Chapter Six
Archer
Lottie's out the door before the bell above it even finishes ringing, her bag swinging from one hand like she just closed a business deal instead of ambushing a woman on her way out of a bar.
I catch Ace's face over at the end of the counter, delighted in the specific way of a man who's about to make this worse for somebody, and I already know who.
"Three weeks," Ace says, loud enough to travel, not loud enough to pretend he wasn't aiming it at me. "Lottie's got good instincts. I'm putting money on tonight."
"You said that last week about a different pool."
"I have range." He toasts me with his beer, entirely pleased with himself. "Congratulations, by the way. On whatever this is."
I don't answer that. There's nothing in me that needs to.
Six months on this mountain of a life, at this door, and people have had opinions about me the entire time, wife theories, hermit theories, one memorable rumor that I was in witness protection because I don't talk much and once drove to Fresno for parts nobody could explain.
None of it ever landed anywhere near a nerve.
Ace can run his pool. Lottie can run three of them.
I've got a wall built for exactly this kind of noise, and it holds.
What doesn't hold, apparently, is watching Maya hear it.
She's twenty feet away, restocking napkins that don't need restocking, which used to be my bit before she borrowed it without asking.
Her shoulders are up near her ears. She's got that too-careful posture people get right before they drop something, moving like every motion's been pre-approved by a committee that's already regretting the vote.
I clock the difference right away because I’m doing everything possible to be fluent in Maya Reyes.
The blush from earlier, when I said her name at the bar and she went pink to her collar, that one had heat in it.
This one doesn't. This one's got her jaw tight and her eyes anywhere but the door, and it's easy math to figure out which direction that came from.
Ace, sensing nothing, keeps going. "You two want in on the pool yourselves? Insider trading's usually frowned on, but I could be persuaded."
"Ace."
"Just saying. Man's been standing at that door for six months like it's about to explode, and tonight he can't stop looking over here. That's not nothing."
I give him a look that used to end conversations in the Army and still works on civilians. It works on Ace for four seconds, which is a personal best for him, and then he grins and finds somewhere else to be, which is the correct call.
Maya doesn't look over once for the rest of the shift.
She gets through close on autopilot, wiping the same six inches of bar top like it owes her money, restocking straws that were already stocked, counting her till twice when once has always been enough.
I watch it happen from the door, the way I watch most things: quiet, thorough, filing details I'm not going to do anything useful with tonight.
She doesn't break another glass. She doesn't say another word to me either.
The second her apron comes off, she's moving.
Bag over one shoulder, keys already in hand before she's through the back hallway, a woman leaving a building as if the place is on fire.
No wave to Ainsley. No parting shot at Ace.
Straight out the side door into a parking lot that's gone quiet and dark except for the one light that's flickered since I got here and nobody's fixed.
I follow. Not a decision that takes long to make. The kind where you're already moving before you've bothered arguing with yourself about it.
She's got her car door half open when I catch up, keys jangling, two seconds from being gone.
"Maya."
She turns fast enough that her bag swings into the doorframe. "Oh. Hi. I'm fine, by the way, in case that's the question, which I'm assuming it is, given the whole following me to my car thing, which, no judgment, but also, why."
"Wasn't a question yet."
"Well, get in line, because I've got an entire answer prepared, regardless.
" She drops her bag onto the passenger seat, hands moving fast, the same efficient panic I watched her pour into a shaker two hours ago.
"It's the pool thing. I know it's stupid.
It's a seventy-two-year-old woman running odds on my love life in front of customers, it's not a big deal, people have survived worse, but I've had the job for one day and I already have a betting line, and I just got done being managed out of a career I actually built, so forgive me if 'the whole bar is invested in whether I'm sleeping with you' is a lot to process on top of the rest of my current situation. "
"Nobody said sleeping with me."
"They implied it. Aggressively. With a cane."
Something in my chest that's been quiet the entire shift decides now's the time to move. "Doesn't bother me. The pool."
"Great. Good for you. I'm thrilled one of us has healthy coping mechanisms."
"Wasn't finished." I step closer, close enough that she stops fidgeting with her keys long enough to look at me. "Don't care what Lottie thinks. Don't care what Ace thinks. The only thing that bothered me tonight was watching it get to you."
That stops her mid-sentence, mouth already open on whatever came next, and nothing comes out.
I don't wait for it. Been waiting on enough things this week already.
I kiss her.
She stills, long enough that I almost pull back and call it a mistake, and then her hand comes up and fists in my shirt like she's been waiting on this longer than I have, which, given the last two weeks, might actually be true.
It's short. It's not built to be anything else: a parking lot, one working light, a woman who needs to be behind a wheel in the next five minutes and not distracted doing it.
But it's enough to file away next to everything else I've been filing away since a wrong number and a voicemail.
I pull back before either of us makes it longer than it should be.
"Been wanting to do that a while now," I say, which is as close to poetry as I've got in me tonight.
She blinks up at me, flushed for a reason that's the good kind again. "That's it? That's the whole speech?"
"Drive home safely, Maya."
I step back, giving her room to get in the car, and she does, still staring at me like she's trying to work out what just happened to her week.
I wait until her headlights swing out of the lot before I head back toward the door, and I don't bother wiping the smirk off my face on the way, because there's nobody left out here to see it but me.
Already thinking about the next excuse I'll find to stand near that register.