Chapter Ten
Sam
The night is good. Two hundred and change through the door. Marisol comes on later. A bachelorette party takes over three tables and tips like somebody's grading them. By close, the drawer looks good and there's a guy at the rail asking me what he should buy his girlfriend for her birthday.
"What does she drink?"
"Gin and tonics."
"What kind of gin?"
He stares at me.
I stare back.
"I don't know."
"Start paying attention."
He laughs.
I find him a bottle in his price range, and by the time he leaves, he's looking up florists on his phone.
Bex catches me wiping down the taps.
"Where's Autumn?"
I keep working. "Busy."
"Doing what?"
"She's managing PR for a client tour."
I look over.
Bex is staring at me instead of counting the door money.
Her eyes move toward the stool Autumn usually takes at the near end of the bar.
It's been empty all night. I know because I've looked at it every time the front door opened.
"She's busy, Bex."
"Right."
Bex takes the money to the office, and I keep wiping down the bar.
Her question shouldn't bother me as much as it does.
Where's Autumn?
Autumn is always busy. She has a client on tour, calls at all hours, people in three different time zones trying to ruin her day before breakfast. A few nights without her sitting at the end of my bar doesn't have to mean anything.
Except I know why she isn't here.
She came upstairs asking me to name what we were and tell her she hadn't imagined the last few months. I knew what she was asking. I just couldn't make myself answer it. Now her stool is empty.
The next afternoon, I start a text with You good?
I stare at it. Delete it. If she says no, then I'm asking a question I'm supposed to do something about.
Instead I send:
Me: You around this week?
Her answer comes less than an hour later.
Autumn: Working. Talk soon.
I read it twice. Normal enough. Autumn has sent me shorter messages while sitting six feet away from me. I put my phone in my pocket and go downstairs.
The following day, I do inventory before open.
I'm halfway through the back stock when I lose my place in the tequila. I look down at the sheet. Then back at the shelf. No idea where I stopped. I start again.
The second time, I make it to the bourbon before my eyes catch on the space beside the shelving where Autumn was standing the first time I kissed her back here.
The front door opens downstairs. My head comes up.
Delivery.
I look back at the shelf. I counted the Bardstown already.
Probably.
I start the row again.
A day later, my phone buzzes while I'm opening.
Unknown number.
I grab it fast enough to knock the bitters against the rail.
Linen company.
I answer their question, hang up and put the phone down. That's when I see the envelope on the back counter where Autumn left it. Somebody put a wet glass on one corner, and there's a ring dried into the paper. I pick it up.
I remember her standing across the bar explaining the filing. Pilsen. The old company. The call she thought I should make.
Mostly I remember her saying, Let me be useful.
And what I said back.
I don't need you interfering in my life.
It was a shitty thing to say. I knew it the second it came out.
Tony comes through the service door carrying a case of wine against his chest.
"Where do you want this?"
"Back wall. Bottom shelf."
He disappears into storage. I look down at the paper in my hand.
Autumn doesn't do vague. There won't be three ideas and a good-luck note inside. There will be names. Order. Probably exact sentences because she doesn't hand somebody a problem without building them a way through it.
Opening it means sitting down with all of that. I put it back on the counter.
Later.
Marisol comes in early the next day with Lucia because her sitter fell through.
Lucia takes over the office couch with a ladybug backpack, three coloring books and enough crayons to furnish a kindergarten classroom.
I bring her a plastic cup with a couple of cherries. She takes it with both hands.
"Thank you, Sam."
"You're welcome."
Marisol is standing in the doorway watching me.
"What?"
"You look like hell."
"I've got a fridge dying in the back."
"You look worse than the fridge."
"That doesn't make sense."
"It does from here."
I go back to the invoices.
Lucia colors quietly for maybe four minutes.
Then:
"Where's Autumn?"
My pen stops.
Marisol answers before I do. "She's working, baby."
Lucia looks up from the page. "She was going to draw the dog-cat."
I remember. Autumn told her there was no such thing as a dog-cat. Lucia told Autumn she was wrong and promised to teach her how to draw one.
"Next time," I say.
Marisol looks at me. I keep my eyes on the invoice.
The week is good. Our numbers are up, a repair cost came in eight hundred less than the estimate, and Bex books an act out of Detroit.
Downstairs, everything makes perfect sense.
A customer needs a drink, I make it. Tony needs change, I get it.
Ice gets low, somebody fills it. Something breaks, I call the guy who knows how to fix it. Every problem comes with a next move.
My apartment doesn't. Upstairs, Autumn is everywhere. Her presence is in everything. Her socks are still under the coffee table. Her charger is still beside the bed. Her coffee creamer is still on the door of my fridge.
I stop checking my phone every time it buzzes.
Mostly. She said talk soon. I can give her room.
By the end of the week, giving her room is starting to feel a lot like being ghosted.
That pisses me off more than it should. She knew I wasn't going to be good at answering her questions, and I tried anyway.
Maybe they weren't the answers she wanted, but I didn't lie to her.
Now I'm supposed to figure out how long I'm benched because she didn't like what I said?
I wipe down the same section of bar twice before I notice.
I know that isn't entirely fair. At some point, she has to talk to me too.
Doesn't stop it getting under my skin. I'm not going to chase her across Chicago because I couldn't articulate what she wanted to hear into the right sentence at one in the morning. She knows me. Or I thought she did.
A few nights later, Summer walks into Vibes alone. I notice before she reaches the bar. Summer almost always comes in with Colt. Or Autumn. Sometimes she brings a laptop so she can try to work and ends up ignoring the thing for three hours.
She doesn't usually come in alone anymore. I make her a Shirley Temple.
"Sam."
"Summer."
I set a glass in front of her.
She doesn't touch it.
"Autumn's leaving to go to London."
My hand stays on the bottle.
"What?"
"For the Nix O'Keefe tour. There is also talk of her firm opening a branch there."
I look at her.
"Seriously?"
"Enough people in London are turning their careers into PR nightmares I guess."
My chest is starting to feel too tight.
Summer keeps looking at me. "She'd be running the whole thing."
I set the bottle down. "When did you find out?"
"She told me a few days ago."
Working. Talk soon.
"How long will she be there?"
"She doesn't know."
"What does that mean?"
"It means the tour is months and the office is an office, Sam."
There's noise all around us. Glasses. Music. Somebody laughing too loudly three stools down. I hear all of it. None of it makes sense with what she just said. "When does she leave?"
"She told me she flies out in nine days."
I stare at her.
"Nine days?"
"Yeah."
The number doesn't fit anywhere. Nine days isn't talking about London or deciding whether to take a job. Nine days is a plane ticket and arrangements already made. It's leaving. I look toward the front door before I can stop myself, like Autumn might walk through it and make any of this make sense.
Summer watches me for a moment. "I almost didn't come tonight."
That pulls my attention back to her. "Why did you?"
"Because I don't want to get in between what is going on with you two, but I love you both." Her voice softens. "And she didn't ask me to come talk to you. I don't want to choose between the two of you, but I wanted you to know."
I don't say anything.
"I care about you, Sam. And I care about her. I was pretty sure you didn't know, and I couldn't decide which was worse, telling you something that isn't really mine to tell or letting you find out when she was already gone."
My chest feels tight enough that I have to take a deeper breath. "Did she take it because of me?"
Summer's fingers tighten around the glass, but there isn't judgment in her expression. "That's something I can't tell you."
"You know why, though, right?"
"I know some things." She shakes her head. "I won't betray her confidence, and if she wants you to know anything, it needs to come from her."
I look down at the bar.
Working. Talk soon.
"I thought she needed space."
"Maybe she did."
I look back at her.
Summer gives me a small shrug. "I'm not going to pretend I know what she needs from you right now. She may not even know. I just know she's leaving to take an assignment in London."
"In nine days."
"In nine days."
I drag a hand over my jaw.
"I thought we had time."
The words are out before I realize I'm going to say them. Summer goes quiet, which is worse than if she'd answered right away.
Finally she says, "Maybe that's why I'm here."
I look at her.
"I'm not telling you to chase her. I'm not telling you to leave her alone. I'm definitely not going to explain Autumn to you because she'd kill me, and she'd probably be right."
Despite everything, a breath of a laugh gets out of me. Summer's mouth lifts for half a second before it disappears again.
"I just don't want you standing here next week realizing there was something you wanted to say and you kept waiting because you thought you had more time."
I don't know what to do with that. There are things I want to say. That's the fucking problem.
"I don't know what she wants from me anymore."
Summer studies me. "Then don't guess."
I look at her.
"That's all I'm going to say."
Someone calls my name from the other end of the bar, but Tony gets there before I have to move.
Summer looks toward him, then back at me.
"I love you, Sam."
My throat tightens unexpectedly.
"I love you too."
"And I love her."
"Of course you do."
"So I'm staying out of the rest of it." She starts to get up, then stops. "But nine days is nine days, and it's not nothing."
I nod. This time I don't tell her I heard her.
She leaves money beside the untouched drink, squeezes my forearm once and heads for the door.
I watch her go. For the first time all week, talk soon doesn't sound reassuring. It sounds like a clock counting down.
The duo starts another performance while Tony dumps fresh ice into the well beside me. Somebody at the rail pushes an empty glass forward, and I pick it up because my hands know what to do even if the rest of me doesn't.
"What can I get you?"