Page 44 of The Grumpy Defenseman
“That’s a lot of rules.”
“I’m a lawyer. Rules are my love language.”
The drinks arrived. I took a sip. The warmth spread through my chest, not healing anything, just taking the edge off the cold that had been sitting there since yesterday.
We talked. Not about Evan.
About Bella’s new case, something involving embezzlement and a man who had hidden money inside a taxidermized moose. About the restaurant she had discovered at the Pearl that served the best tamales she had eaten outside her grandmother’s kitchen. About the condo she was furnishing with estate-sale pieces because, according to Bella, new furniture had no character and she refused to live somewhere that looked like a hotel lobby.
I laughed. Actually laughed. The sound surprised me. It came out rougher than usual, like it had to push past something to get free, but it was real.
A man materialized at the edge of our booth. Good smile. Easy confidence. The kind that came from either genuine self-assurance or a careful avoidance of introspection.
“Hey,” he said, directing his attention at me with a warmth that felt unearned but not unwelcome. “Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to say you look incredible tonight.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I’m Noah.”
“Samantha.”
Bella kicked me under the table with the subtlety of a freight train.
“He’s cute,” she whispered when Noah went to get us drinks we had not asked for. “And breathing. You owe the other one nothing.”
Noah came back. He was easy to talk to, the kind of man who asked questions and actually listened to the answers. Marketing. New to San Antonio. Liked live music and thought the breakfast-taco debate between San Antonio and Austin was the most important constitutional crisis of our time.
I flirted.
Just enough to remember I still could.
Bella watched the exchange with the satisfied expression of a woman whose plan was working exactly as designed. Then she stood abruptly.
“Jukebox,” she announced. “We’re dancing.”
“No one else is dancing.”
“Exactly. We’re starting something.”
She crossed the bar, punched in a song from approximately 2008, and turned back with a grin that could have powered a small city.
The music kicked in. I rolled my eyes. Got up anyway. Saying no to Bella Rey was a skill I had never developed and probably never would.
We danced. Not gracefully. But with the kind of joyful recklessness that made other people smile and eventually join in.
For three minutes and forty-two seconds, I was just a woman in a bar with a friend who refused to let her disappear inside her own hurt.
When the song ended, I was breathing hard and smiling, and Bella pointed at me from across the dance floor.
“There she is,” she said. “Still Sam.”
I went back to the booth. Noah was still there, looking hopeful in a way that was sweet and completely wrong for where I was.
“I think I’m going to head out,” I told him. “But it was really nice meeting you.”
He took it well. Smiled. Said maybe he would see me around. I said maybe.
We both knew what maybe meant.
