I didn't tell them about the PCOS. Some things just need to stay mine.
Thursday night. Tyler comes into the Anchor at nine.
He looks different tonight and it takes me a second to figure out why—no notebook, no pen behind his ear, no stack of printouts stuffed into his bag.
"I'm heading out tomorrow." He takes the Elijah Craig I pour him. "Article's done. Flight out of Portland at noon."
"Did you get what you came for?"
"The article, yes. The girl behind the bar, no." He says it with a half smile. "I had a good time with you, Holly. I want you to know that. Even when I could tell your mind wasn't always with me."
I don't know what to say to that so I dry the glass in my hand and let him keep talking.
"It's Rex, isn't it?" He looks at me straight on. "I watched you two in the same room once and that told me everything I needed to know. He looks at you like you're the only thing in the room and the door's on fire. I hope he figures it out."
He finishes his bourbon and leaves a fifty under the glass. I start to push it back and he puts his hand over mine for half a second.
"Keep it. Buy yourself a frame for all those photos you take."
He sets a business card on the bar. Tyler Briggs. Pacific Northwest Monthly.
"If you want those photographs published, call me."
"Goodbye for now, Holly."
"Bye, Tyler."
The door closes behind him. I pick up the card, turn it once, and slide it into the register drawer behind the rubber bands and the spare pens.
I wipe down his spot and drop his glass in the sink and stand behind the bar for a long minute, looking at the walls. The neon signs. The dart board. The framed photo of Sal behind the taps in 1973 that nobody believes is from 1973 because she looks the same. Bare wall space between all of it—patches of dark wood where nothing hangs and the grain shows through.
Gerald's nursing his usual coffee at the far end, watching Griz walk Gene Tillman to the door. Gene's three sheets to the wind and Griz has a hand on his shoulder, steering him toward the cab Sal called ten minutes ago. Gentle. Patient. Like walking a kid across the street.
"That gargoyle's more reliable than half the humans in this town," Gerald mutters into his mug. He doesn't look at me when he says it, but he says it loud enough for me to hear.
"Sal."
She glances up from the register.
"What would you say if I wanted to hang some of my photographs in here? A show. Just prints, framed, on the walls between the signs. The harbor stuff, the Toy Run, the town."
Sal studies me for a long moment. Her face gives nothing away. Then she reaches under the bar and pulls out a hammer and sets it on the wood between us.
"I'd say measure twice."
Upstairs after close, I open my laptop and create a new folder. NIGHTFALL COVE SHOW. I start dragging files. The harbor at dawn. The fishermen. Griz in the Anchor's doorway bathed in red neon. The orc family at Morretti's. Colt and Lily at the Toy Run. The Humans First pamphlet framed against scuffed bar wood.
A show in my bar, in my town, on my terms.
I set my alarm for four thirty. The harbor light at dawn only lasts about twenty minutes and I need to be on the pier when it hits.
Chapter 8
Rex
Three hundred miles north of Nightfall Cove and the rain gets harder.
A wall of water that drops the headlight's range to ten feet and turns Highway 101 into a guess. I'm riding blind at seventy, the engine screaming between my knees, and the speed doesn't do what it's supposed to do. Doesn't empty my head. Doesn't scrub the noise. Every mile north puts another mile between me and Holly and the distance should feel like progress but it doesn't. Every time I slow down the same thing fills the gap—MateandMineand Holly's face when I told her I had work and walked out. The way she turned back to the taps like she didn't care, but I saw the hurt in her eyes.
