Page 4 of Don't Go
I closed my eyes for one second, and I opened them.
I made it again.
I made it watching his face the entire time, which was deeply unwise of me because his face was annoyingly pleasing to watch. I twisted the orange peel against the rim of the glass with what I'll say was unnecessary aggression. I slid the new glass across.
He sipped. He nodded. "Perfect. Thank you."
You're welcome, you absolute menace.
He didn’t leave. Instead, he stayed at the bar, taking a slow sip of his perfect drink as he looked out at the room. Then he turned back to me.
"Could you also recommend something strong? For after. Something with?—"
"I'm going to close the bar," I replied in a calm voice.
He blinked. "What?"
"Sir, if you order a drink a specific way one more time, I'm going to close the bar. I don't care if there are four hundred people here. I'll close it, I'll go home, and I'll explain it to my boss tomorrow with a song."
He stared at me for half a second.
Then he laughed.
He laughed loudly—actual laughter, not the polite breath-through-the-nose that rich people did at parties—and his shoulders dropped a quarter inch. He picked up his perfect Negroni, he tipped it at me, and he slid off the stool.
"Noted. I'll behave."
He walked away and crossed the room toward the family by the windows. The woman in cream turned and smiled at him. The lighter-haired guy clapped him on the shoulder. The dark-haired man looked up from the woman in green and nodded once.
Oh.
He was one ofthem.
Of course, he is, Sabrina. He smelled good. He had cheekbones. He ordered a Negroni with seven adjectives. He wasn't going to turn out to be a substitute teacher.
I poured myself a glass of soda water, and drank it standing up.
A man came up to the bar a minute later. The dark-haired one from the windows. He didn't say hello. He didn't smile.
"A glass of the white. Anything that's already cracked."
I made it in under thirty seconds, and I slid it across without looking up.
He took it and walked away.
The whole family must order their drinks like they're sending people to the gallows. Lovely.
A few minutes later, the Negroni guy was on the raised platform at the front of the room, holding a microphone. I almost didn't track it—I was halfway through a pour of pinot for a woman who was trying to tell me about her sommelier course in Tuscany—but the room went quieter. Somebody at the front had cleared their throat. I looked up.
It was him, up at the mic, easy as anything, thanking the patrons, announcing the highest bids of the evening, doing thetidy work of a host. He was good at it, he was confident with it, and he spoke loosely enough that you forgot there was a script.
Huh. Board member, maybe. Or family, doing the family thing.
He paused, and grinned. "Now my brother has something he would like to say."
The dark-haired man from the windows walked up onto the platform. The woman in green walked up after him, her face going through three things in two seconds—recognition, then panic, then her hand coming up to her mouth like she was trying to hold the moment in. The dark-haired man took the microphone.
He didn't say much. He said he'd been trying to think of the right place to do this for a month. That he realized the right place was wherever she was. He said he loved her, and he’d love her forever for the rest of his life.
