I had my phone, wallet, and CharlieCard. It was for Boston transit, two years useless in any practical sense. I kept it in myleft jeans pocket. The day I took it out was the day I'd have to decide what that meant. I wasn't there yet.
I locked up and stepped into the hallway. Errands to run before work swallowed my evening.
***
The first hour at Carver's was always easy. The second hour was loud. By the third, someone spilled something, and everyone stopped noticing.
The after-work crowd came in still wearing their lanyards. A bachelorette party colonized the back corner: eight women, one wearing aLast Rodeosash, and a bottle of Prosecco they'd requested with the cork in so they could do it themselves.
They could not.
“Okay, we’re going to try this one more time,” I said, handing the bottle back. “You—yes, Last Rodeo—less wrist, more commitment. Think champagne, not revenge.”
The cork went sideways and hit the wall.
“That’s on me,” I said immediately. “I gave you too much emotional context.”
The far rail had two guys on a first date sitting four inches farther apart than they wanted to. Probably Fine was on his usual stool, nursing a beer with the patience of a man with nowhere better to be.
Nora was already moving, which meant the floor was falling behind.
I tied my apron, checked the rail, and started pouring.
"Table seven wants to split the check four ways," Nora said, appearing beside me, waiting for a bottle. "The one guy's doing the math on his phone like he doesn't trust us with long division."
"Historically, we're experts at long division."
"He doesn't know our history." She took the bottle. "His problem."
Nora had six months on me and moved through the bar like she'd poured its foundation herself. We didn’t see each other outside shifts, but we didn’t need to. She moved onto the floor when it started to slip. I held the bar. Tomasz helped close and occasionally shared his thoughts on the impermanence of things, unprompted. It worked.
The TVs ran muted and captioned above the bar the way they always did. Ambience like the weather outside. Two of them were on the Ironhawks' game.
The camera went wide, and I looked up.
Pratt was in the crease.
I finished a pour and set it down, already reaching for the next glass before I realized I'd pulled the wrong tap. The ticket said bottle. I looked at the draft for a second—full, cold, for nobody—and I poured it out.
I'd known him for maybe fourteen minutes, through a wrong-door situation and a doorstep apology. Here I was looking at him on a TV in my bar, thinking:yeah, that's right. That's him.
"Hey." I set the pint in front of the guy at the far end. "Ironhawks up?"
He glanced at the screen. "By one. Third."
On screen, Pratt skated to the boards and said something to a defenseman, two words, maybe three. Then he skated back to the crease and reset.
Nora came back to the rail for a bottle and stopped when she caught my sightline.
She looked at the screen and then looked at me.
"Since when do you watch hockey?"
"I don't." I picked up a rag. "I'm watching my neighbor."
"No," she said.
"Way. He plays for the Ironhawks,” I added, like that clarified anything. “That feels like information I should have led with.”
