Her.
On my turf.
During what has somehow become… our time.
Like a goddamn offering.
Man, this is cruel.
She stares straight up at the exposed beams with an expression I can't quite read.
Sad. Tender. Like she's having a conversation I'm not invited to.
“The health department's gonna shut me down.”
She doesn't startle. Doesn't even move. Just shifts her eyes toward me without lifting her head, like she expected me.
Like we're both caught in the same insomnia, thesame orbit, the same gravitational pull we've been pretending doesn't exist.
“I'm not touching the food prep surfaces.”
“You're touching all the surfaces.” I move closer. “This is where the bartender stands, Sierra. Where I make drinks. With my hands.”
“Then sanitize it tomorrow.” She goes back to studying the ceiling. “I'm busy.”
“Doing what, exactly?”
“Looking.”
I stop at the edge of the bar, close enough to see the faint pulse jumping at the base of her throat. Close enough to smell her shampoo—something floral and familiar that makes my chest ache in ways I'm too tired to fight.
“At?”
She doesn't answer right away. Her finger traces something in the air above her, following the line of a beam I've walked under a thousand times without really seeing.
“Did Grammie Bea ever tell you the story of these logs?”
I lean my hip against the bar. “Which story? She had about forty.”
“The initials.”
I look up. It takes me a second to find them—two sets of letters carved into the wood, weathered by time and smoke and a century of life happening underneath them, and on opposite sides of the beam.
Like some sort of standoff.
Like us.
“Jedediah and Eleanor were childhood sweethearts.” Sierra's voice goes soft in that way it does when she's telling a story she loves.
“They grew up on neighboring homesteads. Fell in love young—too young, everyone said. But they didn't care. When the original lodge was being built, they snuck out one night and carved their initials into a log together. Side by side. Forever.”
I stare at the ceiling. E.S. on one beam. J.M. on another. Separated by at least fifteen feet of empty air.
“They're not together.”
“No.” She's quiet for a moment. “The log got split during construction. Installed wrong. Nobody realized until it was too late. The initials that were supposed to be the centerpiece. Instead they ended up on opposite sides of the room.”
Two people who belonged together. Separated by a mistake. Never properly reunited.
