Hannah slid in first, all grin and sparkle. Her earrings swung like tiny disco balls when she waved at the bartender.
“Place has character,” she said, which meant it was a dump.
I tugged at my sweatshirt sleeve. Too soft, too safe. She’d wanted me in something tight and glittery; I’d settled on jeans and an oversized sweater over the cute shirt. I wasn’t here to meet anyone. I was here to stop feeling anything at all.
We picked a booth near the back, away from the biggest crowd. A hockey game flickered silently on the TV above the bar. Of course it did.
Hannah flagged the bartender without looking. “Two tequila flights,” she said.
“Make that one,” I murmured.
She rolled her eyes, audible even through the noise. “Fine. Whiskey, neat,” she told him, like she’d ordered it for a condemned man.
The glass came slick with condensation. I smelled the burn before I tasted it. Swallowed anyway. Every nerve screamed why as it went down.
Hannah was already clinking shot glasses with the couple at the table beside us. Her laugh cut through the din, bright as tinfoil. She thrived in chaos. I envied that.
I checked my phone. Blank screen. No message from Nate. Not even one of those pointless apologies he specialized in—half words strung together to sound like remorse. The quiet hit harder than any explanation.
My chest ached in a dull, pulsing way. Like bruise pressure. Like something under the surface still trying to breathe.
I set the phone facedown, stared into the amber swirl inside my glass. “I feel like my skin doesn’t fit right anymore.”
Hannah stopped talking to the strangers long enough to look at me. Lipstick smudged red on her teeth, defiant. “Then let’s drink until it doesn’t matter.”
She wasn’t joking. That was the terrifying part.
She tilted back a shot and winked at the bartender, a tall guy with tattoos crawling up his forearm like vines. He grinned back without hesitation. Of course he did. Couldn’t blame him.
I slouched lower in the booth, half listening, half floating. The noise blurred into one long hum: glasses clinking, low laughter, the muted cheer from the TV. Someone behind us dropped a cue ball, the sharp crack jolting through me like thunder from a storm I didn’t know was coming.
Another sip burned my throat raw, and I thought of Nate’s smirk when he told me not to be dramatic. The sound of that woman’s laugh still ghosted somewhere behind my temples.
Hannah touched my arm lightly. “You’re not there anymore,” she said, words softer than usual.
I nodded, even though the room tilted a little, and stared at the amber in the glass until it blurred into nothing.
The hum ofThe Pour Housesettled into a low, steady throb. Conversation blurred into meaningless noise, and the air thickened with that sour mix of whiskey, sweat, and someone else’s heartbreak.
I tipped what was left of my drink down, the burn settling deep where the ache used to be, and let my eyes drift past Hannah’s clatter and laughter.
I wasn't going to drink, but…
It hurt too much not to.
I heaved a sigh and glanced around until my eyes locked on a man. He sat two booths over by the far wall, just under the glow of a busted neon beer sign that blinked unevenly against his shoulders. Broad frame. Stillness that didn’t belong in this place. He wasn’t performing drunk the way everyone else was; he was studying the room like someone waiting for it to make a mistake.
A glass of something dark rested near his elbow, untouched for a long time. He held it like a habit. His fingers—scarred knuckles, thick wrists, veins like faint roadmaps—wrapped around the rim without hurry. His arms, bare to mid-forearm, carried the kind of tattoos that didn’t feel decorative. They looked earned. Every line seemed to tell someone’s bad idea.
He didn’t smile.
A group of college kids crammed into the bar just then, loud with bravado and cheap cologne, bumping into his table on their way past. I waited for him to snap, some part of me counting down the seconds before the blowup—this place fed off small disasters—but he didn’t move. His jaw flexed once, slow as a clock turning, and then he looked away. Controlled, deliberate.
That restraint felt unreal in a room full of noise.
I caught myself staring longer than I should have. Something about him held weight, and that weight steadied the space around him. Which only made the air in my chest turn brittle.I didn’t want to notice how calm he seemed, or how his silence made everyone else’s laughter feel thinner.
Hannah leaned in close, catching me looking. “You scope-checking the lumberjack, or just zoning out?”
