Page 67 of Handful

Handful was two stools down with his clipboard and a coffee, going over the numbers from the weekend. He didn’t look up. “She’s been here twenty-five minutes and she’s insulted four of your drinks, your stirring technique, and the way you hold a glass.”

“The glass was a public service. He holds a coupe like he’s about to throw it at someone.”

“In fairness,” Handful said, “he might be.”

The numbers were stupid good. Fewin was turning into something I could be proud of. And Handful — somewhere in the last week and a half, the man had stopped being a man I was ignoring and gone back to being someone I could trade insults with for an hour without checking the clock. We’d found the rhythm. Quick and dry, him lobbing, me knocking it down.

It was easy. But I didn’t want him clocking how much I was enjoying myself.

Fewin set an Old Fashioned on the bar and slid it down toward Handful. “One for you, brother.”

Handful looked at it and shook his head. “I’m good.”

Fewin blinked. “It’s a perfectly decent Old Fashioned.”

“I don’t drink Old Fashioneds unless she makes them.”

I looked up. “What? Why? Is that some kind of biker superstition?”

He grinned at me. “You made me an Old Fashioned the first night we met. Best one I’ve ever had.” He looked at me. “Told you once you were my last. Covers a lot of ground.”

“Handful,” I said. “I told you the night you came back — that wasn’t the first time we’d met.”

He went still. “I remember. You said four. I’ve never figured out where you got four from though.”

“You really don’t remember, do you?”

“Remember what?”

“You’re a man who’s strolled through life on the working assumption that he made a charming first impression on every woman he ever met.” I leaned on the bar. “The night at Velvet wasn’t your first impression on me. It wasn’t even your second.”

He went still. The grin dropped, and I watched him trying to place me.

“Go on,” he said eventually.

“Dutch and Indira’s wedding. I was there with someone — doesn’t matter who — and a biker with pin-up tattoos and a great deal of confidence decided I was the most interesting thing in the room and would not be told otherwise. Three separate times. I shut you down three times and you kept coming back like a Labrador who’d found a tennis ball.”

Recognition flashed across his face. “The redhead.”

“Oh, you do remember.” That honestly surprised me.

“Ruby,” he said, and closed his eyes.

I hadn’t expected that one at all. “Ruby.”

He put his face in one hand. Fewin, down the bar, had stopped pretending to build a new Negroni and was openly listening, delighted.

“That’s three,” Handful said, into his hand. “You said four. What’s the other one?”

“A birthday party. My friend Rachel had started seeing a prospect and dragged me along to a birthday party at the clubhouse.” I picked up a lime and started cutting it, because I wanted something to do with my hands and because making him wait for it was the most fun I’d had all day. “You came over. You were very charming for about four seconds, and then you spent the next twenty minutes having a conversation with my chest.”

Fewin snorted.

“I’m not exaggerating for effect,” I went on. “Twenty minutes. Not a glance. A conversation. At one point I genuinely wondered if you thought that was where the sound was coming from. So I told you your conversation might improve if you tried making eye contact.”

“And what did I do,” Handful said, still behind the hand, the voice of a man who already knew.

“You grinned at me like I’d handed you a trophy.”