Chapter 11
?
— Handful —
Iwas at the bar with Colt around eleven. Fourth beer. I went to take a piss sometime after that. Ten minutes later, fifteen. I wasn’t tracking.
The corridor between the common room and the bathrooms was quiet. Target was leaning against the wall near the bathroom, scrolling his phone. He looked up.
I went past him. Came back out. He was still there, phone down, watching a hangaround come through the common room door — dark hair, short skirt, killer heels.
She passed us. Target watched her go. I watched her go.
“Legs for days on that one,” I said.
Target grinned. “Still got eyes, Handful.”
“Always.”
He went back to his phone. The hangaround turned the corner and was gone.
I stood in the corridor.
The music was muffled through the wall. Someone laughed. A glass clinked.
Legs for days on that one.
I’d said it the way you say hello. No thought. No hesitation. The kind of sentence that assembled itself in the back of my throat and walked out before the front of my brain knew it was coming. Six words. Said to a brother in a hallway. About a woman whose name I didn’t know.
I’d spent months watching my mouth.
I looked down the corridor. Empty. The common room door was closed. Nobody had heard it except Target, and Target thought it was normal, because it was normal. It had always been normal. That was the whole fucking problem.
I went back to the common room. Looked for Austen.
The booths. The bar. The dance floor. The porch through the window.
Not there.
I checked the kitchen. The hallway. The porch.
Not there.
I came back inside. Stood at the edge of the room for a second. The party was still going — music, voices, the bar three deep. Nobody tracking me. Nobody who’d noticed anything was wrong.
Indira was in the booth with Lilac.
“Indira.” I leaned over. “You seen Austen?”
She looked up from something she was saying to Lilac. “She left. About twenty minutes ago.”
I straightened. “She—” I looked back at the room, like she might still be somewhere I hadn’t checked. “She didn’t tell me she was going.”
“No.”
“We were staying tonight.” I was talking half to Indira, half to myself. “That was the plan.”
Indira’s expression didn’t change.
“Did something happen? Is she—”
“She’s fine.”
Twenty minutes. I’d been at the bar with Colt, laughing about frosting, while she’d put her jacket on and walked out the front door.
“Did she say—”
“She said she was tired.” Indira’s face gave me nothing. “What did you do, Handful?”
I stood there. Indira waited. When I didn’t say anything she turned back to Lilac.
Outside it was quiet. The party sounds muffled from here — bass and voices, someone laughing at the top of their lungs somewhere inside. I pulled out my phone and called.
Four rings. Voicemail.
I ended the call. Called again.
Four rings. Voicemail.
I stood there with the phone in my hand, trying to think. She’d been fine when I’d last seen her — or I’d thought she had. Had something happened? Her parents, maybe, or Emma. Some message that had pulled her out of here without time to find me.
I texted.
Hey. Indira told me you left. I’m sorry I didn’t notice. Are you okay?
I stood in the lot watching the screen. Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Came back.
I’m fine. Early morning tomorrow. Talk later.
I read it twice then I called her.
One ring. Then voicemail — the flat click of a call declined.
A message came through.
I don’t want to talk to you tonight.
I called again. Straight to voicemail. No ring at all this time. She’d hit decline before it connected or switched the phone off entirely.
I typed a message. Deleted it. Typed it again.
Austen, what happened?
Delivered. Not read.
I stood in the lot. The bike was twenty feet away.
Four beers over a long night. Not wrecked — I knew where my limit was — but I wasn’t getting on the bike. Wasn’t getting in any vehicle. Not tonight.
I looked back at the phone. Still not read.
One of the prospects was still by the side door, run detail winding down for the night.
“Hey.” I crossed the lot to him. “Did you drive anyone home tonight? Last hour or so?”
He straightened. “Few people. Some of the old ladies. Your—” He paused. “Austen. About thirty, forty minutes ago.”
“How was she?”
He weighed it the way prospects did when a patched brother asked something that wasn’t strictly his business. “Quiet,” he said. “Said thank you when she got out.” He paused. “I waited until she was inside with the door closed before I left.”
I looked at my phone one more time. Still unread.
“Thanks.”
I went inside. Not back to the bar. Straight upstairs to my room.
The party sounds came up through the floor — the last of it, the music going quieter, the front door opening and closing. People leaving. The building getting lighter by degrees.
I sat on the bed and looked at the ceiling.
Legs for days on that one.
The words. How easy they’d been. No fight. No moment where something caught them and held them back. I had just spat them out.
Austen had been gone twenty minutes by then. Left the party without telling me, and while I wasn’t noticing, I’d walked into a hallway and said exactly the kind of thing she’d kicked me out of her bar for saying.
Not because I was drunk. Not because I was angry. Because it was easy. Because the room was right. Because she wasn’t there.
Glitch, the first week. The real question is whether you want to be better for her, or for yourself. Because if it’s just for her? It won’t stick.
Eleven weeks at her bar. Pride and Prejudice on a bar stool. The date. The dinners. Glenwood. Her arms around me on my bike. Five months of watching my mouth — and the second she turned away, I said exactly what I’d always said.
I thought about Mark. Not what he’d said — he’d just nodded and gone inside when I’d called him out — but what he’d meant. What, you’re a saint now?
He’d done the sweep with Austen standing right next to me.
Quick, automatic — top to bottom, the inventory he didn’t even know he was running.
I’d seen it because she was there. Because I was watching Mark look at her the way I used to look at every woman, and for the first time I could see what it looked like from the outside.
I’d called him out. Felt like something, doing that.
And then she left the room tonight and I became him.
?
I woke up at four.
Tanya.
Fuck.
Her hand on my arm, running up toward my shoulder. Slow. Familiar. The way she’d always done it. And I’d stood there with her hand on me — Austen right next to me, right there — before I’d remembered to step back.
Easy. I’ll explain it tomorrow. Tanya doesn’t mean anything to me, never has. Austen will understand.
Except.
Austen could hold her own. I’d watched her do it with Tanya before.
Watched her do it with the men at Velvet who thought being a customer gave them something.
She didn’t need me to fight her battles and she didn’t rattle easy.
A hesitation before I stepped back — that wasn’t going to make her leave a party without telling me and send me to voicemail twice.
So if it wasn’t Tanya, what was it?
Then the dance floor hit me.
Oh, fuck.
Austen had been gone maybe five minutes.
I’d had her in my arms — her forehead against mine, her hands on my shoulders — and the second she’d gone to the bar, I’d filled the space.
Some girl I barely knew. And when she’d pressed in close, when her body had come flush against mine — chest to chest, the whole length of her — my hands had slid off her hips and onto her ass.
Automatic. Not a decision. Just my hands going where they always went.
I sat up.
Handful.
Five months of showing up, watching myself, staying present for Austen — and the second she’d turned away, Handful had walked back in and picked up where he left off.
How the fuck was I going to fix this?