Sugar Plum laughs and disappears toward the taps.
“And I have a boyfriend,” I whisper to myself when she’s out of earshot.
Two teenagers in puffy coats order fries and a Sprite and stare around like the world might start happening to them any second now.I want to tell them it already is.I mop a spill.I align the bar mats.I tell myself not to turn toward the hallway like a compass that just learned a new north.
A scream cuts the room in half.
It’s not a big scream.Not cinematic.It’s the startled sound someone makes when reality hooks left.Then the front door slams too hard, and three figures boil in with the storm, faces obscured under ski masks, guns up and wobbling in hands that don’t look steady.The tallest one’s breath rattles through the knit like a dog about to bite.
“Everybody hands up!”Mask One shouts, voice cracking.“Phones on the bar!”
Mask Two bangs his gun’s butt against a tabletop, and a mug does its own little death rattle.“Do what he says!”
The room freezes like we practiced.Evervale hasn’t.It’s a tourist town.We rehearse for weather, not this.But it happens more often than I like to admit.The teenagers start crying without sound, and I move without thinking, my body putting itself between them and muzzle flashes that might happen.I lift both palms.
“It’s okay,” I say.My voice goes soft, the way you talk to skittish horses and drunks.“Just take the register.We’ll help you.No one has to...”
“Shut up,” Mask One snaps, gun swinging to me like it’s magnetized.“Open it.”
“Okay.”My hands don’t shake.I learned how to keep my cool years ago.“I’m opening it.”
I walk backward to the register, punch the code, and the drawer kicks out, blooming with green.I slide it forward.“Take it.”
He hesitates, then leans in across the bar.The gun follows his hand like it doesn’t want to lose its friend.
“Faster,” Mask Two says, coming around the end of the bar like he knows the terrain.
He’s sloppy, jittery, the worst combination.
“No one’s being slow,” I say.“See?I’m helping.You’re doing great.”
“Shut up,” he says again, and now I hate the words like I hate hangnails.His gun is pointed at my face, and I won’t cry.That’s the rule.
Then the hallway breathes, and Humbug appears.
Everything tightens around him, the room realizing it’s been missing a center.He takes in the scene the way a storm sucks in the air, fast, precise.One mask.Two mask.My hands.The kids.The angle of the gun to my mouth.
“Don’t,” he says, and it’s almost gentle.The word drops heavy anyway.
Mask Two laughs a little, high and terrible.“Or what, Grandpa?”
The gun tips toward Humbug.That’s his mistake.His last easy one.
Humbug moves the way men move who’ve had to.Clean.No wasted reach.He’s on Mask Two before the laugh lands, jerks his wrist, cracks the arm across the bar edge so the gun clatters like a coin.The second sound is flesh on wood.The third is Mask Two’s breath leaving his body in a whoof that says this hurts forever.
Mask One swears and points his gun at Humbug, and I don’t even think.My hand is already closing around the heavy glass ashtray we keep for tourists who lie about quitting.I slam it into Mask One’s skull as hard as I can.
It’s not cinematic either.It’s ugly, but it works.He wobbles, and Humbug takes the rest.Two punches, one knee, decisively cruel.The third guy, I hadn’t even noticed until now, backs out the door and disappears into snow like a ghost that never mattered.The other two, tougher than they seem, resurrect and follow him.
Silence falls in a mess.Someone starts sobbing like they just remembered how.Sugar Plum curses in a whisper.The TV keeps playing like it’s in denial.
Humbug stares at me, breathing hard, knuckles split and red.His eyes are winter, cold depth and dark water.Without warning, I experience the oddest thing.Relief, like a fever breaking.
“You okay?”he asks, voice rougher now, like he’s swallowing rocks.
“I’m fine,” I answer, and then realize I’m crying.“I’m...yeah.”
He reaches across the bar and wipes a streak of peppermint dust from my cheek with his thumb like he can’t help it.His hand smells like motor oil and smoke.But the warmth of his touch finds every nerve in me.My body answers faster than my brain with a low heat that pools deep in my belly, a fire I’m too smart to feed and too weak to smother.
