Page 8 of After the Snap

“Do you want a lime?”

She hesitates, her eyes flicking toward mine a second time. “Will a lime make me look like I know what I’m doing?”

“Not even remotely.” I lift my glass toward her before taking another drink, finally giving myself permission to look at the woman who claimed the empty stool beside mine.

She doesn’t look like she belongs in a neighborhood bar, trading sarcastic remarks with strangers. Gold wire-frame glasses rest on her nose just above a small golden hoop, half-hidden beneath dark braids twisted into two buns on either side of her head. Her golden-brown skin catches the soft light hanging over the bar, and every time she shifts, the stack of bracelets crowding one wrist answers with the quietest clink. She looks like sunshine wrapped in flowing fabric, someone you’d expect to find browsing a bookstore or painting in a park.

But then she opens her mouth. “You’re the one drinking alone in a bar before dinner. I don’t think you’re qualified to judge anyone else’s choices.”

The bartender snorts as he reaches for another glass to pour her drink.

“I didn’t judge your choice. I judged the lime.”

“That’s even worse. The lime hasn’t done anything to you.”

I snort into my bourbon and immediately regret it. Whiskey catches in my throat, and I cough into my fist until my eyes sting. By the time I manage to breathe again, the bartender is setting a vodka soda in front of her.

“Vodka soda with innocent lime.”

“Thank you.”

She turns the glass once in her hands before studying the lime floating near the rim with enough suspicion to make me wonder if she’s actually considering my argument.

She lifts the glass toward me. “If this tastes terrible, I'm blaming you.”

“People have blamed me for far worse today.”

I take another drink, hoping the bourbon gives her enough time to pretend she didn’t hear what slipped through the cracks. Instead of asking what I mean, she studies the glass for another second before taking a cautious sip, and her nose wrinkles.

“That bad?” I ask.

“It tastes like someone whispered the word fruit near a glass of cleaning solution.”

The bartender points at the lime floating near the rim. “That’s your innocent party.”

She watches it bob in the glass before pressing it beneath the surface with one finger. “I owe it an apology.”

I shake my head, smiling into my bourbon.

A few hours ago, Graham was explaining why getting traded was the best thing that could’ve happened to my career. Coach Quinn was asking me to believe Charlotte still wanted me. Every sports show in the country had an opinion about my future before I ever had the chance to form one of my own.

She hasn’t asked my name or tried to guess why I walked in here looking like the day had already beaten me. She simply lets me be another guy at the end of the bar.

“Still terrible?”

She looks over, taking another sip before answering. “Not as terrible as it was five minutes ago.”

“That might be the most anyone should expect from a drink.” I tip my glass toward hers as her smile grows. “Or an evening.”

The conversation could end there, but when I turn a little farther toward her on the stool, I find she has already angled herself toward me.

She keeps one hand around her glass while the other rests on the bar between us, bracelets slipping toward her wrist whenever she moves. Up close, the gold threaded through her braids catches the light when she turns her head. A few braids fall beside her cheeks, brushing the round frames of her glasses when she tips her chin toward my bourbon.

“Does yours actually taste good, or have you been drinking it long enough to stop caring?”

“It tastes exactly how bourbon is supposed to taste.”

“That wasn’t the question.”