Page 29 of Into Pitch

“Drink break first! Then I’ll do another.” She promises as she steps down from the stage and disappears into the crowd with practiced ease. Sliding through bodies like she’s among them. People reach out to lightly touch her arm or shoulder, all of it friendly and familiar. She doesn’t once flinch or recoil, but beams back and offers words I can’t make out.

I watch her as she pushes to the bar, slipping behind it with the smooth confidence of someone who knows every inch of that space. Within seconds she’s back to work; hands moving fast, smile flashing as she takes orders, laughing at something someone says.

She’s good at this.

Not just the bartending, but the social dance.

I adjust my position to get a better view as she leans in to hear a customer over the chaos, then straightens and slides a drink across the counter with a grin that feels genuine.

It bothers me.

Not because its happy, but because she has this version of herself that exists entirely outside of what she gives me in my office.

I see now that I’ve been working with an incomplete picture and I do not like that. That would need to change, and I would have to figure out a way to make it so.

My jaw tightens as I fight the urge to move closer. It would only be a step, just enough to hear her voice without the microphones filter, but I don’t move.

I remind myself that I am not here to be seen, but to observe. So I stay where I am, drinkless, untouched by the bar’s chaos, and let the questions build.

What makes her tick outside of her trauma?

What does she want when she isn’t afraid?

Who is she when she isn’t trying to survive?

I realize, with a slow, sharp interest, that the answers to those questions might matter more than anything she’s said on my couch. Because trauma explains why someone breaks, but it doesn’t explain why they keep going.

And Sadie keeps going.

I want to know how.

I will know how.

Exhaling, I leave before she sings again.

Not because I’ve had enough, but because I don’t trust myself to stay without shifting from observation into something else. Because the longer I watch her move through that room like she belongs to it, the more something in me wants to step into her line of sight and see what happens.

I can’t do that.

Yet.

I slip out into the cold night air and let the door shut behind me. The sound of the bar muffles instantly, leaving only faint bass leaking through the walls like a distant heartbeat.

As I walk back to my car, the image of her on that stage follows me. Hell, her voice follows me. And beneath it all, a quiet certainty settles, unpleasant and satisfying in equal measure.

I have more questions now than I did when I walked in.

And I will get the answers.

The bus creaks when the wind shifts, metal sighing like it’s tired of holding itself together.

Same, Bus. Same.

I’m curled up on the narrow bench that doubles as a couch, legs tucked under me, notebook open on the little fold-out table I welded myself last year. The heater hums in the corner, fighting a losing battle against February cold, and my breath fogs faintly when I exhale too close to the window.

Valentine’s Day hangover without the hangover.

It’s lovely.