4. Wes
WES
Leon walks in at noon.
He is carrying his usual travel mug and wearing his usual flannel and he has the usual newspaper folded under his arm—the Harlow weekly, which he reads through with a pencil because he likes to correct the spelling—and he stops in the doorway.
He looks at me. He looks at the bar. He looks at the ceiling above the bar, like something about the air up there is telling him a story. He closes the door behind him.
"Hm," he says.
He walks past me without another word. He pours himself a cup of coffee from the back pot. He takes a sip. He sits at his usual stool at the end of the bar, unfolds the paper, and takes out his pencil.
That's it.
He doesn't say anything for an hour.
I'm polishing glasses. I'm pretending I slept.
I did not sleep. I walked Lia back to Maya's at four in the morning.
She wouldn't let me carry her, though I offered, and she said I can walk, Wes, I have been walking since I was one.
I stood on Maya's porch. I kissed her good night like a man sending his wife off to war.
I drove home. Sleep didn't come. I lay in my bed and smelled her on my pillow that she hadn't touched, and I thought mine about fifty-seven different ways, and at nine I gave up and came downstairs.
The bar has been cleaned twice.
The office has been cleaned once, and cleaned carefully, because Lia had been on that couch and I didn't want her walking in tonight to see anything that made her feel like I had been careless with her.
Leon turns a page.
"Spelling mistake," he says. Mildly.
"What?"
"'Acheive.' They never learn."
"Mm."
He circles it. Takes another sip of coffee.
"Good night last night?" he asks. Without looking up.
I polish a glass.
"It was fine."
"Mm."
He circles something else.
"The regulars all right?"
"The regulars are fine."
"The new hire work out."
"She did."
"Hm."
He doesn't say anything else for another forty minutes.
Neither do I. I polish glasses that are already clean.
I wipe down a bar that Lia and I cleaned together last night.
I go into the cellar and pretend to count kegs for a third day running and I count them correctly on the first pass because my mind is entirely somewhere else and muscle memory does the counting for me.
I come back up.
Leon has folded the paper. He's looking at me.
"Wes."
"Leon."
"Your collar."
I look down at my collar.
There's a red mark. A bruise. A bite mark. The bite mark of a curvy woman who at one point last night got carried away and bit my collarbone hard enough to break skin.
"Huh," I say.
"Mm."
Leon goes back to his paper.
I pull my collar closed.
At two he gets up, refills his coffee, sits back down.
"I'll say this once," he says. He is still not looking at me. "And then I will never speak of it again."
"Leon—"
"She is too good for you."
"I know."
"She is too good for the entire rest of this town."
"Leon."
"If you squander this."
"I'm not going to squander this."
"Mm."
He picks his pencil back up.
"Good," he says. And turns a page.
That's all of it.
That's the whole conversation. In the twelve years I've known Leon McAfee he has never once offered me unsolicited advice about my personal life and he isn't going to start doing it now.
He has looked at my bar, at my face, at the bite mark on my collarbone, at the polished-twice glasses, and at the faint smell of sex and bear that I haven't fully aired out of the office, and he has concluded whatever he has concluded and he will leave it at that.
I'm grateful. I'm not sure I could have weathered more.
At two-thirty he stands up, takes his paper and his mug into the back, and clocks in officially for his Sunday shift, which, as of today, apparently has us both on it.
I go upstairs to my apartment above the bar and I stand in the shower and I push my forehead against the tile and I think about tonight.
Five p.m.
Lia's shift.
She is coming back. She texted me an hour ago—I'm bringing a change of clothes and don't lose your mind on me again, Wes Maddox, I need to actually make drinks—and I read that text forty-five times and I haven't responded because I don't know how.
Okay feels insufficient. Yes ma'am feels cute.
I am going to put my hands on you the minute I can reach you is the true answer and probably not a thing to text.
I put my hand against the tile and I breathe.
My bear is louder today.
That's the thing. He recognized her on day one.
He settled, a little, after last night—after I was inside her, after the knot, after I told her everything and she told me I believe you and then slept against my shoulder on the couch for twenty minutes before we both got up because she had to get home before Maya saw her walk of shame.
The bear settled. But underneath the settling, something else is starting.
The rut.
Not yet. Not full. A thrum of it—a warmth in my chest that won't go down, a constant attention on her even when she isn't in the room—and I know my own body well enough to know what is coming. Three, four days. Maybe a week. Then I won't be able to stay on my side of a bar.
I'll need to tell her. I'll tell her tonight.
I turn the water hot and stand there until I can breathe.
At four-forty-five I come downstairs. Leon has set up for the shift. He has cut limes. He has rotated the kegs he said I didn't rotate, even though I did. He has put a tray of fresh glasses where the last rack was. He is working quietly and not looking at me.
At four-fifty-nine the door opens.
Lia walks in.
She is wearing a different black shirt and the same jeans as yesterday and her hair is down this time, loose over her shoulders, and she has done something with her face—mascara, maybe, a softer color on her mouth—and she smiles at me when she comes through the door.
Small smile. Just for me.
My bear rises up inside my chest and I hold him down with everything I have.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi."
"Leon."
"Lia." Leon, from behind the bar, doesn't look up from the limes. "Welcome."
"Thank you."
She comes around the bar. She passes close to me—closer than a new hire passes her boss—and her shoulder brushes my chest. Casual. Like it's nothing.
I close my eyes for half a second.
I open them.
She is smiling. She knows.
"Boss," she says.
"Lia."
"What do you need me on?"
"Well drinks tonight. Leon's got taps. I'll float."
"Got it."
She goes to the well. She ties on an apron.
She tests the speed rail with the efficiency of someone who has done this a hundred times.
I watch her hands. I watch her shoulders under her shirt.
I watch the line of her jaw when she tips her head toward Leon and I'm aware—acutely aware—that I'm staring at my own employee in front of my other employee and failing to be subtle about it.
Leon turns a lime. Says nothing.
I touch her twice in the first hour.
First time—she's reaching for a bottle on the top shelf, can't reach it, and I am right behind her and I just put my hand on her hip and reach over her head to get it.
My chest against her back. My hand at her waist. I hand her the bottle and she takes it without looking at me and says "thanks, boss" in a voice that is one shade more even than normal, and my hand stays on her hip a full second longer than it needs to before I step back.
Leon picks up a glass. Polishes it.
Second time—she walks past me with a tray and I put a hand on her lower back.
Casual. Like I'm moving her out of my way.
My palm on her shirt. She doesn't react.
She keeps walking. But she tilts her chin half an inch toward me as she goes and her mouth curves and I stand there holding a bottle like a man who has forgotten what bottles are for.
Leon pours a beer. Says nothing.
I tell myself I'm going to behave. I tell myself I'm a thirty-eight-year-old bar owner with a reputation for being the most steady man in Harlow and that I'm going to get through one shift without mauling my new hire in front of my other employee.
I fail.
By seven the bar is busy and I am passing behind her to get to the speed rail and my hand finds the small of her back again and I let it stay there longer than I should.
I come up to her shoulder when she's talking to a customer and I stand six inches closer than I would have yesterday.
When she turns to grab a glass I am directly in her path.
She doesn't move around me. She comes up against me.
She pats my chest—my own chest, in my own bar—and says "excuse me, boss" and moves past. I watch the back of her head.
I lose the sentence the man at the bar is trying to tell me.
Leon is at the other end of the bar pouring a beer.
Leon is smiling.
It's a small smile. One side of his mouth, briefly. He catches me looking and wipes it off his face with professional speed and gets back to pouring.
At nine there's a lull. Most of the regulars have eaten and the night rush hasn't started and we have a pocket of quiet behind the bar where it's just the three of us and one table of men watching a game in the corner.
I stand next to her at the well. I put both hands on the bar, one on either side of her hips, and I say low into her ear, "go take a five. Back office."
She freezes.
"Wes—"
"Not for that. I need to tell you something."
"Oh."
"Before the rush picks up. While we've got a minute."
"Okay."
I step back. She goes through the back. I look at Leon.
Leon is looking at the ceiling.
"I'll take the bar," he says. "Take your five."
"Thank you."
"Wes."
"Leon."
"Take five," he says. Flat. "Five minutes."
"I know what five means, Leon."
"Making sure."
I go back through the hall.
Lia is in the office with her arms crossed. Not defensive—amused. She is sitting on the edge of my desk and she is watching me walk through the door and her mouth is doing that thing where she's about to laugh at me.
"You lasted an hour and a half."
"Yes."
"Your hands keep finding me."
"Yes."
"Leon has noticed."
"Leon is pretending not to notice."
"Leon is smiling."
"I saw."
I stop across the desk from her. I don't touch her. I want to. I've wanted to since she walked through the door tonight and every second since and I'm going to behave for five minutes because what I need to say is more important than what my hands want to do.
"I need to tell you about my rut," I say. "And I'm going to apologize first, because I'm about to do it badly."
"About to do it badly."
"Mating rut. I told you what it was last night in the context of explaining the knot. I didn't tell you I was about to have one because I wasn't sure. I'm sure now. I should've led with that and I didn't, so—sorry. Start over."
She uncrosses her arms. Her mouth has curved.
"You're apologizing to me for how you're phrasing this."
"Yes."
"Wes Maddox."
"Yeah."
"Okay. Start over."
"What does that mean?" she says, not mocking. Giving me the doorway back.
"It means." I take a breath. "Recognition of a mate triggers it.
My body is starting to—it's going to ramp up.
Two, three days, probably. Once it hits, I'm going to be—not much use for anything but you.
I won't be able to be far from you. I won't be able to not touch you.
I'll need—I'll need to be inside you. A lot. For days."
"Days."
"Three, four."
"Days."
"Yeah."
She glances at the office door behind me. The bar sounds are faint through it—Leon pouring something, glass on wood, a laugh from the back table.
"You're telling me this in your back office in the middle of a Sunday night."
"Yes."
"While our coworker is running the bar."
"Yes."
She leans back against the edge of the desk. Her hands grip the wood on either side of her hips.
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"I'm a little behind on this conversation. Give me a second."
"Take a second."
She sits still for a moment. She looks down at her hands in her lap. She looks back up at me and her face is calm but there are two pink spots on her cheeks and I want very badly to put my mouth on her.
"Are you going to be okay?" she says.
"I'll be okay. If you'll have me through it."
"If I'll?—"
"It's a lot. I'm telling you before it hits so you can decide."
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"I am going to have you through it."
I close my eyes. Open them.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Her mouth curves. The pink in her cheeks deepens. She slides down off the desk and comes to me—three steps—and puts her hands flat on my chest.
"You have twelve years of saved-up rut and you're going to pour it into me for four days straight."
"Approximately, yes."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay, Wes."
My mouth finds hers before I've decided to move.
I meant to stand here and get the information across and get back to the floor.
I kiss her anyway. Both hands at her jaw, my mouth on hers, and she opens for me with a small sound and her hands slide up around my neck and I press her back against the edge of the desk and I forget about five minutes.
Somewhere, distantly, I hear Leon ring the service bell at the bar.
"Five," he calls. Mildly. "Was five minutes."
I pull back.
Lia is laughing against my mouth. Breathless.
"Five," she says.
"He's keeping time."
"He is."
"We need to go back out there."
"We do."
Neither of us move for another twenty seconds.
She kisses me one more time—short, hard, deliberate—and then she ducks under my arm and is out the office door before I've caught up.
I stand in my office by myself for one second and breathe.
Then I go back to the bar.
Leon doesn't look at me when I step back behind it. He pours a whiskey for Hal, who has come in for his evening visit. He doesn't, at any point, make a face at me or call me out or suggest by any expression whatsoever that he knows exactly what happened in that office.
He just keeps pouring drinks.
At the end of the night, after we've locked up and Leon is putting on his jacket, he pauses at the door.
"Wes."
"Leon."
"If I were you," he says, "I'd take the week off. Put me on the full schedule. Just in case."
He opens the door. Steps out.
"Good night, Lia," he calls over his shoulder.
"Good night, Leon."
The door shuts.
Lia looks at me.
"He knows," she says.
"He knows."
"He knows what's coming."
"Leon has known more than me for twelve years running. I stopped fighting it a long time ago."
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"The week off."
"Yeah."
"Do we—should we take the week off?"
I look at her. She is standing behind my bar in her apron with her hair coming out of its tie and her cheeks pink and her eyes are on me with a question that's mostly already an answer.
"Yeah," I say. "I think we should take the week off."
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