Page 103 of Wreckage and Rain

Colt, from his quiet corner: "Knoxville's a nice drive from here. Long, but pretty. Once you cross into Tennessee you start seeing the hills. The leaves should still be turning when she goes."

The booth goes a little quiet.

Summer turns her head and looks at him. Just looks. He has, without meaning to, said what a husband says about a city hiswife is going to visit. Not I'll come, not I'll fly down, just the easy aside of a man who has already thought about the route. Marisol's mouth quirks at the corner. Autumn writes something down in the notebook and doesn't show us what it is.

Summer says, "Yeah. The leaves." And she doesn't look away.

He doesn't look away either.

It lasts a beat too long for a casual moment and not long enough to be a scene, and then Lucia, who has lost interest in Auntie's hair, declares "WUCY WANTS THE PURPLE CRAYON," and the tension breaks because the only thing more powerful than two people remembering they are in love is a toddler with a specific equipment request.

"It is in your mom's bag, baby."

"Wucy needs it NOW."

Marisol digs the crayon out and Lucia takes it and clambers, with the focus of a tactical operator, off Summer's lap and across the table and into the booth seat next to Colt, where she proceeds to lay her construction paper across his thigh and begin a drawing, ignoring him entirely while requiring his leg as a desk.

He sits perfectly still.

"Don't move," Summer says.

"I won't move for the rest of my life."

Dom, from across the booth: "Get used to it, Bennet."

"I have been crayoned on by Lucia exactly once before and Marisol made me throw out the jeans. I am being practical."

Marisol laughs. Actually laughs. It is the first time I have heard her laugh at something Colt said, which means he has, without anyone noticing, crossed into the second circle of trust. He registers it. He doesn't draw attention to it.

"You wear two-hundred-dollar jeans, brother. That's your problem."

"I'll consider it."

Dom raises his bourbon at him. Colt raises his back. He keeps his thigh still and accepts the role of human easel. Lucia draws a shnake. Then another shnake. Then what might be a moon or might be a pancake. Autumn glances at me at the bar. Her wavy red hair is backlit by the show lights, and she is absolutely stunning. She's doing what she's done all weekend, looking a half-second too long, then looking away.

I haven't responded to her DM yet. The one she sent on Wednesday night that said: if I'm ever in Chicago again would you actually want to get coffee or are we doing the polite thing.

The DM has been in my phone since Wednesday. I have read it more times than I'm going to count. I haven't answered because every answer I have drafted has been wrong in a different way. Yes was wrong because it was too fast. Maybe was wrong because it was a coward's word. I would like that was the right one and I deleted it twice because I don't entirely know if I am ready to put like that in writing.

She knows I haven't answered. She hasn't asked. She is just here, in the booth, doing what she does, holding her own space.

I pour her a fresh mezcal. Walk it over. Set it in front of her. She looks up and her green eyes are sparkling at me.

"Are you closing soon?"

"Half hour."

"Will you come sit?"

"For a minute."

"For more than a minute."

I look at her. She holds my gaze. Steady. Like her best friend does. It is a King-Hayes inheritance, that look. They learned it from each other in middle school and never put it down.

"For more than a minute," I say.

I go back to the bar. I do the last of the cash. Tony, the new closer, comes on. I hand him the keys to the register and I cross the dim room to the booth where my favorite peopleare arguing about Knoxville and a two-and-a-half-year-old is drawing pancake-moons on a man's leg. I sit down on the end of the bench next to Autumn, and she shifts to make room, and the warmth of her against the side of my arm is a small thing I notice and don't push away. Across the table, Summer catches my eye. The smallest tilt of her chin. The corner-lady acknowledgment. I see you, Sam. I see what you are doing.