to act out like the rehearsed farce of fulfillment it’s always been.
For telling George the changes he sees in me aren’t about a woman when every stupid action I take is a rebuttal in motion.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
I’m at the bar, black dress, red heels. Where are you?
I don’t pull the phone out. I can’t move in any direction that isn’t toward the exit or toward them.
Skye spots me first, because of course she does.
Her head rotates, blue hair a beacon, and her face lights up like she heard a joke she’s about to tell.
“Leo!” she calls over the buzz of a cover band playing something too earnest. The room pivots; Tori’s head snaps toward me, eyes scanning, catching, sliding past one familiar face back to mine.
She doesn’t wave. She doesn’t look away.
She meets me as if she has time to make that call.
I lift a hand anyway—futile, boyish. She holds my gaze. She doesn’t smile in an inviting way. She doesn’t freeze me out either. It’s a neutral that feels like a test.
Kelsey pings again.
At the bar. Do you see me?