“Yeah, and the job. Thanks to Elizabeth.”
“You’re welcome. Best hire ever. But forget about that. Levi?”
I turned my glass slowly on the table. “We’re talking tonight. Actually talking. About everything.”
Harper straightened slightly. “Everything, everything?” she asked, eyes darting to Elizabeth.
“Everything, everything,” I confirmed.
She and Elizabeth exchanged a look over my head that they thought was subtle and was totally not.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing,” they said, in unison, with identical expressions of complete innocence.
“That was coordinated.”
“We don’t know what you mean,” Elizabeth said, and took a long sip of her drink.
“We’re just pleased,” Harper added. “No further comment.”
“You’re both terrible,” I said, and laughed, and it felt easy in a way that laughing hadn’t for a while.
At some point, the music got louder, and Harper pulled us both to our feet, and we danced badly and enthusiastically in the small space near the band. I didn’t think about the river or the laptop or Travis or any of it, not even once. That was the thing I hadn’t realized I’d been missing. Not just fun, exactly. The relief of being somewhere loud enough that your own thoughts couldn’t get a word in.
“You’re smiling,” Harper said, leaning close to be heard over the music.
“I’m allowed to smile, aren’t I?”
“You are.” She bumped her shoulder against mine. “It looks good on you. I’ve missed it.”
“Don’t make it weird,” I said, but I squeezed her hand. “I’m getting used to it again.”
Elizabeth reappeared from the bar with a pitcher of Coke—since none of us were here to get wasted—and a man’s phone number written on a napkin that she was studying with the detached curiosity of someone who had not asked for it but wasn’t disinterested either. “Opinions?” she said, holding it out. “Should I be taking numbers when I only have eyes for a hot cop named Matt?”
“Oh god,” I mumbled. “He won’t know what to do with you, Elizabeth.”
“Oh, I bet he would,” she countered with a smile that could only be described as dreamy.
“Is he cute?” Harper asked, shooting an alarmed expression my way.
“Objectively, yes. Aggressively so. Which historically has been a red flag for me personally.” She folded the napkin and tucked it into her pocket. “I’ll think about it.”
“Keep your options open,” I told her.
“I always do.” She poured us our drinks and lifted her own.
We stayed until the band played their last song, and the lights came up slightly, and the warm, easy bubble of the evening began to thin at the edges. I helped Harper into her coat, and she leaned her head briefly on my shoulder the way she had since we were teenagers, and I felt something loosen in my chest that I hadn’t fully known was tight.
“Good night?” she asked.
“Really good night,” I said, and meant it completely.
We spilled out onto the sidewalk still laughing, the cool night air hitting clean and sharp after the warmth of the Tavern. Elizabeth was mid-sentence about the napkin situation, Harper was laughing, and I was pulling my jacket closed when I saw it.
Across the street. Idling at the curb in the thin wash of a streetlight.
Faded silver sedan. The same one from before.
