Jasper #2
The question should’ve hit harder than it did. Instead, it left me with a strange sense of relief. “Yeah,” I said. “I think I am.”
She nodded slowly, as if she’d already suspected as much. “I can give you more shifts. Business has been good lately. Really good.”
That was putting it mildly. The Twilight Tavern had been packed most nights—locals, tourists, people drifting in because someone told them it felt like home. The jukebox never stopped playing. Glasses were always clinking. Laughter carried all the way to the door.
“I’ve noticed,” I said. “It’s great that the place took off like this.”
Paige smirked. “People like a bar that doesn’t try too hard. Turns out that’s a niche. Also, our proximity to Oregon’s best ski slopes doesn’t hurt.”
“Appreciate it,” I said. “Really.”
Paige waved me off. “You’re good behind the bar. People like you. And you don’t disappear mid-shift, which puts you ahead of about eighty percent of applicants.”
I smiled at that, small but genuine. As I turned back to the sink, rinsing glasses and lining them up to dry, the thought settled in fully that this wasn’t a placeholder anymore. This was my livelihood now. I had savings, but there was no need to live off them.
The bar filled gradually as the evening progressed—voices rising and falling, chairs scraping softly across wood. I worked on autopilot, my hands steady even as my thoughts circled the same truth from different angles, trying to find a version that didn’t feel like free fall.
The door opened and let in a ribbon of cooler air, along with Cara Darlington, Paige’s younger sister.
And without thinking, my mouth curved into a slow, small smile I didn’t bother trying to hide. Why should I hide it anymore, now that I’m sticking around?
I’d known her since she was fifteen years old and serious about books in a way that made you feel like you were missing something if you weren’t.
I’d sat across from her a few times a week in the school library, and she’d been patient with me in a way most people weren’t.
She’d tutored me in English—dragged me through Shakespeare and Bronte and essay structure and close reading with a quiet, steady persistence that I hadn’t deserved and hadn’t known how to thank her for.
The honest truth was that I wouldn’t have graduated without her.
I’d never said that out loud to anyone, but I’d thought it more than once in the years since—usually somewhere far from Honeybrook Hollow, in the middle of something dangerous, something that required me to think clearly and follow through—and the quiet recognition would surface that she’d had more to do with that than my diploma would ever indicate.
Back then, I hadn’t known what to do with that—with her, with the way she made the hours in that library feel different from every other hour in my day.
I hadn’t let myself look at it too closely.
I was seventeen, I knew I was leaving after graduation, and there were things a man should not get started when he already knew how the story would end.
Then I’d come back the first time, between deployments, already planning to ship out again.
I’d seen her around town, and something had moved in my chest that I’d shut down fast and clean, how they train you in the Corps.
It wasn’t the right time. It was never the right time.
So I’d filed it away with everything else I wasn’t ready to acknowledge and gotten back on the plane.
Now I wasn’t getting back on any plane. And that changed things in ways I was still working out.
She paused just inside the door, like she was letting the space settle around her before stepping fully into it.
Tall, softly curved beneath a cardigan she wore like a second skin.
Her golden-brown hair was pulled back loosely, a few strands already slipping free.
Beautiful in a soft, familiar way—the kind that didn’t ask for attention, but held it once you gave it.
I didn’t move. Didn’t say anything to her.
I never did, aside from asking her what she wanted to drink.
We’d developed an unspoken agreement over the months since I’d come back—careful distance, polite nods, the practiced ease of two people treating the past like it was just the past, and that was fine.
I’d held up my end of it. Tonight I was done holding it.
I watched as she crossed the room and took a seat at the bar—one stool down from where Paige leaned, her attention already sliding toward her sister.
Paige smiled at Cara and said something I couldn’t hear over the hum of the room.
Cara answered, her shoulders lifting in a small, familiar shrug—the one that meant I’m fine and don’t look too closely in the same breath. I recognized it. I’d seen it enough.
Paige’s gaze flicked once in my direction, sharp and assessing, before returning to Cara with a look that said I see it. Whatever it was.
I looked away first, suddenly aware of how closely I’d been watching, and refocused on the customer I was serving until the heat in my chest settled.
Cara laughed quietly at something Paige said, then wrapped both hands around the glass in front of her.
She looked down at it for a second longer than necessary, like she was buying herself time.
I went back to work, but my attention kept drifting.
The way she held herself—attentive, contained.
The way she pushed her glasses higher on her nose when Paige leaned closer.
The way her smile slipped when the noise rose around her, like she was listening past it instead of to it.
She didn’t look at me. Not once.
And somehow the absence of it carried more weight than if she had—like being deliberately overlooked said more than any glance ever could.
She knew I was here. She always knew. That was the thing about Cara Darlington, she noticed everything and gave nothing away unless she decided to, and tonight she’d decided not to.
Paige said something else, low enough that Cara’s expression shifted—surprise, then something more thoughtful. Paige followed it with a squeeze to Cara’s arm before moving away to help another customer.
I watched Cara mull over whatever Paige had said, her hands still wrapped around her glass, her eyes still down. She had the look of someone working very hard at appearing unbothered.
I understood it. I’d been doing the same thing for months. The difference now was that I’d finally stopped pretending. I didn’t have a reason to.
Cara stayed at the bar, shoulders drawn in slightly, gaze fixed on her drink. She didn’t look up. Didn’t scan the room. Just sat there like she was waiting for the noise to fade.
I kept my head down and worked, hands moving on instinct. The activity of the bar carried on without me needing to think about it, and that was a relief. A reminder that some things were routine now, even if others weren’t.
When I glanced up again, Cara was standing.
She slipped her bag over her shoulder and leaned toward Paige for a quick word, her expression softening briefly before she straightened.
She didn’t look my way as she crossed the room.
The door opened, then closed behind her, and the night folded back in on itself as if nothing had changed.
I wiped down the counter and stood there for a moment, something restless moving through my chest—not the dull weight from earlier, not the grief of the doctor’s office, but something sharper. Something I hadn’t expected to feel tonight.
I wasn’t counting the hours until I left anymore. I wasn’t thinking about what came next. But I was, without quite meaning to, thinking about her.