Chapter 6
Asher
The home stretch is on the TV behind the bar, and half the place is yelling at it.
We took the afternoon game six to two, and the highlights are running on a loop above Lenny's head, my face flashing up there for half a second between replays. Nobody at our table looks up. No need to see it again when we've lived it.
"I'll take another Duckaroo," Nora says to the kid clearing glasses, because, unlike my sister, she has the decency to order it right. Lenny would have her photo on the Wall of Shame in a heartbeat otherwise.
Knox is hunched over his beer, brooding.
Felicity is poking him in the ribs and diagnosing his mood out loud, which is her favorite hobby and his least favorite experience.
Declan hasn't looked up from his phone in twenty minutes.
Nate has his arm slung along the back of the booth behind Nora, the picture of a man who has everything figured out.
I have a drink in my hand, a script in my head, and a woman across the room looking at me.
I catch sight of her without turning fully. Dark hair, red top, the kind of confidence that's read the room and decided it likes its odds. I know her a little. We've talked. She's never gone home with me, which means she's been waiting for the right night to change that.
I look back at her and grin.
It's the easiest thing I do, easier than hitting, easier than breathing. The smile that says I see you, and I'm glad, and the rest of this is just a formality. I've run it a thousand times, and it's never once failed me.
I head to the jukebox, pretending to look through the songs.
She drifts over within two minutes.
"Big night," she says, sliding into the space to my right. Close. Warm. Smells like vanilla and something sharper underneath.
"Every night's a big night." I arch an eyebrow and watch her cheeks flush. "You catch the game, gorgeous?"
"I caught the part where you won it."
"That's the only part that matters."
She tips her head and laughs. The whole thing is going exactly the way it's supposed to go, the way it always goes, the rhythm so familiar I could fall asleep inside it.
So I wait for the part where I want her.
I keep the smile up, keep my hand on the jukebox, keep the conversation moving while the whole routine runs on autopilot.
Underneath it, I wait for something to wake up.
It doesn’t come.
"I'm gonna hit the restroom," I tell her, gesturing to the jukebox. "Set the mood for the night?"
She bites her lip, getting the drift. "Okay."
I slide away from the old machine, and the relief is immediate. Fucking hell, it makes no sense to me. I don't let it touch my face.
On my way to the back, two women at a high-top call my name before I'm even past them. "Asher. Asher! You were amazing tonight."
"Hey, ladies." I wink at both of them. I don't break stride. "Looking lovely as ever. You look like you're up to trouble tonight."
They dissolve into each other, delighted, and I keep moving, the grin doing its job, the whole performance running so smoothly that nobody watching would ever guess there's no one home behind it.
The whole operation is exhausting.
The restroom door swings shut, and the noise drops to a hum.
I run the tap on cold and splash water over my face, bracing my hands on the porcelain, and I look up.
The mirror gives me back a stranger.
Same jaw. Same eyes. Same dirty-blonde mess that women have been running their fingers through since I could do basic algebra.
The face works. It always has.
I don't know who's wearing it.
I stand there longer than I should, water dripping off my chin, watching a reflection I don't recognize.
Then I dry my hands and fix my face into the one they're expecting.
I make it four steps away from our booth before someone catches my arm.
"Great game." Bright smile, manicured hand, fingers curling into my sleeve. "You must be exhausted after carrying all of that."
I don't miss a beat. "Somebody's gotta carry the team, babe."
Down the booth, three people roll their eyes in unison. I feel it more than I see it.
"You doing anything tonight, Ash?" she asks.
"What'd you have in mind, baby?"
Nora makes a sound like she's choking on her Duckaroo. "Do you mind? Some of us are trying to keep our food down over here."
The woman gives Nora a slow once-over, decides she's not worth the trouble, and turns the wattage back on me. "Let me know when you head out, Ash." She trails her fingers down my forearm as she goes.
I slide into the booth.
"Disgusting," Nora says, glaring at me like I personally arranged the whole thing.
I point my glass at Nate. "Your girlfriend is an absolute cock-block."
"You're absolutely annoying," she shoots back.
"What's annoying is your dumb cat."
"She isn't dumb. She has twice the brain you do."
"She sheds on everything I own."
"Then stop coming to Nate's."
"I've been going to Nate's before you knew his name, Bellinger."
"I love when they do this," Felicity says, poking her fingers into Knox's side.
"Don't, Liss," he grumbles.
"So grumpy, Knox."
"Just not in the mood."
"Like you ever are."
Declan snorts at his phone. Doesn't look up, doesn't contribute. Just registers all of us from somewhere far away and keeps scrolling.
"Knock it off, all of you," Nate says mildly. Then he turns to Nora, and his whole tone shifts into something domestic and easy. "Hey. You think Audrey needs help with anything this weekend? We could go down, and I can mow the lawn for her."
The name lands in my chest like a curveball I didn't see coming.
I don't react. I look at my drink and pick it up. Set it back down without lifting it to my lips. I pull out my phone and pretend to read something on it.
Out of the corner of my eye, Nora's thumbs are moving.
Hey anything you need help with this weekend? We can come down—
I'm so tuned to the fact that Nora has her number in her phone that it's all I can see. The thing I've spent weeks wondering how to get is sitting right there on the table. Not that I'd do anything with it. But I've thought about it more than once while lying in bed half-asleep.
Nora's phone buzzes a minute later. She reads it and smiles.
"She says no, but she appreciates it. Says she already handled it so she doesn't have to think about it after Eli's soccer game tomorrow."
My stomach does something it doesn't have a name for.
Eli. She has a son named Eli. She has children. She has a Saturday where she'll pack snacks for a soccer game and a lawn that needs mowing and a sister who texts to check on her.
And I can still feel her beneath my hands if I close my eyes for one second too long.
I set my glass down.
"I'm out, guys. Long week."
“Again?” Knox lifts an eyebrow. "You’re not hitting the club?”
Declan finally surfaces from his phone. "You sick, Ash?"
They’re both staring at me, and I try to throw them off. “Aww, Deckles. It’s so cute that you care.”
He glowers at me before going back to his phone.
"You've been ditching the fan club a lot lately, Mash." Felicity's looking at me now with the look she saves for when she actually wants the answer, the one that goes straight through the performance to whatever's underneath it. "Last few times."
I give them the grin, the effortless one. It feels harder than it used to.
"Ha ha. I'm beat. Night, everybody."
I don't look at Nate on the way out. Nate's the one who'd press and wouldn’t let it go.
The woman from earlier is watching me from across the room as I head out. I don't look at her either. I walk past the wall of duck-faces and the orange duck with my signature scrawled along the side, past the open windows and the lake smell coming through them. Out the door into the night.
The air's cool. It rained earlier, and the lights of Harlow’s Copperside are smeared across the wet pavement, red and gold running long where the cars roll through.
I get into my car.
I don't start it.
I sit there with both hands on the wheel and try to work out what’s wrong with me.
I've tried. That's the part nobody would believe. I've done everything I used to do, said everything I used to say, run the script clean from the top a dozen times since August. The setting's the same. The women are the same.
And every single time, I get right up to the door and something goes flat in me. The wanting just isn't there. So I make some lame-ass excuse and leave, driving home alone. I don't fucking understand it.
I shut my eyes.
I’m there again.
The bathroom at Nate's. The lock turning. That enormous click.
The way she pulled me in like she'd been deciding it all afternoon, the way she kissed me, the way she put her hand flat on my chest and said don't talk me out of it, like I was the one with the doubts. Like I was the one who needed convincing.
She wanted it. Christ, she started it.
Then she fixed her hair in the mirror and walked out like none of it had happened.
At the gate, across the whole yard, she looked back, half a second too long.
Then she turned away.
I've been replaying that half-second for weeks, and I'm starting to think I'll be replaying it for the rest of my life.
I start the engine.
The apartment's dark when I get in. I drop my keys in the bowl, sink into the couch, and scrub both hands down my face.
I should sleep.
Instead I lie back and let her in, because I'm done pretending I can keep her out.
I know how this goes now. It's the only thing that's worked in eight weeks. It’s sad. Pathetic, honestly, a guy with my resume reduced to this. I undo my belt anyway.
And it's her, immediately, the way it never used to be immediate with anyone. The way my body knows the shape of the memory before my hand even moves.
The give of her against the door, the broken little sound she made into my mouth when I got it right, the way she clung to my shoulders and my neck as she came apart with me. Don't talk me out of it.
I work myself slowly, but it doesn't stay that way. It never does with her in my head. Her mouth. The exact heat of her. The way she moaned into my mouth, and I swallowed the sound so no one would hear us.
The pressure builds fast and ruthless, and I let it, jaw tight, breath going ragged in the dark, chasing the only version of want that still answers when I call.
I come hard with her name behind my teeth, spilling into my hand, and the room goes quiet around me.
For about ten seconds it's relief.
Then it's everything else.
I lie there with my chest heaving and the ceiling blurring. The cold creeps back in, and the truth sits down next to me on the couch like it's been waiting all night.
I can't get her out of my system.
She's a widow. She's grieving. She's got two kids and a sister who loves her and a whole careful life an hour outside the city.
She made one mistake in a stranger's bathroom, and she got to walk away clean.
No commitments, no number, no call the morning after.
Come for the ride, go home for real life.
I wrote those rules. I've kept them for years, and she followed them perfectly.
Audrey.
It’s the last thought I have before sleep, the same way it's been since a Saturday in August.
And I already know it'll be waiting for me in the morning.
I close my eyes.
I'm so far off my game I can't even find the field.