"Yet."
Despite herself, Raven felt her mouth twitch. "You're insufferable."
"I prefer 'charmingly direct.'" His drink arrived and he raised it in a mock toast. "To unwanted publicity."
She clinked her glass against his, feeling marginally less stabby.
They sat in silence for a moment, the kind that was surprisingly comfortable for two people who barely knew each other.
"The comments," Raven said finally. "They're brutal."
"They always are."
"It's not even about the photo. It's about… everything else. The breakup. The band. The fact that I'm thirty-five and apparently past my prime."
"Ah yes. The ancient age of thirty-five. Practically one foot in the grave."
"I'm serious."
"I know you are. That's the problem." Arty leaned back, studying her. "How long have you been reading comments?"
"Too long."
"And has a single one of them made you feel better about yourself?"
"Obviously not."
"So why keep reading?"
Raven didn't have a good answer to that. Because she was a masochist? Because some part of her believed they were right? Because it felt like penance for something, though she wasn't entirely sure what?
"I shouldn't have come here," she said instead.
"To Bankton?"
"To anywhere. I should have stayed in London, or gone abroad, or…" She gestured helplessly. "Not subjected a tiny village to tabloid attention just because I couldn't deal with my own shit."
"Is that what you think you've done?"
"That's what IknowI've done. Look at that photo. Look at the headlines. I brought that here."
Arty was quiet for a moment, turning his glass in his hands.
"I used to be a journalist," he said finally. "Did I mention that?"
"You might have."
"Investigative reporting, mostly. Political scandals, corporate corruption, the sexy stuff." He smiled, but there was no humor in it. "I was good at it too. Really good. Won a few awards, got some high-profile cases. But the thing about that kind of journalism is that you're always chasing the next story. Always looking for the angle. Always compromising just a little bit more to get ahead."
Raven listened, not sure where this was going.
"I burned out," Arty continued. "Badly. Panic attacks, insomnia, the whole works. My editor told me to take a break, but I knew if I took a break I'd never go back. So I quit. Came here, bought the pub, and never wrote another word."
"Sounds like running away."
"It was. For a while." He met her eyes. "But then it became something else. A choice. Running away and hiding are different things, you see. One's about fear. The other's about choice."
Raven frowned. "What's the difference?"
