Page 58 of The Lies We Play

It doesn’t.

It proves the world is still there, that men can keep pouring drinks while something irreversible begins three stools from the service well.

I take the beer.

“Thanks.” Then look at Halston. “We’re in the friends stage. As in getting slowly to know each other so . . . you’ll catch up fast.”

And then, for good measure, I wink at him.

I sit on the empty stool to Livia’s other side.

Livia between us. Halston on her right. Me on her left.

Three at a bar.

It should feel like nothing.

A seating arrangement. A joke. A postgame drink with a girl I can’t stop texting and a man I met two minutes ago.

It doesn't feel like nothing.

Livia’s knee bumps mine beneath the bar.

She freezes for half a second.

I don’t move away.

Halston notices.

He notices everything.

His mouth curves at the corner, barely there, and he turns his old-fashioned on the bar with two fingers.

“So,” Halston says, looking between us, “does this sharing arrangement come with rules?”

Livia opens her mouth.

Closes it.

For once, no immediate answer.

I take a drink of beer to give us all one second.

It tastes cold and ordinary.

Nothing else does.

“We’re new to the arrangement,” I say. “As I mentioned, we’re in the early stages.”

Halston’s eyes move to mine.

“Good,” he says.

Livia looks from him to me.

“Good?”

Halston lifts one shoulder, elegant even in a hockey bar, even with James shouting at someone about closing a tab. “Then no one has had time to ruin it with bad policy.”