Page 95 of Pin My Alpha
“Rough one?” a voice says from the end of the bar.
I look over. Ruth Rowe is on the stool nearest the register, her red lipstick perfect. Her jacket is buttoned up despite the warmth in here, her purse hooked over one wrist like it might contain a weapon.
“Evening, Ruth.”
“Is it?”
That gets a real smile out of me, small and tired. “Not particularly.”
“Thought so.” She doesn’t order. That’s how I know something’s up. Ruth orders rye whiskey, one cube of ice. Tonight, she just watches me. “You look like shit, Declan.”
Tessa makes a choking sound near the taps.
“Good to see you, too.”
“I mean it affectionately.”
“Somehow, that doesn’t help.”
“It shouldn’t.” She slides onto the stool properly, folding her hands on the bar. “Pour me my whiskey. Not the cheap stuff.”
“I’d never.”
“You did once. In 2019.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember everything that inconveniences me.”
I set her drink down, one clean cube of ice clicking against the glass. She takes a sip, her eyes still on me over the rim. The silence stretches. Ruth is good at silence. She doesn’t fill space to make anyone comfortable.
I break first. “Benji send you?”
“No.”
“Jude?”
“No.”
“Milo?”
“He texted me a picture of soup yesterday, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I blink. “Why?”
“Apparently that’s how young people communicate concern now. A photograph of lentils.”
That sounds exactly like Milo. My chest gives a stupid little pull. At least Shay’s not alone.
Ruth puts her glass down. “Nobody sent me.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I’ve been drinking in this bar since you had the bad sign and the worse stools. And I know what you look like when you’re trying to disappear in plain sight.”
I look down at the polished wood. Shay spent days insisting the lighting mattered. He’d stood right where Ruth is sitting, tapping through a presentation on his laptop, explaining sightlines and color palettes. He was right about all of it.
“You know,” Ruth says, “most men your age buy a motorcycle for their midlife crisis.”
