Page 14 of Handful

I ignored him and went back to work. Wednesday nights at Velvet were manageable — enough business to stay busy, not enough to drown. The after-work crowd had thinned to the regulars, the couple in booth four who came every Wednesday and always ordered the same thing, and a group of women at table six who were two bottles of prosecco into what looked like a very productive divorce-planning session.

And Handful. At the end of the bar. Reading Jane Austen like his life depended on it.

Ten weeks. He’d been coming back for ten weeks, ever since that Tuesday night when he’d sat on this stool and apologized — really apologized, not the kind men do when they want something — and I’d told him no. No to a date, no to anything beyond bartender-and-customer, no to whatever he thought was going to happen if he kept showing up and being sorry.

He’d taken the no.

I’d expected him to push. Men like him always pushed — that was the playbook, the escalation, the assumption that no was a speed bump, not a wall. He hadn’t pushed. He’d come back the next night, sat at the same stool, ordered the same drink, and read. Didn’t try to start a conversation. Didn’t linger at the bar when I was serving other customers. Didn’t perform his reformation for an audience.

He just sat there. Quiet. Reading a book about a man who was an asshole and a woman who saw through him.

I was not going to think about that metaphor.

“Austen.” Derek materialized at my shoulder. Derek had a gift for materializing — he moved through the floor without sound, which made him excellent at managing a room and slightly unnerving as a colleague. “Your biker’s back.”

“He’s not my biker.”

“He’s sitting at your bar reading a romance novel.”

“It’s not a romance novel. It’s a novel about manners.”

“It has a love story in it.”

“It has social commentary in it.”

“It has a man being humbled by a woman who’s smarter than him.”

I looked at Derek. He shrugged once, unrepentant. “Derek. I served him. I’ve already had a version of this conversation with Jamie.”

“Then you’ve heard the optimistic version.” He folded his arms. “Let me give you the other one. It’s a long con. He’s playing the redemption angle. New him, look how much I’ve changed. They all do it.”

“Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe. I’ve been in this business longer than you. Men like that have three modes: charm, apology, charm again. He’s on mode two. Mode three’s coming.”

“Noted.”

Derek gave me one more I know what I’m talking about look and went back to the floor.

I built a Negroni for the woman at seat three, poured two glasses of the Willamette Pinot for the Wednesday couple, and held out about ninety seconds before I looked at the end of the bar.

He was frowning at the book again. His finger was resting on a line like he’d found something he wanted to argue with. The cut sat across his shoulders. It should have looked absurd in here, the leather and the patches against the polished wood and the pendant lights. It didn’t. He wore it the way some men wore wedding rings.

He looked up. Caught me watching. And instead of the grin — the one I’d been bracing for, the one that said gotcha — he just raised his glass slightly, gave me a nod, and then he went back to his book.

Damn it.

❧

Indira came in at nine.

I hadn’t seen her in months — since before the baby. She looked tired. Coffee-and-willpower tired. She’d put on lipstick anyway.

“You’re alive,” I said.

“Barely.” She slid onto the stool closest to the service well — my end, where we could talk without shouting. “Maya’s with Dutch. I told him I needed an hour to just be myself. He told me to take two.”

“What are you drinking?”