Page 11 of Cherry Picking

“Aren’t prenups meant to be, like, practical? Something you’d advise literally anyone with assets to get?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t negate reality,” she replies dramatically. “When you sign one like that, you’re standing at the altar holding a would-be funeral in your heart.”

“You’d know about that,” I say with a snort. “Adjacent to the industry.”

She places a hand over her heart. “Unlike you, I am still a romantic.”

I let out a laugh, and for a second, it actually feels honest. The weight of this bizarre week is still leaning on my ribs—the hole I spent my Saturday morning digging, the cold granite, and that man in the dark overcoat who told me to call him by his first name.

I haven’t breathed a word of it to Hazel. I’ve got the whole encounter folded up small in my pocket, tucked away with the work order like a secret I’m not ready to share. In this line of work, it’s nothing out of the ordinary, but for some reason, I can’t seem to put it down.

“Wanna dance?” I ask.

“About damn time,” she says, hopping off her stool like she’s been waiting for the starting gun. “I was starting to feel like part of the furniture.”

“We’ve been here twenty minutes.”

She ignores me, towing me toward the small patch of floor where the jukebox is currently playing “Dreams.” We both loudly sing along. Hazel does a theatrical spin that nearly takes me out, and I’m laughing hard enough to lose my footing. A guy by the bar whistles; someone else complains about the floor space.

“We’re bringing culture to this establishment,” Hazel informs them.

“Philistines!”

By the time the track shifts into “Dancing in the Dark,” I’m loose and warm.

A man peels away from the bar during the slow synth intro, approaching us. He’s handsome in a way that won’t stick in my memory, with light hair and the kind of forearms that suggest he spends his weekends doing something physical.

He settles a hand on my waist, a silent request to join in, and I let him. We move through two more songs while Hazel finds a target of her own—taller, with a haircut that was a mistake—and we trade check-in looks across the crowd.

This guy is actually a decent dancer, which is a rare find in a dive like this. He tells me his name—something starting with an M that I immediately lose to the bass—and I give him mine.

Ten minutes into our dance, he leans down, his breath warm against my ear. “You smell like dirt.” It’s a fair observation. I showered before we left, but some parts of the day refuse to be scrubbed off.

“Work thing,” I say.

“What do you do?”

I huff a laugh. “You definitely don’t want to know.”

He grins, taking it as a challenge, and I let him spend the next three minutes guessing—paramedic, no; landscaper, warmer; geologist, not even close—before I disentangle myself, telling him I need to find some air.

The smoking patio out back is a slab of cracked concrete with two plastic chairs, a single string of flickering bulbs, and an unencumbered view of the dumpster. It’s perfectly industrial bleak.

I’m not a regular smoker, but Hazel always has a pack of Camels in her bag for emergencies. Tonight feels like one.

I light up, letting the smoke drift away into the dry night, taking slow pulls that I feel all the way down.

In late autumn, Vegas does this thing where the heat just finally breaks. It’s like the entire valley takes a breath. And above the trash and the orange electric glow of the Strip, there are actually a few stars visible through the haze.

A small, unearned miracle.

I puff again, the silence of the alley a relief. Hazel finds me ten minutes later, her coat already zipped.

“Deposition at 8:00 a.m.,” she says, looking genuinely sorry about it. “The prenup man cometh.”

“Go fight the good fight.”

She kisses my cheek, smelling of vodka and that cinnamon gum she uses to hide it. “You okay? You’ve been spacey tonight.”