Chapter Twenty-One
Sam
The first time I walk through Pilsen after the financing clears, the place feels different.
I've been inside before. I knew what I was trying to buy, knew the square footage and the condition of the bar, knew the owner had painted over wood that should've been left the hell alone.
But every other time I stood in here, there was something between me and actually having it.
Shit I should've taken care of years ago.
Now the agent unlocks the door and tells me the owner is ready whenever I am.
The room hasn't changed. The tin ceiling is still in decent shape, the old bar still runs down the left side, and sunlight through the front windows manages to make every bad paint choice more obvious.
The difference is that I can finally look at all of it without doing the math on whether I'm allowed to want it yet.
I walk behind the bar while the agent talks about the repairs the owner agreed to handle before closing.
I hear enough to answer when I need to, but most of my attention is on the room.
The old bar top can be saved. The back bar can't. I'd move the taps farther down, keep the brick exposed and get rid of almost everything somebody added in the last twenty years.
I've had some version of this place in my head for years.
Something smaller than Vibes. No stage, no dressing rooms, none of the machinery that comes with putting on a show every night.
Just a bar where a slow night is allowed to be a slow night and I can know who's walking through the door before they sit down.
I look toward the far end of the bar and immediately know where Autumn would sit.
The thought is so ordinary that I almost keep going.
Her bag would be against the wall instead of hanging off the stool because she hates when people bump into it.
She'd tell me she had one email left and still be there an hour later.
At some point she'd take her shoes off, hook one foot over the bottom rung and complain when I told her somebody was eventually going to steal them.
I turn toward the front windows.
I can see her there too.
Laptop open at one of the tables while the doors are locked. Her coffee going cold because she forgot about it. Me working behind the bar while she works on whatever crisis somebody has paid her too much money to make disappear.
I didn't put her in the picture today.
That's the part that catches me.
This place existed before Autumn. I wanted it before I knew her name, but somewhere in the months between meeting her and losing her, the future I kept picturing stopped belonging only to me.
The agent comes around the end of the bar. "So?"
I turn toward her.
"Still want it?"
A few weeks ago that question would have barely deserved an answer.
Now I look around again. Autumn is four thousand miles away. She may stay there. She may come back to Chicago and still never come back to me. Whatever happens next isn't something I get to decide for both of us.
The bar is.
"Yeah," I say. "I want it."
Her smile comes fast. "That sounded more convincing."
"It should."
She starts talking about closing dates and what she needs from me next, and I listen this time. There are documents coming over this afternoon, a final walkthrough once the agreed work is done and enough signatures left between me and the keys to make me reconsider every lawyer joke I've ever made.
None of it changes my answer.
I want the bar.
Wanting Autumn doesn't make that less true.
I spent enough time treating wanting something as a problem I could solve by refusing to name it.
I'm not doing that with this.
Summer comes into Vibes a few days later, one hand under her stomach and the other holding her phone.
"You look uncomfortable," I tell her.
"Thank you. That's exactly what every pregnant woman wants to hear."
"I meant the chair."
"You did not."
I come around the bar before she can argue with me about whether she's capable of sitting down and pull out the stool with the back instead. She gives me a look but takes it.
"Better?"
"I'll decide in ten minutes."
I put soda water with lime in front of her. "You hungry?"
"Maybe."
"That means yes."
"It means pregnancy has destroyed my ability to make long-term commitments."
I grab a menu from beneath the bar and slide it toward her. She doesn't open it.
Instead she says, "I need to tell you something."
I straighten.
Summer turns her glass slowly between both hands. "Autumn's coming home for the shower."
I stop.
There aren't many sentences left that can do that to me.
"When?"
"Next week. She's flying in Friday."
I look down at the bar before I ask something stupid like what time, which airline, how long she's staying or whether she said anything about me.
Summer watches me closely enough that she probably sees every question anyway.
"I'm telling you because you're coming too," she says. "I'd rather neither of you walk in and find out the other one's there from across my living room."
"Fair."
"She knows you're invited."
That makes me look at her. "You told her?"
"I told her who's coming to my baby shower. I didn't conduct negotiations."
Despite myself, I smile.
Summer takes a drink. "I'm not putting either of you in the middle of anything. You're both people I love, and I want both of you there."
"You don't have to worry about me."
She gives me the look that means I'm about to lose whatever argument I think we're having.
"Fine. I'm worried enough to tell you ahead of time. I'm not worried you're going to flip a table."
"Good."
"I am seven months pregnant. Nobody is flipping anything at my shower."
"I'll spread the word."
"Thank you."
She finally opens the menu, and I wait until she starts reading before I start thinking about Friday.
Autumn will be in Chicago. That fact moves through me slowly.
I haven't heard from her since she answered my first message. I sent the flowers, then left the next move where she asked me to leave it. I don't know if she kept them, threw them away or handed them to somebody in the office without reading the card twice.
I know what I hope. That's not the same as knowing what I get.
Summer looks up from the menu. "You're doing a lot over there."
"I'm standing."
"Very intensely."
"What do you want to eat?"
She studies me another second, then lets me have the escape. "Fries, and whatever has cheese."
"That narrows it down."
"Excellent. Surprise me."
I take the menu from her and start toward the kitchen before she calls my name.
I turn back.
"You okay?"
It's an easy question to dodge. I've been dodging versions of it most of my life.
"Not really."
Summer's face softens.
"But I will be."
She nods and doesn't ask me to explain.
I appreciate that more than I can tell her without turning the whole thing into something neither of us needs.
When I bring her food out, we talk about the shower. Not Autumn. The shower. Summer complains about the number of tiny things a baby requires, tells me Colt has become convinced they need three different kinds of bottle warmer, and makes me swear I won't buy anything that needs to be assembled.
By the time she leaves, I know where I'm supposed to be and when.
That's all I ask.
After the door closes behind her, my phone is still in my pocket. I could text Autumn in less than thirty seconds. Tell her Summer warned me. Tell her I won't make things uncomfortable. Tell her I'm looking forward to seeing her.
Every version of it would be me stepping into the space she asked me to leave alone.
So I don't.
Instead, I go back to the office and open the Pilsen documents waiting in my inbox.
At the bottom is the line that needs my signature.
For years I thought the future was whatever I could build well enough that nobody could take it from me. Vibes. Pilsen. My own name on everything that mattered.
I don't think that anymore.
But this still matters.
I sign.
Next week Autumn will be in Chicago, and I have no idea what she'll give me when I see her.
Today, I can choose this.
So I do.