Page 17 of Handful

“One. Not here. Somewhere quiet. Not a club thing — no brothers showing up, no bikes in the parking lot, no audience.” I held up a finger. “No surprises. You pick the place, tell me where it is so I can get myself there, and if at any point during the evening I decide I’m done, I leave and you don’t follow me. Those are the rules.”

“Rules are good.”

“They’re non-negotiable.”

“I didn’t say they were negotiable. I said they were good.” He stood up, pulled cash from his pocket, and laid it on the bar next to the book. Enough for the drink and a thirty-percent tip, same as always. “What’s your night off?”

“Sunday.”

“Sunday, then. I’ll text you the place by Friday.”

“You don’t have my number.”

He paused. Looked at me. The grin appeared — not the usual one, not the hundred-watt performance that had made me want to throw things at Dutch and Indira’s wedding. A smaller one. Almost shy, which was a word I wouldn’t have associated with this man before.

“Austen, can I have your number?”

I wrote it on a napkin. Slid it across the bar. Ten weeks of no, undone by a Bic pen and a cocktail napkin.

He took it, folded it once, and put it in his pocket without looking at it. “Sunday,” he said.

“Sunday.”

He left. The door closed behind him. I picked up the towel and wiped down a stretch of bar that was already clean.

Jamie appeared at my shoulder. “Did you just give him your number?”

“I gave him permission to text me a restaurant name.”

“You gave him your number.”

“Go restock the limes, Jamie.”

He went. Grinning.

Chapter 5

❧

— Handful —

Eleven weeks. Not that I was counting. Okay, I absolutely was counting — which would’ve gotten a laugh out of the version of me who sat in church a couple months back, watching Dutch run church with Maya asleep on his chest, thinking why does everybody track this kid by the week? I’d been smug about it. Sworn up and down I’d never once told a soul how many weeks old I was. Apparently it was catching.

Now here I was. Eleven weeks since I’d first sat down at The Velvet Hour — Velvet, as the regulars called it. I guessed I was a regular now. Eleven weeks of the same stool, the same drink — always an Old Fashioned, because damn, Austen made a killer Old Fashioned — the same book — Pride and Prejudice, which I was grinding through a few pages at a time. Just hit the part where Wickham showed up smiling, lying about everyone who’d ever done him wrong. Eleven weeks of not flirting with her staff. Eleven weeks of tipping thirty percent, keeping my hands on the bar, and my eyes where they belonged.

On Wednesday, she’d said yes. One date. Her rules. Somewhere quiet, not a club thing, no surprises.

Now, three hours before the date. I was standing in my room in a T-shirt and jeans, looking at the contents of my closet when Indira knocked.

“Dutch said you needed help.”

“Dutch has a big mouth.”

“Dutch has excellent instincts.” She walked in without waiting for an invitation, Maya on her hip - not a newborn anymore but not quite a person yet, somewhere in the middle where her eyes tracked movement and her hands grabbed anything within reach.

Indira looked at my closet. Then she looked at me. Her expression was the one she reserved for marketing proposals that needed to be burned and started over.

“No,” she said.