Page 191 of Cinder
Rain spits against the windshield as I pull up outside Neverland, the neon sign dark for the first time since I can remember. The handwritten paper taped to the inside of the front window shifts slightly in the draft every time someone opens the door.
Closed today for Colt Lawson.
Don’t be assholes.
– Gwen
My hands stay on the steering wheel for a second after I kill the engine, and I glance out the window. The parking lot is packed. Fire rigs from neighboring towns line the curbbeside Maplewood trucks, reflective striping glowing under the streetlights. PD cruisers sit mixed in between them without the usual territorial parking bullshit, and through the rain-streaked glass I can already see silhouettes moving inside the bar.
So many people. Too many black clothes.
Beside me, Penny unclips her seatbelt. The bruising along her arm disappears beneath the sleeve of my hoodie, but I still see it anyway. I see all of it.
She catches me looking and gives me a small smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
“You okay?”
No. Not even remotely. But neither is she, and we’re both getting pretty good at pretending otherwise.
“Yeah,” I lie.
In the backseat, Elle kicks the heel of her sneaker against the booster absentmindedly while she watches rain race down the window. She’s been quieter lately. Careful in a way five-year-olds shouldn’t know how to be.
“You ready, bug?” I ask.
She nods once and reaches for the little penguin clipped to her jacket zipper before climbing out when I open the door.
Cold rain dampens my shoulders almost instantly as we cross the parking lot. Penny moves slower than usual beside me, still healing, and without thinking, I slide my hand against the small of her back to steady her over the slick pavement. She leans into the touch automatically, and some tightness loosens.
The second we step inside, warmth and noise hit us together.
Neverland smells like beer and fryer oil and wet jackets. Music hums low through the speakers beneath the sound of conversations layered over each other, and every table in the place is crowded with firefighters, cops, dispatchers, town council people, and old retirees who haven’t worked a truck in twenty years but still showed up in pressed station shirts.
Gwen is behind the bar in all black, pouring whiskey into glasses with the efficiency of someone running a military operation instead of a wake.
The wall behind her has been cleared except for framed photos of Colt.
Colt grinning in turnout gear. Colt holding a fish. Colt half-drunk with his arm around Fletch after last year’s Maplewood Cup win.
My stomach folds painfully.
For one stupid second, I still expect him to walk out of the back hallway carrying spicy wings and talking shit about whoever cried over the hot sauce first. The realization hits me again when he doesn’t.
It keeps happening. Little bursts of forgetting followed by the slam of remembering.
Leah spots us first.
“Oh, thank God,” she says, already moving toward us with the determined energy of someone about to feed an army. “You three look half-starved.”
“We ate before we came,” I tell her
She knows I’m deflecting, and gives me a look that says she’d like to fight me physically. “Then you can eat twice.”
Elle gets scooped into a one-armed hug before she can protest, and for the first time all day, I hear an actual little laugh out of her when Leah kisses the top of her head.
“There’s my favorite girl.”
“I thought I was your favorite girl,” Penny says lightly.
