Chapter Six #2
The words used to fit like a command.
Now they sounded like a bad habit.
“I am,” I said.
Then I looked at Nella.
Sal got into the car. The door closed. The engine shifted, the brake lights washed the alley red, and the town car rolled backward before turning toward the street.
Nella and I stood there until the sound faded under boardwalk music and the far-off rush of the ocean.
The alley didn’t get prettier.
Dumpsters still smelled like fryer oil. Heat still clung to the concrete. A receipt corner had bent under Nella’s thumb. My shirt stuck to my back, and my watch felt too heavy on my wrist.
The bar was safe.
For one second, I didn’t know what to do with my hands.
Nella solved that by hitting me in the chest with the receipt folder.
“Ow.”
“That was for trying to close the door on me.”
“You hit like a woman with documented profits.”
“I have more where that came from.”
“I believe you.”
She studied my face, and her expression lost its sharp line.
“You’re done with them?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t collect for Sal. It means I don’t go back to Jersey and expect my uncle’s doors to open. It means some men who used to step aside for me won’t.”
Nella hugged the receipt folder tighter. “Are you in danger?”
“No. Not the way you mean.”
“Don’t manage me.”
“I’m not. Sal cuts men off before he wastes more time on them. The cost is doors closing, calls not getting answered, and men who used to know my name deciding they don’t.”
Her grip tightened on the folder. “That better be true.”
“It is. No one’s coming through your door over this.”
She held my stare for one beat longer.
“I don’t know every piece of what it costs yet,” I said. “But it’s mine to sort out, not yours to carry.”
Then she reached up and flicked my gold chain. “Good. Because I’m busy being emotionally available to my own problems right now.”
A laugh broke out of me before I could stop it.
Her expression softened.
“I want you here anyway,” she said.
The laugh died in my chest.
She lifted one hand before I could answer. “I don’t want you here as an owner. I don’t want you here as a secret investor. I don’t want you here as the man who decides which shelf gets the tequila.”
“I don’t want your shelves.”
“You say that now, but you have control issues and opinions about citrus.”
“I can work on one of those.”
“Great. Start with the shelves.” She stepped closer, receipts between us. “I want you here because you stood beside me tonight. Because you didn’t take the proof out of my hands. Because when it mattered, you told him no.”
I looked down at her.
The alley light caught the curve of her cheek, the dark strands slipping loose from her scarf, and the tired slope of her shoulders. She stood in front of me and offered me a place beside her that didn’t require taking anything away.
My voice came out rough. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Obviously.”
“That was quick.”
“I’m tired. My filter closed with the kitchen.”
I reached for the receipt folder, then stopped.
Nella handed it to me.
My fingers closed around the folder, and my throat tightened.
I held it while she unlocked the service door.
Inside, the bar waited with its lights low and the night’s success everywhere.
The black sea-salt rim had stained the service mat in little dark crescents. Empty cannoli trays sat stacked by the pass, dusted with powdered sugar and tiny crumbs. The register was locked. The cash drawer was empty. The blue drink pitcher had left a bright ring on the back counter.
Nella walked in first, kicked the door shut behind us, and leaned back against it.
For the first time all night, nobody needed her name from the kitchen.
No tickets printed. No blender screamed. No one asked whether mozzarella could be spiritual, gluten-free, or more authentic if served with feelings.
In the quiet, her shoulders dropped half an inch.
I set the receipt folder on the back counter. “Where do you want this?”
She pointed to the tiny office. “Locked drawer. Top right. Don’t get ideas.”
I walked the folder into the tiny office, slid it into the top-right drawer, and turned the key she handed me. The lock clicked. She took the key back and tucked it into her pocket.
“I’m not after your drawer,” I said.
“I meant the other kind of ideas.”
“I have those.”
“I know. You’ve had them loudly all night.”
“That’s your fault.”
Nella pushed away from the door. “My fault?”
“You wore that top.”
“This top made me thousands of dollars.”
“It’s still a threat.”
She looked down at the smear of blue curacao near her hem. “This top is a casualty.”
I moved closer. “A brave one.”
“You’re flirting after renouncing your shark mafia family in my service alley?”
“I didn’t renounce every shark in my family. I renounced the part where I do what I’m told.”
“Important legal distinction?”
“Family tree, not employment contract.”
Nella’s smile finally came, small and tired and enough to make my chest feel too tight.
“Good,” she said. “I don’t have the energy to learn a whole new family tree tonight.”
“I won’t quiz you.”
“Very generous.”
She crossed behind the bar, pulled two short plastic sample cups from the stack, and reached for the last small pitcher of the blue margarita. There was barely enough for a few swallows each. She poured anyway, then took one of the cups and pushed the other toward me.
“Drink,” she said. “You look like you just quit your entire life.”
“I did.”
“Then hydrate with tequila.”
“That sounds medically questionable.”
“I’m a professional.”
“You’re a bar owner.”
“Exactly.”
I took the cup.
The drink was bright blue, creamy at the edges from coconut, sharp with lime, and rimmed in black salt that clung to my lower lip. It tasted like trouble and sugar and the first clean breath after a fight.
Nella watched my face. “Well?”
“It’s good.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t you dare stop there.”
“It’s dangerous, too pretty, and it tastes like something tourists will order because they think they can handle it.”
Her smile widened. “Better.”
“It needs a name.”
“I’m aware.”
“The Shifty Shark.”
Nella blinked.
Then she stared at me. “Absolutely not.”
“It’s accurate.”
“It sounds like a man in wet swim trunks named it after an emotional crisis.”
“I’m wearing linen.”
“And having an emotional crisis.”
“Still accurate.”
She looked at the cup, then at the neon shark over the back mirror, then back at me.
“I hate that it works.”
“I know.”
“I’m putting it on the board tomorrow, and if it sells, I’m taking credit.”
“It’s your bar.”
Her fingers stilled on the cup.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
I set my cup down.
Nella set hers beside it.
The bar stretched between us, clean, sticky in a few places, still smelling faintly of sugar, fryer oil, and summer money. She stood on the other side with her hands on the counter and the scarf slipping in her hair.
I’d wanted women before. I’d wanted relief, sex, distraction, the clean hit of getting what my body demanded.
This made me stand there too long with my hands at my sides.
Nella lifted one brow. “Don’t go quiet and tragic on me now.”
“I’m trying to decide how to kiss the woman who just saved her own bar.”
Her fingers curled on the counter. “Correct answer is with enthusiasm.”
I came around the bar.
Nella didn’t wait.
She grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me down.
She kissed me hard, sweet with the blue margarita and salt. I caught her waist, and for one second, the whole night moved through the kiss: the alley, Sal’s car, the receipts, her voice saying my bar, his choice.
Then she softened against me, and that nearly took my knees out.
I slowed.
Nella made a sound against my mouth and tugged harder on my shirt. “Don’t get careful in a boring way.”
I kissed her cheek. “I’m trying not to bend you over the bar you just saved.”
Her breath caught.
My hands tightened once at her waist.
Nella leaned back enough to look at me. “Is that an option?”
My grip tightened again.
“This is your place,” I said.
“I know.”
“I don’t want to take anything from it.”
She slid her hands up my chest and over my shoulders. “Nico, I’m deciding what happens in it.”
My jaw tightened.
Her gaze dipped to my mouth. “Here. With you. Because I want it.”
“Nella.”
“That sounded like a warning.”
“It was.”
“Good. I like your warnings better when they come with follow-through.”
I lifted her onto the clean back counter.
Nella gasped, then laughed once, bright and breathless, and wrapped her legs around my hips. Her sandals hooked behind me. The folder was locked away, and the counter under her was clear. I still checked once, because dying over Nella’s documentation would be humiliating.
I braced one hand on the counter beside her thigh. “If you want upstairs, say it.”
“I want it here.”
“If you want me to slow down, say it.”
“I want you to stop talking like an instruction manual.”
I almost smiled.
She tugged at my shirt buttons. “And I want this off.”
I let her open it. Her fingers weren’t steady now, but she didn’t hide that. She pushed the linen off my shoulders, and her palms found my chest, warm and certain.
“You’re still wearing too much jewelry,” she said.
“You keep touching it.”
“I’m allowed. I won the night.”
I bent and kissed her throat, above the place I’d marked before, not touching it yet. Her breath hitched. Her thighs tightened at my hips.
“You did,” I said against her skin.
Her fingers slid into my hair. “Say it again.”
“You won.”
Nella went still.
I lifted my head.
Her eyes were wet enough to make my chest hurt and sharp enough to warn me not to mention it.
“I had help,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I still won.”
“Yes.”
She kissed me again.
In the second kiss, she slowed at the end.
My grip eased at her waist. The heat was still there.
It had been there since the first day she insulted my shirt and handed me a margarita like a dare.
But under it, she stayed soft against me for one full breath, and I wanted to slow down for once in my life.