Page 46 of Handful

So I’d booked myself a full day at a spa on the outskirts of Millfield instead — the kind of place that handed you a robe and a schedule, and expected you to surrender the next eight hours without apology. A woman had put her elbow into every knot in my back. Another had done my nails. I’d eaten lunch alone by a window overlooking a garden and read forty pages of a novel I’d been meaning to finish for three months. What I was actually doing, in between all of that, was trying to work out what I was angry about. Whether I was angry at Handful for being exactly who he’d always been — or angry at myself for spending months thinking he could be different. I hadn’t landed on an answer by the time I drove home. But I was calmer.

I’d half expected to find a biker outside my apartment when I got home. Instead I switched my cell back on after a day of deliberate quiet and a string of texts came in at once.

Woke up to a message from Dutch. Club business. Out until Monday evening.

Not going to make you talk through a phone.

When I’m home we’ll do it right.

I hadn’t replied.

I went to the bar early Monday and did the work that settled me — going through Saturday’s numbers to see what needed replacing in the order, wiping down bottles, cutting a clean run of orange peels and laying them out like I had all the time in the world. Jamie ran glasses through the washer. Derek stood at the host stand with the reservation book and a pen he wasn’t using. They both knew something was wrong. Not what, exactly, but they probably guessed, and they knew me well enough to leave me alone. At least my friends weren’t going to say I told you so. Even if they were right.

The door opened a little after six.

I knew it was him before I looked up, because Derek went still. Derek had a radar for trouble in a room — it was why he was good at his job — and I watched his head come up and his eyes track across the floor and settle, and I knew.

He was wearing his cut, sleeves pushed up so the pin-up girls on his forearms were visible, ink I’d traced in the dark with my fingers and my tongue more times than I wanted to think about right now. He looked tired. Road tired. Like he’d come straight here off the bike without stopping at the clubhouse to clean up.

He stopped just inside the door. Saw Derek clock him, saw Jamie set down a glass and stare at him. Then he crossed the room and stopped in front of me.

“Hey.” He put his hands on the bar. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Austen.” Just my name. He had a whole register for it, low and careful, and I hated that it still did something to me. “What happened Saturday? Why did you leave?”

I picked up a cloth and wiped down the bar in front of him. “What can I get you? Old Fashioned?”

He blinked. “Austen. We need to talk.”

“We do? I’m working. Order or leave.”

“Something happened Saturday. You walked out without telling me and I need to know—”

“Derek.” I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t have to. Derek was already three steps closer than he’d been, one hand resting on the back of a chair, easy, like he was passing through. Jamie had drifted closer too, drying a glass that was already dry. My people, arranging themselves without being asked. Handful looked at them, and then back at me. I knew Derek was no real obstacle if Handful decided to push.

“When’s your break?” he said quietly.

“An hour.”

“I’ll wait.” He moved to the far end of the bar, out of the way, and sat down.

I watched him settle onto the stool. Picked up a glass. Put it back. An hour was too long to have him sitting there in my sightline, and we both knew it.

I untied my apron and folded it over the rail. “Jamie’s got the bar.” Derek nodded. I looked at Handful. “Outside.”

The sidewalk out front was empty. Handful stood with his hands shoved in his jacket pockets and I stood with my arms crossed, not because I was cold.

For a second neither of us said anything.

“I don’t know exactly what you saw,” he started. “But it wasn’t what you think.”

“That’s a bad way to begin, Handful.”

He looked at me. Just for a second, his jaw tightened. For months I’d called him Tyler. Calling him Handful now was deliberate and we both knew it.

“You’re calling me Handful,” he said.