Natalie smiled. “I know, but there’s several tiers above me. The kind of people that shut down a street or a store. Okay, maybe I’m easily recognizable, but I’m not world-famous. But it’s not worth the risk, usually, to go to a bar. Things can go wrong fast. Whether it’s a photographer or a drunk fan.” Natalie took another drink. “Here, nobody cares. I’m just Bridget’s granddaughter who comes here every summer. It’s one of the nicest feelings in the world. To just exist here and not always be thinking three, four steps ahead.”
The relief of saying it out loud surprised her. In Los Angeles, explaining why she couldn’t just go places required admitting to a level of recognition that sounded either like bragging or complaining, depending on who was listening. Here, with Emma, it was simply true.
The session shifted into something slower, a waltz, the fiddle dropping into its lower register with a sweetness that pressedagainst the chest. Trish appeared without preamble, two fresh pints in hand. She set them down in front of them.
“Thanks,” Emma said.
“How are you settling in?” Trish asked Natalie.
“Good. Yeah. It never takes long to get used to this. The relaxed way everything is here. Even driving on the other side of the road is something I’m getting more confident with.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Trish said before leaving them to enjoy their pints.
Emma finished her first pint and pushed her empty glass towards the center of the table. “Three years this week,” she said. Her eyes on the new glass, her thumb tracing a line through the condensation as the Guinness settled. “Since I qualified.”
“Three years.” Natalie set her own glass down. “Really?”
Emma smiled, small and real. “I nearly didn’t make it, you know. The first six months were a lot harder than I thought they’d be. The training was fine. It was the wards. That first night everything went sideways at once. Two emergencies and a patient who coded and I hadn’t a clue where anything was. I stood in the corridor after and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.” Emma shrugged, one shoulder lifting and falling. “Anyway. The last three years have flown by, but I wanted to celebrate. The only thing is…” She gestured vaguely at the snug, at the pub, at the night. “Everyone I went through college with is in Boston or Sydney. Sarah’s doing agency nursing in Perth. Aoife’s in Connecticut somewhere. Sean’s in New York.”
She said it without self-pity. Just as a fact. The way you reported weather. But Natalie heard what lived underneath the words, and she thought of Emma coming home from a twelve-hour shift to a house where both parents had once been and were no longer.
Twenty-five years old. Her parents gone. Her friends scattered across the world. And she’d stayed. Not because shewas trapped or too frightened to leave or lacking in imagination. She’d stayed because this was her home.
She studied Emma in the golden glow of the snug’s lamps, the way the light caught the warm chestnut strands of her hair where they brushed against her collarbone. There was an effortless grace in how Emma held her pint glass, fingers loose around the curve of it, her whole body relaxed against the worn wooden bench. No tension in her shoulders, no restless energy in her limbs—just complete, unthinking belonging.
Natalie felt something shift in her chest. It was admiration, she told herself firmly. The kind you feel watching someone who knows exactly where they’re meant to be. She let the feeling sit there, unexamined, and took another drink. The music swelled from the main bar, but here in the snug it was just the two of them, and this moment that felt like it could stretch forever if Natalie let it.
“Well.” Natalie lifted her glass. “To three years. Congratulations.”
Emma’s smile widened. She touched her glass to Natalie’s. The sound was soft, almost lost under the music. “Cheers.”
A while later, Trish appeared in the snug doorway and collected their empties, balancing them effortlessly as she wove between tables toward the bar.
Emma watched her go.
A beat. Then another. The kind of looking that lingered past casual, that carried something not quite explained by gratitude or friendship.
Natalie noticed.
Emma turned back and found Natalie’s face and whatever she saw there made her smile, shorter this time, the colour rising in her cheeks.
“Right. So.” She took a breath. Looked at her pint, then her gaze flicked up to Natalie. “You know how everyone has that oneperson when they’re a teenager? The one that makes it all click? Well, that’s how it is if you’re gay, and you’re kind of late to realize that you’re not the same as everyone else.”
Natalie said nothing. Just waited.
“Anyway, it was Trish. For me. I was about sixteen.” Emma’s lips pressed together around a smile that was half embarrassment and half something softer, something fond. “She was behind the bar and she said something, I don’t even remember what, and I just thought. Oh. That’s. That’s what that is then. I couldn’t wait until I eighteen, and I could sit up at the bar and… I don’t even know. I was crazy enough back then to think I had a chance with her, I guess.”
She said it lightly. As though it were a teenage crush, long past.
But it was also confirmation. Natalie had suspected—had read it in glances and absences—but had never heard it stated plainly. Emma liked women, and she’d known since she was sixteen. And her first crush had been a dark-haired woman, who was considerable older than her, with a sharp jaw and piercing eyes.
“Trish is a good looking woman” Natalie said, and her voice came out steady and warm. “Why wouldn’t you have had a crush on her?”
She stared at her drink for a moment.
She did not examine what she was feeling. She took a sip instead and let the cool weight of it settle in her chest, and she asked Emma if she was seeing anyone, and she said no.
The session ended just as Natalie was considering asking more questions. The music stopped, leaving only the ambient noise of the pub.
