Page 104 of Wreckage and Rain

I see you back. Corner-watching woman.

We close the booth at one. Outside, Dominic helps Marisol load a sleeping Lucia into a car seat. Autumn stands with her hands in her jacket pockets in a way that is meant to look casual and isn't. Colt and Summer are a few feet down the sidewalk, his hand at the small of her back, hers tucked into the crook of his elbow, both of them looking up at the marquee.

VIBES. Burlesque. Cabaret. The Art of Being Seen.

"You ever wonder about that line," Summer says.

"What about it."

"Whether it is a promise or a dare."

"Both. Probably."

She tilts her head against his shoulder. Just for a second.

"We leave Tuesday."

"Tuesday."

"You sure you want to do this with me."

"Summer." He turns her gently so she is facing him on the empty sidewalk under the gold marquee, and I, locking the door of my own club from the inside, look up at exactly the wrong moment, and what I see isn't a husband and a wife reconciling. It is two people standing on the same ground for the first time in too long. He has both her hands. She is looking up at him. He is looking down at her. He says something I can't hear and her shoulders drop, like they do when she has been holding something all day and gives it up.

"Yeah," she says, loud enough to carry. "Yeah, okay."

He kisses her forehead.

Not her mouth. Her forehead.

The forehead kiss of a man who has been told, expressly, that he doesn't get to lead.

I lock the door. Turn out the bar light. Go upstairs to my apartment above the club, where my phone is sitting on the kitchen counter with Autumn's DM still glowing on the screen.

I pick it up. I type.

Yes. Coffee. I know a place in Wicker Park. You can pick the time.

Send.

Three dots. Almost immediately. The dots stop. Start again. Stop.

Tomorrow at ten?

I stare at the screen.

Tomorrow at ten.

I set the phone down. I look out the apartment window at the sodium-orange light at the marquee I've built everything around, and I feel something in my chest. Not the ice. Something else.

It feels like the start of something.

I am ready to write it.

Chapter 32: Charleston

Summer

We leave before the sun. Colt loads the trunk of the rented SUV while I stand in the doorway in a hoodie and yesterday's mascara, holding both our coffees. The light is the color of wet stone. The block is still asleep.