“This is a twenty-dollar cocktail at anopenbar. You’d have to try pretty hard to do better.”
Her friend nudged her with an elbow. The redhead didn’t break eye contact with Handful. She just waited, the way you wait for someone to figure out the conversation is over.
Handful didn’t figure it out. He leaned on the bar beside her. “So, what brings you to a biker wedding?”
“The bride is my friend. What brings you to a biker wedding?”
“I’m a biker.”
“Right. Well.” She turned back to her friend. “That was fun.”
He stood there a second too long, then came over to me.
“How’d that go?” I asked.
“Great. Really connected.”
“She turned her back on you.”
“She turned her backslowly.That’s different.”
I laughed. It caught me off guard — the feeling of it, rusty and unfamiliar, like a muscle I hadn’t used in weeks.
He was still watching her. Not just interest on his face. Something told me this was not just about the chase. He looked like a man who’d run into a wall he actually wanted to climb.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Ruby.”
“And you’re going back over there?”
“Obviously.”
“She’s going to shoot you down again.”
“Obviously.” He finished his drink. “But she’s going to remember my name.”
He went back. The redhead saw him coming this time and said something to her friend that made them both laugh before he’d even arrived. He said something I couldn’t hear. She replied without looking at him — one sentence, delivered sideways — and her friend covered her mouth with her hand.
Handful came back to the bar grinning like he’d won something.
“What’d she say?” I asked.
“She said I was persistent, which is basically a compliment.”
“What else did she say?”
“That she’d rather eat her own shoes than give me her number.” He was still grinning. “But she said it with style.”
I shook my head. “You’re a disaster.”
“Yeah.” He was still watching her across the room. “But I’m a memorable disaster.”
My eyes drifted past him, and that’s when I caught it — Dutch at the far end of the bar, standing next to Indira’s father. I hadn’t seen him approach. Neither had the father, from the look of it. Dutch had just appeared beside him the way he did, like he’d always been there.
Dutch didn’t apologize for anything. Not for the clubhouse, not for the cut on his back, not for who he was or how he’d gotten there. He just leaned against the bar beside the man and talked to him like a person.
“How’s the recovery going? Indira said they switched you to a new cardiologist.”
