I cringe at the thought. Even if they don’t string me up, I sound like a freakin’ serial killer with a line like that, or a really bad prostitute. I go over the options in my head for how to approach the lone figure in the booth, without looking like I want to take him home or cut him up into little pieces, but everything I think of makes it seem like I’m going to try and sell him something. He doesn’t look like the type who needs lipstick that never wipes off or a pretty new set of earrings, so I abandon that line of thought and start stressing about how to even help him if he lets me. Will it be as simple as a reading? Will there be more to it than that?
“What can I get you to drink, miss?” an older woman with a kind face asks me.
“Oh. Uh...do you have Michelob?” I ask, embarrassingly frazzled.
“I do, hon. That’ll be four dollars.”
Shit.
I tap my pockets like I’m going to somehow magic money there, but I didn’t even think to grab my wallet, and my phone with my emergency credit card isn’t tucked anywhere on me.
“I got it,” a deep and annoyingly familiar voice announces, his strong arm rubbing against mine seconds later as he presses next to me at the bar.
I release an exasperated breath as I look up into moss-green eyes, and I shake my head in frustration. “Where’s Hoot?”
“Asleep in the car. I cracked the windows,” he states evenly, ordering something for himself and handing over a twenty. “Keep the change,” he tells the obliging bartender, but instead of it making her more endeared to him, a suspicious gleam enters her hazel eyes. I decide I like her right there and then.
She hands me my bottle of beer, and I pull a small sip from it, enjoying the cool liquid and the light taste in my mouth before I swallow it down. “Well, I hope someone breaks your windows because they think you left a dog in the car to die,” I tell him with a tilt of my bottle in a faux cheers, and then I leave him at the bar and approach the man in the booth.
Here goes nothing.
11
Itake a deep fortifying breath, and then without working myself up any more than I already have, I slide into the booth on the other side of the man. He looks up at me, confused, and quickly shoves something in his pocket.
“Nice night for a drink,” I tell him, taking a sip of my beer and internally wanting to flick myself in the eye.
Really, Lennox? That was the best you could do?
“It is,” he agrees awkwardly, looking around for a moment before his gunmetal-blue eyes land back on me.
“How’s your night going?” I ask at a loss for how else to approach this. Maybe he’ll just come right out with whatever is going on with him.
“Listen, as flattered as I probably should be that someone that looks like you is talking to someone who looks like me, I saw that big guy come in after you,” he tells me, gesturing to Rogan at the bar with his sweaty glass of half-drunk beer. “I’ve been married long enough to recognize a woman who’s cheesed off at her man, and I’m not interested in getting in the middle of whatever the two of you have going on,” he finishes, taking a quick drink from his mug before setting it down and slowly spinning it, once again appearing to be lost in thought.
“Who? That guy?” I ask, feigning bewilderment as I turn to look at the bar. It doesn’t help that Rogan is watching us like a cat watches birds that are playing on the other side of the window it’s perched in. “He’s just my stalker, you don’t have to worry about him,” I explain dismissively. “And he’s not why I’m here,” I add.
The man studies me for a moment, and I take in the dark circles under his eyes, the limp plaid shirt that’s hanging from him like he’s lost a bit of weight recently. His golden brown hair is dull, and he keeps spinning the mug in his hands like if he stops the world just might crumble all around him.
I find myself unknowingly reaching out to him with my magic. He’s definitely a Lesser, and his bones don’t reveal to me any kind of illness or cause of the deterioration I sense, but there’s a deep-rooted exhaustion there that makes me want to sing him a lullaby and stand guard over him while he sleeps for a month.
“Then why are you here…”
“Lennox, my name is Lennox, but you can call me Leni,” I supply, and he nods once. “I’m here to help you,” I tell him simply, and a flash of shock moves through his features before moroseness regains its hold on him, and his face sags with gloom.
“And how do you think you can help me?” he presses, the skepticism bleeding out of his words.
“I’m not sure yet, I just met you…”
“Paul,” he provides, and I offer him a kind smile in exchange for his name.
Paul leans back against the cracked pleather of the booth seat, and I can feel that he’s sizing me up, trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing here and what he wants to do about it. “Why would you want to help me?” he questions, and there’s such raw vulnerability in the question that it makes my heart ache for him. I don’t know who he is or what he needs from me, but I can feel that he thinks he’s unworthy, I can feel in that moment how painfully broken he thinks he is. It breaks my heart.
“This will probably sound weird, but I felt pulled here. I felt with everything in me that you needed something or maybe someone, and I just couldn’t walk away from that feeling. So here I am, a complete stranger, sitting in your booth, here to help you with whatever is going on.”
Emotion wells up in Paul’s eyes, but he doesn’t let it escape. I watch quietly as he wrestles with what he’s feeling, and I wonder what has this man feeling so shattered. He looks maybe a handful of years older than me, and although I don’t get the impression that life has been easy, I don’t sense that it’s been overly hard either.
“My Phoebe was like that,” he tells me, his voice cracking on the name. “I’ve never seen a kinder, more compassionate person in all my life, and there are some good people in these parts. She would bend over backward for anyone. It used to drive me nuts, but now…”
