Page 125 of Fate, Interrupted

“Well?” he says.

I chew. I consider. I take another sip of my drink.

“Mine is better,” I say.

“That’s not possible.”

“It absolutely is. Try it.” I cut a piece of mine and push the plate toward him.

He takes it, and I watch his face for the verdict. He delivers the answer with a silence that is more damning than anything he could say out loud.

“Yours is better,” he says.

“I know.”

“How did you know?”

“Because I always order the thing that sounds like it has the most going on,” I say. “It’s a philosophy.”

He picks up his own burger. “That sounds like a way to be wrong a lot.”

“It also sounds like a way to find the best burger in every roadside bar between here and Paxton,” I say. “Sample size of one. Very promising.”

His expression eases, the last of whatever the confrontation left behind dropping back into the attentiveness he’s had all evening: focused, warm, a little more present than he usually lets himself be in public.

I lean back in the booth.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You’re going to anyway.”

“That’s fair.” I rest my elbows on the table. “I’ve had wolf customers in my shop for years. Regulars. People I see every week, same time, same kind of books. I know what they read; I know their routines; I know who prefers the armchair by the window and who always asks about new releases.” I pause. “But I don’t actually know any of them.”

He sets his burger down.

“They come in; they’re polite, but they never really engage. Like there’s a whole part of their lives they don’t let anybody see.”

“That’s not an accident,” he says.

“I didn’t think it was.” I tilt my head. “Why?”

He leans back, his forearm resting on the edge of the table. “Because it’s easier,” he says. “If people don’t know you, they can’t decide what to do with what they know.”

“They decide anyway,” I say. “People always decide.”

“Yes,” he says. “But distance gives you a little control over how much of that decision matters.”

I ponder that. “That’s not really living.”

“No, I guess not. It qualifies as surviving, though.”

I trace the edge of my glass with one finger and think about the wolves who come into The Last Chapter every week, who pick out their books, who conduct their transactions with a politeness that has always felt like a wall I never thought to question.

I was someone they were keeping their distance from.

That hits harder than I like.

“What about work?” I ask. “Jobs. Is it always as limited as it seems from the outside?”