“Perfect,” she smiled. “Thanks.”
Then she and the guy with her sauntered off to their table, where Maggie was very intentlynotlooking at me.
Why was she here? Why come here and parade some guy around in front of me like…
Fuck. I didn’t have any right to complain. There were only two bars in town, and this was where most folks ended up at the end of the night if they were local or didn’t want to deal with the uppity fucks at Summit & Vine.
She had every right to be here, and I was just an old, washed up?—
“That’s her, huh?” Kathleen asked, looking back at the table. “The shy one?”
I grunted under my breath.
“She’s not shy,” I said.
Kathleen tilted her head. “She hasn’t looked over here once.”
“She knows I’m here.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because she walked in and found the one corner of the room that isn’t directly in my sightline,” I said. “That’s not shy. That’s deliberate.”
Kathleen considered this. “Hm.” She sipped her whiskey. “And the guy.”
“Tourist.”
“He’s cute.”
“Kathleen.”
“Just observing.” She set her glass down. “He’s looking at her like she’s the most interesting person he’s ever met.”
“She probably is,” I said, very intently wiping down a specific spot on the bar.
“Nash.”
“I’m working.”
“You’ve wiped that same spot four times.”
I put the rag down.
The bar was loud around us—jukebox, Friday crowd, happy and buzzed people. Normal. Fine. I’d worked a thousand Friday nights exactly like this one and none of them had felt like this.
Because Maggie Laine was sitting in a corner booth with a stranger and he was looking at her like she was the most interesting person in the room because she was, because of course she fucking was, because she was goddamn perfect and didn’t want to get dinner with me.
“Go bring her the drink,” Kathleen said.
“Tess can bring it.”
“But youshould,” she said. “I don’t think you understand what’s happening here.”
I rolled my eyes toward her. “I’m forty years old, Kathleen. What’s going on here is petty bullshit.”
“Nope.” Kathleen shook her head. “Her friend is trying to set you two up. The tourist is a prop.”
“Sounds an awful lot like petty bullshit to me.”
