Page 33 of Wild Card 13

I glanced toward the stereo automatically just as Lucy looked over too.

Then both of us laughed quietly at the exact same time.

“Your dad listens to this constantly,” she said.

“My dad thinks music peaked in 1973.”

“He might not be wrong.”

I grinned slightly and turned the volume up a little.

Something settled differently inside the cab as the song played. The kind of moment you don’t realize matters until much later when it’s already attached itself to you permanently.

Lucy leaned back slightly against the seat, watching snowy downtown streets blur past outside while the song drifted softly between us.

And somewhere halfway through the chorus, she started absentmindedly singing under her breath. Quiet enough she probably didn’t realize she was doing it.

I looked over at her instinctively. Then immediately forgot how breathing worked again.

Because she looked happy. Just Lucy sitting in the passenger seat of my truck with flushed cheeks and winter light catching against her hair while The Beatles played softly through blown speakers.

By the time we pulled into a parking spot outside Matt’s, snow had started falling again.

Soft flakes drifting lazily through the yellow glow of the streetlights while downtown Northbend settled into that strange in-between feeling winter evenings always carried. Busy without rushing. Cold without feeling empty.

Lucy looked up at the old brick building through the windshield. “This is where we’re celebrating?”

I looked over at her like she’d just insulted my entire bloodline. “Watch your tone.”

She laughed quietly. “I’m asking a question.”

“You’re questioning greatness.”

The red awning stretched over the entrance exactly the same way it always had, faded around the edges from years of weather and Minnesota winters that apparently tried to destroy everything equally.

Matt’s didn’t look impressive from outside. That was part of the point. No giant signs. No trendy downtown energy. No polished restaurant aesthetic trying too hard to convince people it mattered.

Just an old Northbend bar that had existed forever and fully intended to outlive everyone currently inside it.

I killed the engine and climbed out quickly before jogging around the truck through the cold to open Lucy’s door for her.

She blinked up at me as she stepped down onto the snowy pavement. “What was that?”

“What?”

“The door thing.”

“I’m being gentlemanly.”

“That sounded painful for you to say.”

“It was horrible.”

Lucy smiled and pulled her scarf tighter around her neck as we headed toward the entrance together.

The second I pulled the heavy door open, warmth wrapped around us. Alive in a way that never demanded anything from you. The smell wafted from the grill—grease, grilled beef, onions caramelizing on the old flat-top behind the bar, beer soaked into decades-old wood and fryer oil and winter jackets drying from the snow outside.

Matt’s always smelled the same.