2. Jamie #3
He looks at me for a moment, really looks, the way people rarely bother with strangers. It’s the kind of look that takes inventory. He considers me, like he’s turning a puzzle over in his hands to find the edge pieces.
“Bad day?” he asks.
I swirl what remains of my ice around the bottom of the glass. “Something like that.”
His gaze follows the movement before returning to my face. “Work?”
“Work,” I confirm, keeping it deliberately simple.
He nods slowly. “Mine too.”
I smile. “That’s convenient.”
“What’s convenient?” he asks, brows pulling together slightly.
I point between the two of us. “If we keep everything vague, neither of us has to explain anything.”
That earns me a genuine laugh, fuller than the ones before it, igniting something warm in the middle of my chest before I can do anything about it.
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all week,” he says, lifting his Jack and Coke in a mock toast.
“See? Now we’re making progress.” I raise my own glass and tilt it toward his until the edges meet with a soft click.
His eyes narrow, playful rather than suspicious. “We?”
“Absolutely.” I toss my drink back and tap the bar twice to get the bartender’s attention.
“We’ve known each other for thirty seconds,” he replies, following my lead and finishing his own drink in a single swallow, jaw tightening slightly at the burn of it.
“Thirty productive seconds.”
The bartender approaches and I gesture between the two empty glasses with a single point of my finger. No elaboration required.
“You’re keeping track?” he asks, not questioning why I’m covering the next round. He just watches me with that same considering expression.
“I like data and I’m not the only one.” I keep my tone conversational.
The smile he gives me this time is different from the ones before it. Brighter. Warmer and less guarded, with an openness to it that feels like something earned rather than something given freely. It is, I will think later, a dangerous kind of smile to be on the receiving end of.
“That’s a weird thing to admit to a stranger.” He shifts his stool an inch closer to mine. It is a small movement, barely significant on its own. It tells me everything I need to know about where his head is at. He is interested. So am I.
“You’re drinking a Jack and Coke in a five-star hotel bar while wearing a tie like it personally offended you,” I say. “I don’t think either of us gets to judge tonight.”
He laughs again, and this time the sound lingers in the air between us rather than disappearing the moment it arrives.
People laugh all the time, in bars and lobbies and in the background of other people’s evenings, and most of it means nothing.
This feels different. Every time he laughs, another layer of something tightly held seems to release from his shoulders, like his body is finally remembering what it feels like to stop working so hard.
I find, with a clarity that surprises me, that I don’t want the moment to end.
I couldn’t tell you exactly who suggests leaving first.
Maybe it’s me, or maybe it’s him. By this point, it doesn’t really matter, and I’m not entirely sure either of us can reconstruct the specific moment even if we tried.
One minute we are sitting at the bar, trading stories that somehow manage to reveal absolutely nothing and everything at the same time.
Stories that avoid names and specifics and anything that could be pinned down, and yet somehow feel more honest than conversations I have had with people I’ve known for years.
The next, we have worked our way through enough drinks to take the sharp edges off the night, and neither of us seems particularly interested in saying goodnight first.
The conversation never slows. That is the thing that sticks with me, even later, when I am trying to organize the evening into something I can make sense of.
Not the stories themselves. Not the drinks, or the easy way the laughter comes, or even the fact that I still don’t know his name and he doesn’t know mine.
It’s how effortless everything feels. The absence of any particular effort at all.
I know he’s younger than me, though I couldn’t tell you by how much.
I know he is sharp because every time I throw something at him, he catches it and sends it back with enough wit to keep me working for the response.
I know his smile appears more often as the night progresses, and every time it does, I find myself thinking about what I can say next to be the reason for it.
At some point, the piano music changes and the crowd around us begins to thin, tables clear out one by one until the bar feels quieter and more private than it did an hour ago.
More rounds appear between us, followed by another stretch of conversation that feels so effortless I lose track of time completely and stop caring that I’ve lost it.
I stop thinking about Seattle and the trade.
I stop thinking about the flight waiting for me tomorrow morning, my lost apartment, and the great distance that is about to exist between me and every person I love most.