Chapter 3
MILES
Evie:
how was your first day?
Miles:
Bear Sherlock Holmes took one look at me and poured me a whiskey
now he’s making me dinner
so you’re on a date
no one ever makes me dinner on a date
I laughed wryly at my own joke and sipped the whiskey—I didn’t know enough about it to know if it was any good or not, but the kindness of the gesture meant more than the quality of the booze, anyway.
Miles:
oh, also, I think he’s gay and I think this is a gay bar
I took a quick shot of the huge pride flag behind the bar and sent it off to Evie—for proof, or analysis, or whatever. One of the reasons I’d been hesitant to come here was that practically all my friends were some kind of queer, and I hadn’t expected to meet people like them in a small town.
Then Seth had turned up in court heels, carrying a purse that matched his ruby-red nails and lips.
And now Bear Sherlock Holmes, who’d just been offered a male stripper for his birthday, was making me food.
Just as I had the thought, food appeared in front of me, and my stomach rumbled again at the incredible smell rising from the plate. Maybe it was because I’d forgotten to eat today, but I’d never seen a more appealing dish in my life.
“House-made sweet potato gnocchi pan fried in sage-infused butter with crumbled pancetta,” Holmes explained. “I’m working on a new fall lunch menu.”
“So, you’re the chef here?” I asked, grabbing the fork.
Holmes snorted. “Absolutely not. I just run the place,” he said, a wry smile twitching at the corner of his lips. “I have an incredible cook, but he’s uh… not in today.”
“Because the bar doesn’t open on Mondays?” I asked, looking up at him with my fork halfway to my mouth.
Holmes scratched the back of his neck and shrugged. “You looked like you could use… a bar, I guess.”
I meant to say something intelligent, but the first bite of food had just hit my tongue and all I could manage was a happy little whimper.
The rich salty pancetta, the sweetness of the gnocchi, the savory herbal comfort of the sage butter, the perfect crispness and pillowy softness of the whole mouthful.
That was another thing I hadn’t expected to find in a small town—anything resembling halfway decent food.
This, though, was already in my top five favorite meals.
“Good?” Holmes asked, a hopeful light in his eyes. I needed to get a real name for him.
“So good,” I mumbled around a mouthful. Rude, maybe, but I thought he’d take it as the compliment it was.
“Good.” Holmes smiled at me.
I liked the way he smiled, lopsided and a little shy.
“So, I still haven’t caught your actual name,” I said with a burst of confidences. “Unless your actual name is Sherlock Holmes.”
He chuckled, leaning back behind the bar. “Name’s Booker. Everyone calls me Book.”
“Oh,” I said, straightening my back. “I love books.”
Booker laughed again. “Right, because you’re a librarian.”
I was glad he’d gotten the joke—again—because as soon as I’d said it I was afraid I sounded like an awkward weirdo.
I sounded like an awkward weirdo more often than not, after all.
“Don’t remind me,” I said wryly. “I have to go back there tomorrow.”
“Not everything you hoped and dreamed?” Booker asked.
I looked up at him again, another forkful of his incredible gnocchi halfway to my mouth. “It’s not your problem.”
“Some people say I’m a good listener.”
“Seth said great, I think.”
Booker shrugged. “Or I could leave you in peace.”
“No,” I said, too quick and too desperate. But I felt so alone and overwhelmed right now that any company, any comfort I could get, I wanted to hang onto it.
Then I felt guilty, because I got the impression Booker was kind of a community sounding board. That he was the sort of man people brought their problems to. People did that with bartenders.
He was waiting for me to say something now, though.
“I didn’t have any hopes or dreams for this place,” I admitted. “I just… well. I got fired—they said laid off, they were polite about it—from my last job, because, umm. This is complicated.”
“Try me,” Booker said, with a hint of a smile again.
I would’ve bet anything that smile got him what he wanted more often than not. It was the kind of smile I couldn’t have said no to, anyway.
“So I was engaged to a woman, Robin,” I started. “She was, umm. Our families had been close since forever, and we grew up together, and everyone just assumed the two of us would get married someday. Anyway, so did I, I guess. Until she made it clear that she was a lot more interested in my sister.”
Booker’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline as I stabbed at a piece of gnocchi. It really was perfectly pan-fried.
“I’d come back for this,” I added, nodding to my loaded fork. “If you put it on the menu.”
“Consider it already on the menu,” he said. “So, your sister…?”
“Oh, she was horrified. I mean, she’s very gay, but Robin was supposed to be my fiancée, you know?
And I don’t think Evie—my sister—ever liked Robin as much as Robin liked her.
I don’t… I mean, if she was a lesbian the whole time, that…
firstly, explains a lot, and secondly…” I paused to sigh.
“I’m glad she’s not stuck with me. And…”
I hesitated, meeting Booker’s eyes for a heartbeat, trying to decide whether or not I could say what was on my mind to him. What I hadn’t been able to tell Evie yet.
“I’m relieved, too, to be honest. I never actually… I mean, I was just expected… I didn’t feel like I had a choice. And now I’m free, I guess. Anyway, her dad was on the board of the university where I used to work, and breaking off the engagement meant…”
I trailed off, leaving him to use his incredible powers of deduction to fill in the rest.
“Ouch,” Booker said. “That’s not fair.”
“Well, I guess I got it because her dad assumed I was going to marry his daughter.” I shrugged.
I’d meant it about coming back here for the gnocchi. The library backed onto the bar, so I’d have plenty of opportunity.
“And now I’m in the middle of nowhere because it was the only job I could find and I only got it because Evie knew a guy who knew a guy, and I’m an academic librarian, I have no idea how to run a public library.
And I feel like I moved three tons of books today and I can’t even go home and have a hot shower because there’s no hot water in the cabin, or if there is I can’t figure it out.
And there’s a draft from the bedroom window because it doesn’t close and the stove doesn’t work.
There’s not a single bookshelf in the place and I have no idea where to get one and I miss my plants,” I said in a rush.
Tears pricked at my eyes. The last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of a total stranger, but this was the first time I’d let myself talk about all of it. Everything I’d lost and how much had changed for me and how not-particularly-well I was coping with it.
Maybe Booker would think I was ridiculous.
Maybe I was ridiculous.
“That’s a lot,” Booker said after a heartbeat.
A sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob escaped me. I turned my focus to the remainder of my meal, cheeks burning with embarrassment. What must he think of me? We’d known each other less than an hour at this point and here I was, pouring my heart out to him.
Booker set a thick slice of fresh, fluffy sourdough with the most perfect crust on the side of the plate. I used it to mop up what was left of the sage butter, glad to have something to put in my mouth to stop my heart from spilling out of it again.
“Okay, so,” he began once my mouth was full again. “One problem I can solve instantly is that my hot water system works, so you’re welcome to shower upstairs. The water pressure is incredible, you’ll love it.”
I looked up at him, swallowing my current mouthful while I stared.
“I’m a total stranger,” I said.
“So?” Booker shrugged. “I’m proposing to trust you with my shower, not my life.”
“Wouldn’t it be weird?” I asked. “To have a total stranger in your shower?”
“No?” Booker said, brows furrowing.
Oh, right.
Because other people hooked up all the time. He’d probably had dozens of strange men in his shower. He was attractive and funny and kind, he obviously wouldn’t have any trouble finding people who wanted…
Uh. I should maybe not have been speculating about his sex life, especially right in front of him. Not that he could hear me or anything, but it still felt impolite.
“Are you sure?” I asked, the desire to stand under a hot shower for five minutes overriding the weirdness of the situation.
“I’m sure. Finish your food and your whiskey, I’ll go set out clean towels. See if I can find you some clothes that might fit.”
I looked Booker up and down, doubtful that any clothes he owned would fit me, but nodded.
He gave me another one of those lopsided smiles, kinder than I had any right to, and backed off.
“Thank you,” I called out as he disappeared around a corner.
“Anytime.”