It's the first morning all week where I lie in the hotel bed and seriously consider not driving to the bar. Not because anything changed — the assessment is the same, the booth is the same, the nachos will be the same. But last night changed something I can't name and don't want to examine, and the idea of sitting in that window seat pretending to work while my brain runs calculations on Ezra's dating profile and Troy's lip curl feels like too many variables.
I go anyway. Because the alternative is sitting in this hotel room with the HVAC and the popcorn ceiling and whatever's left of my professional objectivity, and at least the bar has good Wi-Fi.
I arrive at noon. The parking lot has the usual bikes. The cat is on the motorcycle seat. I've started thinking of her as a fixed feature of the property, like the neon signs or the gravel lot.
Inside, the bar is the same. Ezra on his stool. Jason in the kitchen. The low sound of something being built or repaired in the garage — metal on metal, the occasional burst of a pneumatic tool.
The booth is empty. My booth. The one I've sat in every day this week like I signed a lease on it.
I take my usual seat. Charger left, notebook right, phone facedown. Jason brings an IPA and a menu I don't need.
"Nachos?" he asks.
"Please."
The routine reassembles. Laptop open, assessment file on screen, the appearance of work. Except today the appearance is thinner than usual because I've been staring at the same paragraph of my report for fifteen minutes and haven't typed a word.
The report is done. Has been done since day three. The property doesn't make commercial sense for Coldwell. I have the traffic data, the zoning analysis, the comparable sales — everything I need to submit the assessment and recommend against acquisition. Daniel is waiting for it. Langford is waiting for it. The professional, efficient thing to do is send it, close the file, check out of the Holiday Inn, and fly back to Portland.
I don't send it.
I tell myself it's because I want the data to be thorough. Because there are gaps in the property file that bother me — the thin owner profile, the missing infrastructure analysis, the fact that Langford flagged this parcel in the first place. Professional pride. Due diligence.
That's not why.
I look up from the laptop. Ezra is on his stool, tea in hand, working on something in a spreadsheet. He hasn't looked at me today — not once, not the way he usually does, the sideways glances I've been cataloging and pretending I haven't. Today his attention is on his screen with a focus that feels deliberate. Like he's choosing not to look.
Something happened between yesterday and today. The nachos arrive. I eat them in my usual order — edges first, working inward — and try to figure out what shifted.
Yesterday: Ezra brought me fresh nachos after Troy left. There was a moment — brief, charged, the air between us doing something that I've been attributing to the bar's ventilationsystem because the alternative is admitting that I'm attracted to a lion shifter and that's a complication I don't have a spreadsheet for.
Today: Ezra is behind a wall. Polite, professional, the bartender version of himself instead of the person I've been talking to all week. The warmth is gone. The half-smile is gone. The thing where he notices what I'm doing and comments on it in a way that makes me feel seen — gone.
I should be relieved. This is simpler. Customer and bartender. Assessment agent and property occupant. Clean categories, clean boundaries, clean exit.
I'm not relieved.
At one-thirty, I close the laptop and walk to the bar. I've done this before — approached, initiated conversation, bridged the gap between the booth and the stool. But today it feels different because Ezra's posture changes when I get close. Not a flinch — subtler. A straightening. Someone who was relaxed and is now guarded.
"Can I get another IPA?" I ask.
"Sure." He pours it. Sets it on the bar. Goes back to his laptop.
That's it. No comment about my second IPA being unusual. No observation about my nachos or my work habits or the weather or the cat. Just the beer and the silence and the wall.
"Did I do something?" I ask.
Ezra looks up. His expression is careful — not blank, not cold, but curated. The expression of someone who's choosing what to show.
"No," he says. "Why?"
"You haven't looked at me once today."
Something flickers behind the careful expression. Surprise, maybe, that I noticed. Or discomfort that I said it out loud. In my experience, most people don't name the thing that's happening in the room. They let it sit between them like furniture and navigate around it.
I'm not most people. If there's a variable I don't understand, I ask about it. It's more efficient than guessing.
"I've been busy," Ezra says.
