Page 42 of Taking Savannah
"Dahlia? When Charlotte said Custodian?"
"Yeah."
"She knows that word. From before. From somewhere that isn't these files."
He nods. "I'm not asking her tonight."
"Obviously not tonight, asshole. Her father's dying."
"Tomorrow?"
"Let the poor woman grieve, he might pass tonight. Or tomorrow, either way, she needs time. The Custodian thing can wait until she's ready." I wipe the counter. "But she needs to know we saw it. At some point. She needs to know we're not stupid."
"She already knows you're not stupid. She sized you up in the first ten seconds and decided you were worth talking to. That's not nothing. Dahlia doesn't talk to people she doesn't respect."
"She called you a disaster."
"That's her love language."
I snort. I put the whiskey back on the shelf and start washing the glasses. Emilio comes around the bar and picks up a towel and dries beside me, and we stand there doing dishes in silence and it's so fucking domestic I could scream.
"Hey," I say.
"What’s up, vixen?”
"I don't belong here."
He sets a glass down. "We've been through this… you belong with me."
"Not in the big dramatic way. I mean in the quiet way. I'm standing behind a bar pouring drinks for your family while they get ready to bury the man who built all of this, and I've known these people for three weeks. Three. I'm not a wife. I'm not a sister. I'm not even a real girlfriend. I'm the bartender who heard a thing and stuck around because she had nowhere else to go and the guy she's sleeping with has a nice smile."
"I do have a great fucking smile, don’t I."
"Asshole."
"What." He turns to look at me. Hands wet, towel over his shoulder, his face doing the thing it does when the joking stops, and the person underneath shows up. "You think belonging is about how long you've known people? Charlotte's been here six months. Alexandra less than a year. Dahlia just walked back in after three years away. Nobody in this compound has a tenure that matches the shit they've been through together. Time isn't the metric. Showing up is."
"I’m literally pouring drinks."
"You hold the room together. You held it together tonight. Dahlia sat at that bar and drank and talked because you made it safe enough to do that. You made it normal. You gave her a stool and a glass and a woman across the counter who wasn't going togive her a speech, and that's the only reason she stayed longer than ten minutes."
I don't say anything. I wash the last glass and hand it to him and he dries it and puts it on the shelf.
"Your grandmother," he says. "Gigi. She raised you behind a bar."
"She raised me everywhere. The bar was just where I learned the most."
"And what did you learn?"
"That the person holding the bottle is the most important person in the room. Because she decides who gets numb and who has to sit with it." I turn off the water. "Gigi said that. I was fifteen. I thought she was talking about alcohol. She wasn't."
He's quiet for a second. Then he leans over and kisses the side of my head. Not my mouth. My head. The temple. A small, warm press that isn't asking for anything.
"Come to bed," he says.
"Close up first. Bottles capped, stools pushed in, rag folded."
"You run a tight ship."
