Page 54 of The Lies We Play

Creed

Then . . .

I’m walking past the dry cleaner on Columbus that closes at seven and the deli that never closes. There’s a small church that always has its lights on, the one with red glass candles near the side entrance and a door people touch before they walk away.

Yet all I can think of is her text.

Verdict: I have a thing for that.

Livia Sabine Crane has gone three seconds, before considering yes, on a man in a suit drinking an old-fashioned at a hockey bar, and I’m about to meet him.

I should be amused.

I am amused.

That is not the whole of it.

Jealousy would be easier to understand. Jealousy would mean I want him gone. I don’t. That is the part I don’t know what to do with. I want to see what she sees. I want to know whether this man in the suit can hold her attention without trying to own it.

Maybe worse, I want to know if he can hold mine too.

I push open the door of the Brewers Table.

The bar is loud. Warm air, beer, fried food, wet wool, someone’s cologne losing badly to the room. James sees me first and raises his chin in greeting. Two of my teammates are at a high-top by the window—Marco, hair still damp from the shower at MSG, and Reeves, a kid in his first weeks in the league who is still figuring out which postgame customs apply to him and which ones will get him chirped for the rest of the season.

They wave.

I wave back.

I don’t go over.

Not now.

I spot them at the bar.

Livia and the new guy.

Liv is on the stool she always takes—three from the end, with her back to a sight line that doesn’t include the TV but does include the door, which is how she sits so she can see me come in.

She’s wearing my away jersey.

She wore the home jersey two nights ago. She has, for reasons she hasn’t explained, decided that wearing my jersey at the Brewers Table during games is a new tradition.

Probably it’s a joke, because she doesn’t like hockey.

Probably.

The jersey is too big on her. The sleeves cover half her hands, and the name across her back does something to me I'm not going to examine in a bar with a rookie watching me from twenty feet away.

Next to her is the man who has to be Halston Saint Claire.

He is in a suit. Charcoal. Slim cut. Open at the collar—no tie—with the easy exhaustion of a man who has been in a suit since early morning and has stopped thinking about being in it. He has dark hair, almost black under the bar lights, a little too long at the front. Clean jaw. Beautiful mouth. Eyes that look like they notice exits before entrances.

He is handsome in a way that irritates me for half a second because it is not lazy beauty. It has structure. Discipline. Control. There is something contained in him, something locked behind the politeness, and it makes the room around him feel more attentive.

Fuck.

I understand why she texted me.