Page 88 of Smoke and Glitter

I've cleaned around it for weeks. Reached over it, moved bottles beside it, slid receipts underneath it and pulled them back out. Tonight I take it with me to the office. I shut the door and sit down. The paper is soft at one corner from being handled too many times. I turn it over.

Autumn probably wrote out the whole thing. Who to call first. What to say if he refuses. What to do if he hangs up. Every possible version of a conversation I haven't been willing to have. My thumb slips beneath the edge of the flap. I stop. For a while I just sit there.

Opening it means admitting she was right about the problem. That's not the part bothering me. She usually is. Opening it means seeing how much time she spent on a piece of my life after I made damn sure she understood I hadn't invited her into it. I put the envelope on the desk and go back behind the bar.

A couple of days later, I look up the restaurant. Not him. The restaurant. I've been using that distinction for two years, and it isn't any less stupid because I've been consistent about it. The second location has an opening date now. There are photographs of the new space, a menu preview and a piece about the expansion. His name is halfway down the page. Then there he is.

He looks older. So do I. His hair is different, but the rest of him is familiar enough that my body reacts before anything else does. My shoulders tighten. My jaw locks. Three years disappears fast when somebody's face is involved. I close the photograph, but keep the website open. He built another restaurant.

Whatever is attached to the company we used to share didn't stop him from doing that. He found whatever path he needed and kept going. I've spent three years refusing to make one phone call. Across the room, Autumn's envelope is sitting on my desk.

I copy the restaurant's number into my phone and leave it open. Then I put Autumn's envelope in the drawer beside my knee before I go downstairs.

Chapter sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Autumn

My phone buzzes while I'm waiting in line for my coffee.

Jake

here

I read it twice before calling him.

"Did you mean to text me? Here where?"

"London."

I grab my latte and head for the door. "Aren't you supposed to be in Ireland?"

"Monday."

I push through the coffee shop door. "And you're in London."

"I noticed."

"Holloway."

There's enough noise on his end that I have to press the phone closer to my ear.

"I wanted to see you. Figured if I was gonna be that close might as well make it happen."

That shuts me up for a second.

"You rerouted. For me?"

"Yeah."

"That is deeply inconvenient behavior."

"You're welcome."

He sends me the name of a pub to meet him at before we hang up. A few hours later, I push through the door into warm air that smells like fried fish, beer and wet wool. Conversation rolls beneath a football match playing too quietly over the bar. Jake is already at a table near the back, his jacket hanging over the chair beside him.

He spots me and gets to his feet. By the time I reach him, his attention has already moved over my face and settled there a little too long.