I pushed off the stool before I could think about it too long and crossed the bar.
“Hey,” she said when I got close.
“Hey.” I slid onto the stool beside her, close enough that our knees almost brushed when I shifted. I didn’t move away.
“Didn’t expect to see you here tonight.”
“Paige insisted.” Cara exhaled a quiet laugh, eyes dropping to her drink. “She said if I spent one more night reorganizing shelves, I’d turn into one.”
“She’s probably not wrong.”
“She’s definitely not wrong,” she said, then glanced up at me. “What about you? I thought you had tonight off.”
“I do.” I rolled the bottle between my palms. “Didn’t feel like going home yet.”
“Mm.” She nodded like she understood more than I’d said. “Too quiet?”
“Something like that.”
Cara shifted on her stool, tucking one leg slightly behind the other, creating just enough space between us that I noticed it.
“How’s the bookstore?” I asked. “Aside from the turning into a shelf thing.”
“Busy.” She hesitated. “Good busy.” Her fingers traced the rim of her glass. “I’ve been working on Mystery Night,” she went on, a little faster now. “It’s Friday, and I—okay, I might’ve overcommitted. There are clue envelopes, and I rewrote the opening twice, and I keep thinking I forgot something important, but I don’t know what—” She stopped herself, pressing her lips together. “Sorry. That was a lot.”
There it was. The thing I’d forgotten about her, or told myself I had—the way she’d talk herself forward and then pull back, like she was embarrassed by her own enthusiasm. I used to do everything I could to keep her going past that point. I still wanted to.
“You care about it,” I said.
“Too much,” she said under her breath.
“Is that a bad thing?”
Cara let out a breath along with her answer. “Sometimes.”
I watched her for a second. The way her shoulders were held just a little tight. The way she kept adjusting her grip on the glass. Being this close to her and keeping my expression neutral was taking more effort than I wanted to admit. “You always did that,” I said.
Her brows pulled together. “Did what?”
“Talk like you’re trying to get ahead of the problem before it shows up.”
She blinked at me. A small laugh escaped her, and something in my chest responded to it immediately, as if her laugh was a frequency I was tuned into, whether I wanted to be or not. “Okay. That’s… accurate.”
“I remember things.”
“I can see that.” Her gaze lingered on me a second longer than necessary, then dropped. “That’s slightly terrifying.”
“Should it be?”
“Maybe.” She tilted her head, studying me now. “Depends on what else you remember.”
I held her eyes. “Probably more than I should.”
Silence settled between us, warm and unresolved. I didn’t rush to fill it. Neither did she, which I’d always liked about her; she could sit in a quiet moment without needing to fill the silence. We used to do that in the library. Just exist in the same space without it costing anything. I hadn’t found that easy with many people since.
Cara broke it first, reaching for her glass. “Well,” she said, too lightly. “That’s not ominous at all.”
I huffed a quiet laugh. Then?—
